Inaugural Lilly Pad Buddy Walk

The 2010 Buddy Walk was held on October 17 at Saluda Shoals park. Yes - that was almost two weeks ago but I have a very good reason for waiting to post about it. I've been eyeing my blogger dashboard for the last 2 months and watching the number of posts climb. I knew the big 200th post was coming up and I kept wanting it to be for something special and not ordinary and definitely not a 10 on Tuesday. So I dragged out all of our Fall activities into individual posts and kept my eye on the number. So this is it - the 200th post on Keeping Up With Joneses - and now, I'm going to turn it over to Katie to tell you about the Buddy Walk.

Hey Guys! It's Katie! I'm going to tell you about the Buddy Walk at Saluda Shoals Park with my family and my cousin Lilly! Hope you enjoy!

This is Lilly. She's the reason we went on a walk together as a family. She's only been around a few months - but she managed to bring our whole family together over something we never knew we'd care about so much. But my family believes in joy and we believe in each other and Lilly reminded us of that when she was born!
This is Lilly's mom, my Aunt Mari. She is the most laid back and easy going mom I have ever seen. She is so much fun to be around and has helped me learn so much about animals. This is also Lilly's award. My mom says she won it because a lot of people gave a lot of money in Lilly's name, but I'm pretty sure it's just because Lilly is awesome. Although that doesn't explain 3rd place - so maybe it was about the money.
I tried to warm up my muscles before the walk by running around and getting loose. Little did I know my mom was going to shove me in a stroller for the walk! Oh well, at least I got some good energy out.

And here's us all walking (although I use that term loosely given my previous statement about strollers). We made posters and carried them around the park. There was a marching band that led us on our walk and it felt like we were in a parade and not just a walk. We were parading around celebrating the lives of all the buddies out there all over the world, but mainly Lilly!

Aunt Mari got some pretty yellow tshirts for everyone to wear. Here's a picture of me and Mommy before the walk sporting our matching shirts. I'm glad the colors for Down Syndrome awareness are yellow and blue because they seemed to look good on everybody!

I know no one likes to have pictures of their backsides taken, but the back of the shirt was too fun not to show you. It was two big footprints made up of lots of little footprints. I like to think all those footprints on the back belong to our family and they symbolize us all walking together with Lilly!

This park has the best covered playground I've ever seen. It was hot outside but that didn't stop me and Cole from getting some quality toddler time on the playground. Here's Cole and his daddy on the monkey bars, using some techniques we picked up at the mud run this year!

Cole let me borrow his daddy so I could do the monkey bars too. My daddy was in Pennsylvania and let's be serious - my mom doesn't win awards for her height! So Uncle Marshall helped me get across and back across twice!

At the end of the day, all of Lilly's walkers gathered together for a group picture. It was hard to get us all in one shot because there were so many of us. There were friends and family and our commonality was that we were all there to support Lilly! It was so much fun to be together and I love being a part of a family that loves and plays and prays and walks better than any other!