Light The Night Walk - Epic Fail

So Lance's work does a lot of awesome stuff as far as supporting cancer research through fundraising walks and such.  We've done several with our family before (remember the 5k last spring?), so it didn't seem like any big deal that we were doing Light The Night tonight.

Things were weird from the beginning.  For starters, all the emails we had from Lance's work coordinator said we should get there just before 7pm; they never really gave an exact start time.  So we got there a bit before 7pm and discovered that things were well underway.

Oops.

But there was free Kona Ice (shaved ice) and free balloons with lights in them, so the kids stopped their complaining (because of course there was lots of complaining about just being there) and ate and waved their balloons in our faces.  We were there for about 15 minutes and then the walk began.

For those familiar with Lafayette, it started in the plaza down by the train depot and then across the pedestrian bridge and back.  Because we had gotten there late and because we had a stroller for Tess, we were in the very back of the pack.  We meandered across the bridge and took our time because we had 4 kids in tow and it wasn't a race or anything.

It was during this time that I learned from Lance that Innervision (his company) would have matched any donations that we would have gotten.  That we probably should have gotten.

Great.  We're losers like that.

So we walked across and back and got back to the plaza and it was pretty empty and all the volunteers were cleaning up the balloons and food and stuff.  I was impressed with how quickly everything and everyone cleared out!

Josh complained about not getting any food (he refused to eat dinner earlier) and Lance and I joked about how that was kind of a lame and short walk as we walked back to our car, which was down on Ferry St. and 6th.  We listened to our kids complain the whole way back and loaded them all into the car and started for home.

Yeah, we turned down toward (I think) Main St. and saw where everyone had gone - they were all STILL WALKING!!!!  We had been so slow and far back that we didn't even see the main group KEEP WALKING down the street.  We had foolishly thought it was all done.

Lance and I kinda sunk in our seats and tried not to make eye contact with any of the walkers on the sidewalk.

I remember saying something along the lines of "We are THE WORST."

Great. We really are the worst.

And then we drove home.  And laughed and laughed.  Because we are the worst, and there was no way we were going to get all those kids back out of the car and finish the walk, and besides, it's not like we had sponsors or anything.

And then Tess had an epic meltdown at bedtime because she was so freakishly tired, which made me feel a little vindicated about skipping the walk because if we had stayed and actually walked we would still be there now with a monstrous toddler.  And nobody - not even good, charitable, cancer research supporters - wants to deal with that.