Our big walk-a-thon was Friday. The weather was PERFECT. Sunny and warm and beautiful. I had spent hours and hours planning and organizing, calling and emailing, and it was to the point that all I could do was hope that everyone actually did what they said they would do. I got there early, lugging three coolers, two bags a box and a backpack. I should have done like our PTA president did and piled everything into a wagon. Only I wasn’t bringing smaller children, and I don’t have a wagon. I gave the cd of carefully selected songs that I had had Cole help me with (Ok, I chose and bought the songs and he downloaded them and burned me a CD) to the principal, and his computer promptly froze up, trapping my one copy in his laptop. Seriously, I thought, this is how the day is going to go? No worries, though. He went and got another CD from inside, and he had a bunch of music from the previous Hawk walks on there, so that wasn’t a catastrophe, merely a glitch. Another glitch in my carefully crafted plan was when Ryan (who was working from home so that he could help me out a bit) went to pick up Megan from the high school and there was an assembly starting, and they could not find her to check her out. Luckily, she looked at her phone and saw that he had sent her a text, and she came to the office. Why did I need Megan, you ask? She was only playing the most important part…that of the MASCOT!

She dressed up as the Hawk (who has no name, as far as I know. Maybe we should name him) and waved, gave high fives, danced, and even hugged the kids. She did GREAT!

I had also arranged to have some other mascots come as well. We had visits from the Chick-fil-A cow,

and even Andy the Armadillo from Texas Roadhouse.

One of my friends came up and said, “This is like DISNEYLAND with all these characters walking around!” Although it was nothing like Disneyland, I think having the mascots added a bunch of fun to our hawk walk.
I had the Cow and the Hawk race each other in the center of one of the tracks, and even though the Cow has longer legs, the Hawk won, which is fitting, don’t you think?

There were a few other little problems, like teachers who don’t read their instructions and take their classes to the wrong tracks, other teachers who complained because one track “was longer” than the other track and those kids are going to get more laps.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Come on, teachers.

I won’t go into that one too much, but let’s just say that that class won’t be winning any awards for good sportsmanship, will they?

Tons of parents showed up to help and to walk with their kids, the Armadillo passed out free kids meals tokens, and Chick-fil-a donated a whole bunch of free kids meals certificates, the kids seemed happy to be walking, and no one was injured.

A very sweaty Megan even survived as the Hawk, and I am so glad that she was willing to help out.

After the two hour long walking sessions were over, there was still lots to do to take everything down and then count all those lap cards and record things. Some of my helpers didn’t come, but I had many who did come and helped. We were able to wrap everything up by the time my kids got out of school, which was good. Yes, I still have tons of work to do in calculating the winners and organizing the prize assembly, but the EVENT is over. Now we just have to wait and see how much money the event brings in.

It turned out well. It was a good event. I am still exhausted, but pleased.