Relay for Life

On April 24th-25th we had Relay for Life. Our team raised just under $5000 this year for cancer research! The theme for the event was "tooning out Cancer" so our tent had to have a cartoon theme. We picked Nemo and our slogan was finding a cure instead of "Finding Nemo". Rach loves Nemo so she was way excited to have so much Nemo stuff around all night. I'm proud to say that Michael, mom, and I made it the entire night but our feet were killing us the next day!

Set-Up

It took us 2 hours to get everything set-up but the tent looked awesome when we were finished. We wanted it to look like a fish tank and it definitely did!

Getting ready to relay

Emily was there to support her big sis!

Survivor Lap

As you can tell, Rach had a different shirt then the rest of us. She gets to wear a survivor shirt so that people know she has had or has cancer. The first lap of the night is for all of the people with purple shirts and their caregivers. It's actually my least favorite part because it's very emotional and I hate getting emotional in front of lots of people! They play a sad song and we walk the track and all of the other people at the event cheer everyone on. Everyone that we pass gets a sad look or starts crying when they see Rach in her purple shirt. She loves the attention and just gives them a wave. She was the smallest and they even had to special order her shirt! I think that most people think of cancer as a grown-up disease but Rachel's presence there definitely serves as a reminder that anyone at any age can get cancer. She's not the only kid that participated that night but it was mostly adults. She got to walk next to Cade and Callie because their grandma Charlin is a thyroid cancer survivor and she pulls them in the lap. She and I laughed at how emotional we get because we cried through the whole lap last year too. What makes it the most emotional is knowing that everyone on the track has had to deal with cancer like we have and it really sucks knowing that so many people have to go through it and there's a lot more people that don't even make it!

Team Lap

The team lap is not as emotional but the track is very crowded! All of us wore white shirts with Team Rachel on the front and Finding a Cure on the back with a little sign that said just keep swimming Rachel.

Hanging around the tent

We earned gold status for our fundraising efforts last year. We were the only team out of 86 that had one of these!! :) Thanks everyone for your support. It means that we raised over $5000 last year.

List of survivors on our team that hung at the entrance of the tent.

Most of the team

Luminaria ceremony

The luminaria ceremony happens at dark. It's suppose to be a somber event for those who are fighting, have beaten it, or those who have lost their battle with cancer but they had some intercom problems and it wasn't as somber as I thought it should be. It was really neat to see all of the bags lit and they had a bagpiper walk the track while a powerpoint played with all the names of people who had bags lit for them. Rachel had 2 bags and we also had some for our grandpas who have both had cancer but survived and Nancy Baese who is fighting cancer right now. They spelt out hope and cure on either sides of the field and that looked really cool!

Mom gave a speech about fighting cancer