Stroll 'N Roll = Success!!

That is right...the first ever Stroll 'N Roll for the West Michigan Spina Bifida Association was a HUGE success!! Emily and I spent the week leading up to the event making signs, finalizing the menu, getting things ready for the raffle, and most importantly...checking the weather! October in Michigan is VERY unpredictable! On Monday, weather.com said that Saturday was going to be sunny and 60...yay! By Wednesday it was cloudy and like 55...on Saturday it was HIGH WIND and mid 40s. Yikes. Not what we were hoping for. Emily and I, along with our awesome volunteers got to the park early on Saturday and were a bit discouraged by the weather conditions. Our signs wouldn't stick, our raffle kept blowing away, and pretty much every thing else that we had planned was just not working out...we had to move on to Plan B. :)

With the help of our great volunteers things ended up working great! By 10:00 the teams starting rolling in. We had over 20 teams and 230 register to join in the walk with us!! A-Mazing! Having all of these amazing families show up was really incredible to see. Emily and I were still a little discouraged by the weather, but then we thought to ourselves...if anyone in life knows how to roll with it when things don't go exactly as planned...it was this amazing group of people. Everyone was happy, enjoying themselves and we heard such nice things from everyone. We only wish that we were able to sit and talk with every single person who made it out. I am so happy to announce that this event raised over $20,000 for the WMSBA!!


To say that I am blown away by this SB community is such an understatement. Emily and I had such high hopes when we first got this crazy little idea of holding our own stroll n roll...will people show up? will people want to support the WMSBA and this event? We shouldn't have doubted. To everyone who came, everyone who supported us and was thinking of us on the 15th, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have all made it possible for this organization to continue helping and supporting those living with spina bifida.

We are already looking forward to next year!

And a special little love note to Emily...I honestly feel so incredibly blessed to have you as my friend. I would never even consider doing something like this without you. Love you!