All about the Relay

The Relay for Life that our team is apart of was this last weekend. The actual Relay had it's opening lap at 9:00am Saturday and then closing ceremony and final lap were at 9:00am Sunday. Lemme tell ya, the hours inbetween were dang cold! The overnight hours were the worst! It got below freezing as the ice on everything proved in the wee morning hours.

Thank goodness we had a camper to help shelter the kids overnight for a few hours. Aside from the four hours we spent in the camper, we wore darn near everything we owned and snuggled under blankets.

The goal for our Relay, which has several teams apart of it, was to raise $90,000 by the end of the 24 hour period. Now, fundraising starts in January so the goal is not completely unrealistic. Last year we finished the Relay with a grand total of $73,000 being raised for the 9 month period.

Going into the Relay weekend we had raised $70,000! So all we had to do was raise $20,000 in 24 hours. Not super hard as long as we all kept at it and stayed creative.

Our team did our usual baked goods sale, we had a Miss Relay (Frank rocked it and helped our team out a bunch, thank you sweetie), and ran a "jail". The jail turned out to be something super fun and very lucrative. All one had to do was pay us a $1 donation and we would "lock up" the person of their choosing. Then once the "prisoner" was in the jail cell, they had to raise $5 bail money to be released. A fun idea that led to an amazing amount of donations!

All said and done, once we were unfrozen, our team contributed a total so far of just over $7,000! At closing cermony time, and donations are still to come in the next few months, our Relay group raised just over $100,000!!! Going above and beyond all of our expectations!

While we are doing our part to help fight cancer and fund research, I hope that everybody will do their part in donating. We simply can't stop doing everything we can until cancer is stopped. Every single penny counts.