March for Babies

Our family walked in March for Babies last Saturday.  The walk is to raise money for March of Dimes, whose mission is to prevent premature births and find cures for birth defects.  Obviously, this is an important cause for our family, in light of Tate's recent premature birth.  I was excited to do something that will help other families like ours.

I designed t-shirts for our team to wear for the walk.  The front says "Fearfully and wonderfully made - Psalm 139" and the back says "For Tate's Sake - March for Babies 2011".  They turned out really cute!  Even Tate got one, although I ordered his a litte too big!  But he can wear it all summer now.

The day started out a little cold and windy so we all had layers of clothes on and blankets on the babies. But halfway through the sun was shining and we started shedding our layers. The picture at the top was at the starting line.  In the bottom picture you can see the FINISH sign in the background.  You can see that we all have less layers on by this point! 

The babies that "marched" with us.  The baby on the left is Grayson - our friends' son.  He is 2 weeks older than Tate.  He rode in his carrier the whole time and never fussed. Tate is on the upper right and Ashley, my niece, is on the bottom right.  Papa carried her at least halfway.  Tate made it in the stroller a little longer, and then switched to a carrier. 

When I signed up to walk they asked me for pictures of Tate for a sign that would be posted at the walk.  I was disappointed during the walk cause I thought they were going to be set up along the path.  But afterwards we found them all lined up along this fence.  They got Tate's name wrong - it says "Christian" (his middle name) instead of Tate.  Then it says "born 9 weeks too soon. 2 pounds 13 ounces."  There were about  50 posters for other premature babies.  About half of them were "in memory of" and the others were "in honor of". The whole day was full of reminders of how blessed we are that Tate is such a healthy baby.  Thinking back about everything that could have happened, but didn't, is just amazing.  We are very blessed to have Tate in our lives.