Relay For Life

The past couple years, our family has participated in our local Relay For Life, the primary fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. This year, Jared decided that he wanted to organize his own team. It was a lot of work - meetings, scheduling, fundraising . . . But he (and his dad) worked really hard at it and last weekend our Team Islandental had a great time participating in event. Here are a few highlights:

Here's Jared in his Team Captain t-shirt. He was by far the youngest team captain at the event. Each team set up a booth around the high school track. This served the dual purpose of providing shade for team members when they weren't walking the track, and providing a place for further fundraising. We had 3 raffles going - dinner for 2 to a fancy local restaurant, a Sonicare toothbrush, and 2 tickets to see Wicked in Seattle. They were all big hits and we raised a lot of money this way.

The rest of the team wore these great t-shirts, as modeled by Adana. She wouldn't wear it until I convinced her that it was actually a dress. She's in that annoying phase where she will only wear dresses. Ugh. How did I get daughters like this!?

This was such a family-friendly event! The walk took place from 4pm on Saturday until 10am on Sunday. That's a long time to be hanging out on a hot high school track, especially for kids. But fortunately, there were a lot of fun things to do. They had a Kids' Area, run by Bank of America volunteers, that had fun activities every hour from 4-9pm on Saturday. This was the water fight.

And, since the track circled the new football field (complete with soccer goals under the goal posts), my boys were kept entertained when it wasn't their turn to be walking the track.

By Saturday night, though, we were all feeling pretty wiped out. Adana decided to snuggle up in her Baba's anti-gravity chair for a while and play with her glow stick. I finally took her, Emma & Micah home around 11pm. Nathan & Jared stayed to make sure we always had someone on the track throughout the night. We had some great friends who volunteered to walk in the middle of the night.

This is what I found when I came back to relieve Nathan at 5am. Jared's friend, Kylie, offered to stay through the night and help with the walking, in case some of our team members failed to show up for their shifts. They both fell asleep around 3am - Kylie on the chair and Jared on the track. Apparently the deal was that they would trade off every hour in the chair, but they both fell asleep so Jared ended up on the ground all night. As well he should. I would have whacked him if he'd taken the chair and made a girl sleep on the ground.

The Relay ended at 10am on Sunday morning with the drawing of all the raffles. We won two of them! Micah had entered to win a Movie Package - a box full of candy and treats, with 4 movie tickets and some video rental passes. Jared & I were crossing our fingers to win the Sports Package, and we did!! It included a great sports seat, water bottle, golf balls & golf gift certificate, two Mariners tickets and . . . THREE TICKETS TO A SOUNDERS GAME!!! We are so excited!

All in all, it was a great experience. Jared gained a lot of service hours and we enjoyed serving this way as a family and with our friends. We will definitely participate in the Relay in the years to come, but I don't know how soon we'll head up a team again. It's pretty tiring! We all took looooong naps on Sunday afternoon.