Special Olympics

Mom may write about this too, but I just had such a fun day that I thought I'd write about a little of it before I have to go pick up Taylor from soccer practice. Anyway, today was my fourteen year old sister Kayleigh's special olympics day for school. I was able to take most of the day to go with my mom while Kalen kept Lynnsey and Spencer with him (they would not have appreciated this particular outing for long). We didn't know when Kayleigh was going to compete so we showed up first thing and watched the opening ceremonies and the lighting of the torch and then the various age groups split up for rotations at different events. As it turned out, Kayleigh's events weren't scheduled until after lunch. But actually it was really fun. The kids are just SO cute and amazing when they are running their races. I LOVE that they all just have so much fun and could care less about winning. They just have these huge grins as they are running and it is such a celebration of their own accomplishments. It was really amazing to watch and half the time I sat there with a lump in my throat. (I could blame the pregnancy hormones since it doesn't take much these days to set me off--the Juicy Juice commercial about motherhood gets me everytime--but I think this might just be one of those things that would get to me anyway.)

Kayleigh did the 200 and 400 meter walks and was so adorable. She was walking really fast and just swinging her arms as high as she possibly could. There were a lot of people from her school there and we noticed that when we all cheered for her she'd walk faster, swing higher, and smile bigger. She got to stand on the 1st place platform to get her ribbons and have her name announced and when everyone clapped for her she'd smile and wave like she was in a beauty pageant. I was just so glad that I could be there and I'm especially loving that for the first time in my life, I live close enough to her to be able to see things like this!