Color Me W.O.W.

Candace – I keep asking myself, how are we going to pull this off?  Sadly, happiness from some comes with a price.  For us, in order to even have a remote chance of a family, we need to raise an obscene amount of money.  We are staring at a crossroads of two paths both ending at $35 K or greater in cost.  So, what did we do?  You guessed it, we got RAD. 

 

We start fundraising … I contacted the folks at Color Me Rad.  This is such a unique 5K in the fact that it’s not timed.  BONUS because I have lazy legs!  They also literally pelt you with dyed color bombs while you run.  You begin the race El Blanco, a blank canvas as white as snow, and at the end of the race, you will resemble something that Jerry Garcia would be proud of, a tie dyed masterpiece.  Seems like a digression, but we were able to use this RAD event to help raise money for our family building.  Who knew you could run for a while in the woods, get accosted with dyed cord starch, and raise money?!

 

For those scratching their heads wondering how are you going to afford your next procedure or how are you going to afford any family building activity in general?  I am here to say you can do it!  We are FAR from hitting our goal, but inch by inch, we are making it happen.  Here is how we did our fundraiser:

 

Step 1.  Rally a team

It took some harassment, but our people got with their people and their people got with their people and by the time everything was said and done, Team Color Me W.O.W. (Wishing on a Wohl) came out in droves … to the tune of 88 people on our team, below is just a small portion of all who came to support us. Talk about being blessed.
 

 

Step 2.  Create a GoFundMe Sponsorship Site

If you ran on our team and got someone to sponsor you for $75, you got a Color Me W.O.W. shirt to run the race in and RADness glory, which is truly better than a t-shirt for sure.  We asked our team members to get sponsorship and were amazed by the kindness of folks, some of whom we never met and still don’t know who they are.  It turns out, RADness runs rampant, much to the contradiction of what’s in the news.

 

Step 3.  Weekly updates and RAD tips

Aside from a Facebook invite, we sent out weekly email updates, couch to 5K schedules, funny quips, and RAD things to do during the 5K.  We always thanked our fellow RAD-ites and encouraged them to keep seeking sponsorship.  It was a bit of a plug each week since we had a direct cut-and-paste in each e-mail that our teammates could use to get sponsors, but we thought our badgering was worth it in the long run.

 

Step 4.  Run the race

Chris will explain this one a little later…

 

So, what are some of those RAD things we suggested you ask?  Well allow me to explain.

 

During the run, you will be getting barraged with all of this dyed corn starch.  There is no reason that electric feeling of running through pink, purple, blue and orange clouds should be limited to just one morning.  how do you capture these moments forever?  You run with a blank canvas.  That way, the canvas can be a reminder of the psychedelic experience that you had.  No LSD required.  Candace ran the whole way with this canvas and we are going to preserve it and put it in our baby’s room to bring RAD notions their way.  It’s also a sentimental token of the RAD things we did to get him/her here.

Thanks to Kindness Girl, we got this great idea, but put the C&C spin on it.  In every Random Act of RADness, we put a touch card with our blog address, spread some awareness of “IF,” how they can help us, and that we are looking to be parents so spread the word!  Here are some of the Random Acts of RADness we hand wrote:

 

RAD Coffee: Treat the next person in line at Starbucks to a Cup O’ Joe

RAD Trash: Pull in your neighbor’s trash can from the street

RAD Fur-babies: Drop off towels, dish soap, pet food, blankets, treats to your local Humane Society

RAD Mail: Leave a note in your mailbox thanking your mail man for all they do; rain, sleet, or snow

RAD Ding Dong: That’s right, do a Ding-Dong-Ditch.  Drop off flowers just because at your bestie’s house and dip!

RAD Cut: Mow your grandparents/elderly couples yard

 

 

Chris – Race Day:  It was freezing cold.  I mean, here we are, May, and it was something like 58 degrees out (Fahrenheit for our Celsius readers).  For North Dakota maybe that’s not all that cold, for us though, that’s cold.  Nonetheless, we were out in full force.  we were rockin’ our Color me W.O.W. shirts, white shorts, white shoes … we were ready to run our RAD butts off.  We all met at a part of the field away from the crowd sow e could rally the troops.  It was amazing to see all the people that had come in support of us 88!!  We moved to the start line and there were tons of runners.  We wedged our way into the next heat, and although we lost about half our group in the corralling, we knew they wouldn’t be far behind.  Our start gun fired and we were off.  I would be exaggerating slightly if I said that all you could see was a blur and some dust behind us.  Okay, I would be exaggerating a lot.  The pace was … how do I put this … exceptionally slow.  We could have walked the whole thing.  But the point was to be RAD the whole time and we were that for sure.  With the W.O.W. flag that Candace’s dad made for us in my hand, we took to the call of being RAD with all seriousness.

  What did we do?  We sang every song we could think of that we could substitute the word RAD in.  Favorites like “You put your RAD foot in, you take your RAD foot out” and “If you’re RAD and you know it clap you hands.”  We took requests from our fellow runners and even got a few people to sing along.  At one point, I had one of our niece’s on my shoulders as we were going through a color bomb station so I could make sure they aimed all of the color at her.  I think our cheeks hurt more from smiling than our legs hurt from running.  After the finish line, we all went to the final color bomb station.  We all stood in a large square and waited for a countdown to unleash a color war on the sky.  It was an amazing experience.

  We had a RAD time with RAD peeps who were running with us for a RAD cause.  No better feeling than that!

  

We had an after party at our house where we raffled off a few RAD prizes.  Candace’s aunt was in charge of selling raffle tickets and I am fairly certain she would have convinced people to mortgage their houses to buy raffle tickets if we let her. Even our friends from afar contributed. My dear friend who couldn’t make the run, sells Thirty One, she donated this awesome bag to our RAD Raffle. Below are more pics below of our RAD crew at the race and at our after party.

 

Chris amazes me, he only passed off the flag once. He ran the whole race with this flag in hand.

 

 

 

 

It takes a village we are pretty lucky ours is so damn RAD!  Thank you Thank you Thank you!

 

 

If you like our blog, please follow us! You can subscribe to our blog via email and can receive our posts hot off the press! If you want more, we are on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest too.