Relay for life

June 17th/18th

I am so far behind in blogging but I am going to get caught up! Thanks to the 2 comments I got when I said I was overwhelmed with blogging. I know its important and really its my only journal! So I am starting a new week and thought I would start on a good note! So be patient and enjoy my blogs!

After losing so many people to cancer this year I decided to do something about it. I wasn't going to just sit by and let it take away everything I love so much. My friend Satina sent out an email asking if anyone would like to join her in doing relay for life. She lost her brother to cancer and had the same feelings. I didn't really know what it was so I looked into it. Its an event that is put on every year to help raise money for cancer research. It happens all over the united states and there are tons of people that get involved. You basically have a team captain and a team and you try and raise as much money as you can.Satina was our team captain and asked if I would like to be a co captain with her. It was a ton of work and frustrating at times. I will try and explain what goes on so you know a little bit about it. On the day of the event you are assigned a place to set up your group for the next 24 hours. You can choose to sell things if you want or like this year was a game theme so you can have a game people play. The theme for our event was "Winning at the game of Life". I decided to tackle the food booth and sell tacos and taco salads, lemonade and homemade oreo's. I thought it was a pretty big hit the only problem was missing out on things going on because I was stuck in there. Anyway so its not really a race you walk on a track. We had ours at a high school so we just walked on the track. They start out with just the cancer survivors walking or being pushed in wheelchairs around the track. That was pretty emotional seeing all of those people and thinking about the ones I had just lost. After that you have to have at least 1 member of your team on the track at all times. We had people sign up for 1 hour slots. They made each hour lots of fun with different themes. Then they had a luminara ceremony which was really cool. We had previously sold these bags for 5 dollars and people could decorate them for their loved ones that either passed away from cancer or survived. I had my family members decorate some of them for our loved ones. We put sand in the bottom of them with a candle and then they were lit up.They were lined up around the track. It was really touching to go around the track and read them. It was a pretty emotional time but I felt good. I raised almost 400 dollars my self and our team raised close to 5,000. Our overall event raised 145,000 which was 20,000 past what they thought they would do. I am excited to do it again this year! Anyway that wants to donate towards a good cause I would love it!



Here is a picture of Kim who is in charge of the whole event, Satina, Trish and Rachel

My roommate Trish playing her uke around the track for her turn.

This is our banner our team was called Walking with Angels. We wrote all of those people we were walking for on there.

Here are some of the luminara bags that me and my family made.