What a weekend it was! Our whole family participated in the Relay for Life of Davison last weekend! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Relay for Life, it is a 24-hour event sponsored by the American Cancer Society to raise funds to fight cancer. I have participated in the Relay for Life for about 6 years now, and the last 4 of them I have been the Accounting/Registration Chairperson. It is an event that I am very passionate about and I am so proud that my kids want to be involved with it, too!
Emma and I are the team captains of our team, the Committee All-Stars. She LOVES this role and comes to all the meetings and even listens for "team captain" announcements so she knows what to do! She is always proud of her team captain t-shirt!!
This year, Bradlee wanted to be involved, too. So we asked him if he wanted to be our Mr. Relay. This is a half-hour competition at the Relay where a guy from each team can dress up to the specifications previously set by the committee. Then they walk around for about 30 minutes and try to collect the most amount of money. All of it goes to the team, and, ultimately the American Cancer Society. This year, our Relay theme was "Fairy tales", so the Mr. Relayers had to dress up like Fairy Godmothers. The requirements were that they had to have: a big poofy dress that went below the knee, a magic wand, a crown/tiara, a cape/wings, a purse to collect money in, and know 3 magic spells! That's a lot for a three year old! :) Bradlee was up for the task...he wore one of Emma's dress-up gowns and tiaras, carried one of her purses and magic wands and we taught him 3 magic spells: 1. "Walletus Openus"; 2. "Abracadabra (or as he says, 'Abratadabra'), I want money!"; and 3. (my personal favorite) "I am good, Cancer is bad. Put your money in my bag!"!! He was FABULOUS...AND.........he won!!!! That bugger won a total of $136 and beat all the other "Godmothers" by a landslide! :)
As I mentioned, the theme was "Fairy tales". We decorated our campsite to resemble the fairytale, "Peter Pan". This was perfect, because Bradlee LOVES Peter Pan and Emma loves Tinkerbell!! My dad made the ship (or part of the ship), Lynne has a friend who gave us the flag, we tied a Tinkerbell doll to the pole of the tent and had a sign that read, "Welcome to Neverland, where cancer never wins!" The ship had a "plank", which we put a blow up pool with a crocodile with a name tag that said, "Hello, my name is Cancer" on it. We won 2nd place for Best Decorated Campsite!!
The Flint Symphonic Wind Ensemble also was able to perform at the Relay, right before the Survivor Ceremony (which ended up getting rained out!)...it was a great way to combine two of my passions, playing music and fighting cancer! I must say I was a bit emotional this year...for some reason a little more than usual. I just kept thinking about Mr. Lee, who was the director of the Flint Youth Wind Ensemble I was a part of for 7 years in middle and high school. He died from cancer when I was in college. If it weren't for him, I would probably not still be playing music today. I owe him a lot, so it was neat to play at an event that honors cancer SURVIVORS, and those we have lost to cancer.
When it was all said and done Sunday morning, we had a great Relay. Our goal was to raise $72,000 and our total as of Sunday morning was $72,136! Our goal was to have 150 survivors attend the event and we had exactly 150 survivors attend! We were also selected to be a CPS-3 site next year...more on that later! :) My team (I mean, Emma's and my team), raise over $2500, making us a Bronze Team!! It's not too late to help, though, so if you'd like to make a donation to our team, go to http://main.acsevents.org/goto/coggins and click on "Donate!"!!!!! We appreciate your help and support!!
