Relay For Life 2009

Well it's the Monday after Relay and we all survived!

The Relay weekend started off on Friday with set-up at 12pm. Karen, Cindy, Lorelei, Whitney, and myself had to pack all of our stuff (and it was a lot) across the CR football field to our campsite. Once we got all of our stuff(tents, tables, chairs, sleeping bags, etc) over there we began to set-up the tents. The first pop-up tent that we tried to put up was broken :( so after struggling with it for a little while we took it down and put up the 2nd pop-up tent. That one was much better! Then we started putting up our big 8 person tent aka the Vacation Home. We must have looked like we needed some help because the CA prisoner guys that were there helping came over to help us. They put our tent up very quickly! After we got everything set-up at the campsite Karen, Whitney, and I went to Fortuna to pick-up our grand prize, the BBQ that Fortuna Ace donated. I was soooo scared that the BBQ was going to fly out of my truck on the highway but we made it with no problems thank goodness. Since I didn't want to deal with getting to our BBQ to the campsite in the morning I talked Casey into going back to CR with me to help get the BBQ to our campsite. I bought a little padlock on our way there so I could lock the BBQ in our tent. I didn't want our grand prize to go missing :)

I stayed up until 1am finishing most of the little details and baking a birthday cake for Whitney. The next morning, Saturday, I got up at 6:30am, finished anything I hadn't gotten done the night before, and headed to the track. I arrived at the track at 8:45am. With the help of Cindy's garden wagon I was able to unload my truck and haul the stuff across the track to our site. I wasn't all that excited to be sweating at 9am but it's for a good cause right! :) The rest of the team started getting there around 9:20am. We put up all of our signs and got everything ready to sell.

The Survivor Lap kicked off Relay at about 10:30am, a little bit late but that's ok. The Survivor Lap was very emotional. There were young survivors, old survivors and every age in between survivors. I found myself choking back tears as I watch parents holding their very young survivors in their arms or on their shoulders. I find myself almost in tears as I write this remembering the Survivor lap and their little faces. I can't even imagine what those kids and parents have gone through. God bless them all!

We all hung out and walked at our designated times on Saturday. The Luminaria's started to be lit around 9pm and we went and found our Lumianaria bags. The Ceremony of Hope started at 9:30pm. They honored community members that had recently lost their fight, a caregiver that has gone above & beyond, and a US soldier that was diagnosed with cancer after he got home from Iraq. It was very special and emotional when we got to see our loved ones pictures on the big screen.

We continued walking through the night, even when it started pouring! Rain in July?! What's up with that Mother Nature??

We started packing all of our stuff up around 8am. Everything was sooo wet :( We continued walking until about 9:30am when they stopped everyone. We had everything packed up by 9:30am thanks to Darl (Megan's boyfriend), Casey (my boyfriend), and the rest of the team so when Relay ended at 10am we were ready and very willing to head home.

We drew the winning tickets for our wonderful prizes at 9:30am. The grand prize winner was sooooo excited to have won the BBQ. I was excited that THEY came to get it and we didn't have to take it anywhere :) The winners of the Spa Day Package & the 49er Package were at Relay which made it very easy. The only one that wasn't there was the lady who won the Dinner & Movies for 2 package which was just 2 gift certificates so I stuck them in the mail this morning. The prizes worked out very well.

I wanted to give a BIG thank you to Fortuna Ace Hardware, Body in Balance, Like Nobody Else, Shane McWhorter, and Bill Chino for donating our fabulous prizes. We couldn't do this with out you!!

I encourage EVERYONE to participate in Relay somehow. You can join a team, start a new team, donate to a team, come to the event and support the teams there, volunteer, etc. It seems like the attendence & money raised keeps going down every year which I think is very sad. Cancer affects 1 in 3 people..I can't think of a better cause to support.

All in all it was another great Relay and I couldn't of asked for a better team. I thank you ladies from the bottom of my heart. I truly appreciate all of your hard work and hope you'll will join me next year!!