So much more than 3 miles

May 7th  was the annual Human Race in Santa Cruz, our first (definitely not last) and it was great!

Claire has the most amazing ABA team and they not only joined us to raise money for Kid Quest, they made special team Claire shirts as part of her "program", surprise the design included lots of glitter.

Claire was in heaven getting so much attention on Chloe's birthday.

Lots of teams dressed up, this was Save Our Shores, always great to see a jellyfish walking!

The drumming at the turn around spot was really cool, both of our girls love drums which made it even cooler.

Claire has the best friends at Kid Quest, this is Leigh and her dog Annie.

Chloe never passes a chance to stand on her head.

Claire got some time with Valerie and Ferdinand, two more great friends from Kid Quest. 

I sure did a horrible job raising money for this. But each of the three donations that we got meant so much to us. There is something so powerful about community getting to raise money for all of the small organizations that is just inspiring. Heather actually ran with Claire. The plan was that they would run a little bit and wait for us at the first water stop. As they ran, everyone cheered them on, apparently half the world knew Claire and with so many people cheering for them, they just couldn't stop. The great irony here is that we started getting ABA therapy for Claire because the screaming on the walks was overwhelming. We had become trapped inside our home on weekends because she would consistently loose it on a walk or outing. After nine months of work and making just over a million yes/no decisions, Claire ran over three miles, not once was there anything close to screaming. She was the life of the party the whole time. A year ago, we would have never imagined having a community center to help support or a team to help us with that, sure is nice to sit back and look at just how far we have come and how much is possible.