Each year a walk is arranged to raise funds for the Children's Hospital of Orange County which was the hospital where Lily's life was saved, her chemo treatment was done and where she continues to go for checkups. We are immensely grateful for the excellent care she received at the hospital and would like give back in any small way we can, so for this year we decided to join the walk which go through Disneyland and the neighboring California Adventure Park.
With our friends and family, we created Team Lily which reached 32 members and managed to raise more that $11,000 for this worthy cause.
The Walk day started out really early when more that 14,000 people have to manage to get to the plaza in front of Disneyland, this meant long lines to get into the resort area and the parking lot. We managed to get the whole group gathered by about 6:45am with the start of the walk being at 7am, not bad for a gang of first timers. It was quite en intense scene with all the people walking along the Main Street of Disneyland, both in a positive way with all the support shown to the hospital but also sobering when there was a lot of groups walking In Memory of... or For Our Angel... This makes you realize how fortunate we are with our miracle the is Lily.
Along the route a number of Disney characters did "cameos" and cheered on the walkers. It all started Mickey and the MC at the end off Main Street. The MC could not ignore our neon-yellow shirt and gave us a nice "shout-out" on the may by, mission accomplished. At the carrousel in Fantasyland, the Disney princesses was riding around, which got all the girls really excited.
When the walk was before the opening of the park, and the route was all set up, there was certain areas with no people in it at all, so we managed to get a picture of Lily by the castle with no people around! That doesn't happen very often.
Group picture by the giant Mickey pumpkin, I think we will make this a tradition.
When passing from Disneyland to California Adventure, a bunch of the local high schools had their bands and cheerleader cheering on the walkers, it was moving to hear 20 or so cheerleaders starting a cheer for Team Lily, and high fiving Lily as she walked by. I just regret that I didn't manage to record that part of our walk.
After finishing off the walk a Downtown Disney, we had our team brunch at a local restaurant so we could give a small thanks to all the wonderful people in our team which did such a great job fundraising for CHOC and made the whole walk such a wonderful experience. This will be a yearly occurrence for Team Lily from now on, and even if we might not be able to put this much effort in every year, we will plan for a big celebration and fund raising effort for Lily's year anniversary when she will be considered cancer free!
