I participated in the Wasatch County Relay for Life on July 11-12th. I joined an existing team from my ward and we became the Tiki Warriors. The Relay started Friday night and someone from each team had to walk continuously until 8 or 9 am Saturday morning. Because I'm a survivor my family and I were able to partake of the Survivor's Dinner and then I did my survivors lap. Along the route were all the luminaria bags that were either donated or purchased to honor cancer victims. I had 3 bags that my kids helped decorate. This first one is Aubrey's bag.
All of the survivors were presented and we told a little about ourselves. There was one other man with brain cancer.
On our survivors lap. Blake refused to walk, so I carried him the whole way. Aubrey is passing me the other direction in the photo and Cerola is in the background behind me with Cole. I have such wonderful family support. My Mom and Cody's parents came up for the evening.
The relay was run like a mini fair. There were games, food, rock climbing wall, bouncy house, petting zoo, face painting, etc. My kids enjoyed themselves until the sun went down and I took them home for bed.
Cody was talked into trying out for the Mr. Relay for Life contest. I went to our last team meeting and presented my team with the idea of Cody being the contestant and everyone whole heartily agreed. He was a terrific sport and came up with his own talent. He dressed in Hawaiian Tiki Warrior attire and learned the dance from Napoleon Dynamite. My one job was to film him, but my battery died just as he began. Thankfully one of our teammates got part of his talent on his phone.
Cody's talent (I'm working on getting the link fixed.)
After an awesome performance, the "men" had to answer some trivia questions and then were "judged" by seeing who could raise the most money. Cody won by a landslide and collected $122 for the ACS. He was crowned Mr. Relay 2013.
I've got the best husband! Seriously who else would compete for something like this? He was a little worried about his outfit before the competition, but when he saw who he was competing against that worry went away. All the other contestants were dressed in drag. He was the real man up there! The man on the far left was so good at his character that many people wondered if he wasn't really a woman. His talent was belly dancing. Here is the link to the award ceremony.
There were hundreds of luminaria's lit up along our pathway and I finally found my last two bags. This is my brain cancer friend, Jen Roper. She and I were featured in a KSL investigative report about the high number of brain cancer concurrences in our neighborhood growing up. I never posted the links to those, so I will later.
1st segment from KSL report
2nd segment from KSL interview
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