Our First FARE Walk!

I think I've mentioned it before, but I didn't feel terribly drawn to the Food Allergy Community until my kids started going off to school. That's when I was forced to acknowledge that the rest of the world isn't as knowledgeable nor as accepting of food allergies as my family and close circle of friends. That's when I really discovered the need for advocacy and outreach, and when Hubby and I came up with the idea for Allergy Superheroes.

And that's why, even though I've dealt with food allergies for more than 30 years, I'd never been to a FARE Walk before.

We went as Team Allergy Superheroes this year, and we had a great time! We learned a lot too, and perhaps we'll even sponsor our local walk in the future. This year, though, we just enjoyed chatting with other Food Allergy Families and scoring free goodies from all sorts of allergy-friendly companies!

The boys enjoyed meeting this peanut-allergic elephant.

It was great to meet a representative of one of our favorite peanut-free brands, Sunbutter!

We also loved meeting the people behind Don't Go Nuts, another Colorado company that we'd like to get more involved with in the future!

The crowd gathered for opening announcements. I think we had a pretty good turn out.

Of course we had a great turn out, if celebrities like Anna and Elsa showed up!

The walk route was a pleasant loop around Wash Park in Denver.

There's that elephant again, cheering us on.

The crowd thinned out as the walk went on, as people moved at different speeds, but it was fun to see the Wash Park trail fill up with blue shirts.

This mile was sponsored by our own allergist's office!

It's much harder to see on camera, but I loved seeing the blue shirts reflected in the lake.

We stopped to chat with some volunteers at one of the water stations along the way. They were very friendly :)

There was no information on the website about how long the route was, so I decided to use MapMyRide (but set to walk) to find out the length.

Unfortunately, I forgot to end the route the moment we got back, so there's a tiny bit of extra mileage in there. I'd didn't walk that far before I figured it out though, so I'd say the walk was probably 2.25 miles.

In addition to all the free samples from sponsors and allergy-friendly companies, there were snow cones available at the end!

There was also a free train ride. Did somebody say "train"??!!!!!!

The boys after the event--their new bags are filled with goodies. If something's free, my kids will grab it!

There were quite a few goodies for all of us, in fact. We loved getting to try some foods we've heard about but haven't purchased yet! Here's a sampling of our swag.

And the items the boys claimed all for themselves.











I'll end this recap with my favorite pic of the day. FARE gave out wristbands to all participants: teal for those of us with food allergies, and dark blue for the people who love us. There were a lot of folks with food allergies at the walk, but there was also a whole lotta love!