Relay Recap

Sorry to keep you guys waiting for so long.  Yesterday was a mish-mosh of catching up on sleep, visiting, and a date night.  Today I’m finally feeling on schedule and back on track.

The Relay was a terrific success!!  Lynn, our team, and I had a great time…very inspiring, a lot of fun, and a great motivation to participate in this every year.

We started out strong with our entire team walking laps, then once it was darker and the luminary ceremony had taken place we decided to go with ten lap turns (sometimes alone, mostly in pairs).  We kept going all night…no naps necessary (for most of us!).

This year I put out luminaries for my Dad and my Grandma.  It was really nice to take a moment to honor each of them with the lighting of the candles.  My Dad is probably rolling his eyes at all of this hoopla :) but I know my Grandma is smiling. 

At midnight we had FIREWORKS!!  When we heard about them we were honestly expecting like two roman candles and a pack of fire crackers, but they put on a great display that lasted about 10 minutes.  I LOVE FIREWORKS.  I just stood there watching with a big ridiculous grin on my face.  Loved it!!

Unfortunately it did start to rain around 3:30am and other teams looked like they were starting to pack it in…the coordinator got on the loudspeaker to convince teams to stay (honestly, we were a little annoyed…what’s a little rain when you are fighting for a cause like Cancer Research?!). 

Around 5:00 they decided to start the closing ceremonies early and it was pretty evident that A LOT of people had left over the course of the night…but our whole team stayed strong (with the exception of one sleepy head) and would have stayed right until the official 7am finish.  But once the closing speeches were given, and the final lap had been walked there was no reason for us to stay…so we waited as long as we could then packed up and headed home.  Including set-up time, we were actually there for exactly 12 hours…so I guess it all worked out!!

Our team name this year is “All Night Fighters” so we came up with the last minute idea of building a boxing ring around our site.  Super cute and now we have lots of ideas on how to improve it for next year.

Lynn’s boss arrived and “topped up” our donation collection to take us to our $2000 goal…so awesome!  When I got home I found that I had received a couple more donations online, so we actually surpassed our goal!! 

Once again, thanks to everyone for your fabulous support!!!