Relay for Life

In case it has escaped any of your notice in the right side bar there is a link that says Relay for Life. Relay for life is an all night relay ran by the American Cancer Society (starts at 7 pm ends at 7am). Teams of 10-15 people are entered and one member from your team is expected to be part of the relay at all times during the 12 hour event. All they really need to do is walk around the track. No running, no jogging, just walking (although I'm sure running is allowed). Each team, and each member on the team is expected to raise money on behalf of the American Cancer Society. James and I have entered a team in honour of Gracie, called none other than "We Love Gracie". We got this idea from a fellow mother of a child with retinoblastoma. This little girl has lost both of her eyes to this disease and in order to fight back against cancer their family and friends enter a team in a Houston Relay for Life every year. They raise a tonne of money and they have an all night party each year in support of their little girl. At the beginning of each Relay (several are held all over the world) they have a ceremony to honour cancer survivors. The cancer survivor's get to do a survivors lap around the track and during the night they light luminarias to honour survivors, or those who lost their battle with cancer.

 We want to start this tradition for Gracie where we also celebrate Gracie kickin' cancer's butt every year (cause we all know it's going to happen). My mother, my sister and possibly my brother are going to be on our team. Including James and I this brings our team total to 4 possibly 5 people. So this is where we really could use your help. We'd really like to have 5 or more of you be on our team. If you don't want to be on our team, you can start your own team. If we have more than 15 people wanting to join we'll register 2 or more teams in honour of Gracie. If you don't want to join a team period then you can donate to someone (preferrably on our team:) If you don't want to be on our team, or another team and if you don't have any money to donate PLEASE mark May 1st on your calendar so that you can show up and cheer Gracie on as she participates in her survivor celebrations. This family in Houston has a huge group there to cheer on their daughter, and I'm not trying to compete with them but they are turning out to be a huge inspiration and support for me. I want Gracie to know how many people there are in this world who are there to support her in this. As James clarified, this is more of a support for us right now, Gracie is still just a regular 3 year old who doesn't understand how her entire life will never be the same again. But she will be able to look back on the pictures of these days and see how big her support network really was, how big our whole families support system really is. It brings tears to my eyes even thinking about actually seeing so many of you who remember Gracie in your thoughts and prayers being there to cheer her and us along on this night of celebration. 

So we still have several months left until this event (May 1) but I'd like to have people committed to joining our team before too long. I've set a really low fundraising goal for now because I didn't want to overwhelm people, but I hope that we far exceed our team goal. (I'm new to fundraising perhaps a better strategy would have been to aim high and then risk falling short of the goal). If you'd like to join our team PLEASE email James or I (I believe our address is in our profile if you don't already have it). We'd really really love to have you on our team. Like I said, the more teams, the better. 

If you'd like to donate to our team so that we can find a cure for cancer so that we don't have to continually live in fear of Gracie developing further cancers (which she has a strong genetic predisposition for) you can click on my link to our team in the right side bar. 

If you'd like to know more about Relay for Life, you also can feel free to click on our link in the right side bar. 

If you'd like to show up to support Gracie in her survivor lap (which I hope all of you do, consider this a personal invitation) please stay tuned for further information. I'll provide it as I get it. And I'll keep inviting you until the time comes. 

There has been talk of entering a team in Canada  (specifically Lethbridge) for all of our family to participate in. Perhaps if this applies to you you can harass my father in law or one of my sister's in law. They'd most likely be the ones organizing such an event and I'm sure you'd be welcome to join their team. The Lethbridge Relay for Life is scheduled for June I believe. PLENTY of time to raise lots of money to finding a cure for cancer.