Pink Cures - AKA "My Saturday"

On Saturday morning I rolled out of bed at dark thirty, grabbed my new fanny pack, and headed to meet up with my team for our 13 mile training walk.  A few hours (and thousands of steps) later, we got to hang out together, support a great cause, and cheer other locals on at an awesome event.

The Wichita area chapter of Pink Heals sponsored a Bus Pulling Contest in the parking lot of our local grocery store.  There are several reasons why this is so cool...

1. They bring a pink fire truck everywhere they go.  And yes... that's a chihuahua hooked up to the fire truck.  He's demonstrating the proper pulling technique for the teams!  What?  Doesn't your local chihuahua pull your firetrucks around?

2.  Cancer survivors and families of lost loved ones get to sign it.  There's my sweet mother-in-law!

Yay, Sue!

3.  Each pink truck is named for a local cancer survivor or someone battling cancer.  If I remember correctly, "Nikki" is named for the wife of a current a Wichita-area fire chief, and she was recently diagnosed (for a THIRD time) with cancer.  Prayers go out to her and her family!

4.  There's a "Survivor Bell".  It's pretty self-explanatory, and pretty awesome.

5.  Nikki has the best mascara I've ever seen.  Bar-none.

6.  Pink Heals keeps it local.  This particular organizations keeps proceeds local and encourages local involvement!  Pretty neat!

Loving the pink.

Remember the Swedish Folk Dancers?  They were at the pull selling delicious Swedish treats!

AND -- remember how I love that I'm a Pihl?  The combine from the news report made an appearance as well!

Kiddos got to play on a tractor and demolish real ears of dried corn.

Sounds like a win-win to me!  ...Just as long as I'm not the one on cleanup duty.

7.  One of my favorite kiddos was there selling his (brilliant) squirrel food fundraiser!  This kid.  So rad.

8.  This guy.  In all of his pink glory.

9.  The (passionate) level of support by locals.  I mean, just look at how many teams entered to pull the truck!!!

10.  The actual race.  Each team was timed -- because who doesn't love a little competition? -- and had to pull the fire truck 100 feet.  There was a maximum of 10 people per team, and the teams were rock stars!  Between the sheer effort of pulling Nikki and their creative costumes uniforms, I can't wait to be a part of the pull next year!

I had SOOOOO much fun cheering them on!

At the end all of the kiddos were rounded up to try to pull...

Cuteness overload!

What they didn't realize was... they were getting a little help from the local firemen.

And the firemen promptly fled the scene at the rear of the truck once the kids reached the finish line.  God bless our heroes!

So, that was my Saturday.  Now I leave you with this:

A puppy in a tutu.  Does it get any better than that?!?

Over and out!