Jennifer Leaves Relay for Life Crowd in Silence

Relay for Life

At 4:30 on Saturday we setup "camp" for Francesca's team - The Caped Crusaders. Most camps consisted of big canopies, tables, chairs, and enough snacks and drinks to stock a convenience store. The Caped Crusaders site consisted of two tents, two chairs, and a cooler. What we were lacking in "stuff" we made up for in spirit!

And having less turned out to be a VERY good thing because right after we setup the tents, it began to rain. It was only a light rain and it was only sporadic, but the foreshadowing card had been played.

There was a pizza run during a brief let up in the rain. As you can clearly see, the Caped Crusaders had the coolest shirts of the entire event!

Jennifer's Speech

Jennifer was asked to speak to the crowd from the caregiver's perspective. Right on schedule, the rain paused. All of the Relay for Lifers gathered around the stage and the lights in the stadium were dimmed. Jennifer spoke for a little more than seven minutes about our experience.

Jennifer was followed by Delaney, a 15 year old leukemia survivor who gave an absolutely riveting talk about her diagnosis and two (two!) relapses. Talk about a special girl!

Several hundred middle and high school students stood in silence while both Jennifer and Delaney spoke. You could have heard a pin drop...and I think that pretty much sums up the mood. And when they were done, Delaney and Jennifer lead the crowd in a walk around the track with bagpipes playing Amazing Graze.

A Familiar Face

Everywhere we go we run into old friends. At the Relay for Life we ran into Shannon, whom we met at the hospital on our first day of our diagnosis.

I can close my eyes and see Shannon riding up and down the hallway of the Pediatric Oncology ward on her IV stand (yes, she was using her IV stand as a scooter!) AND she had a huge thunderbolt face painting on her bald head. That was on our "Day 1." Coincidentally, Shannon was there that day for a fever, just like we had last week.

Shannon, standing between her mom and team sign. No more full-head face paintings for this cutie!

Relay turns into Swimathon

Around 9:30pm the rain resumed. After a while it got a little heavier. And a little heavier. Luckily I had the full rain tarp on the old pup tent. It was nice and dry inside!

One of the many luminaries for Carson - all were limp from rain.

Finally, around 1:30 in the morning, lightening and thunder moved in and was predicted to stay. Relay for Life 2010 was officially concluded and the field was cleared. And with that, we all headed home to sleep in our nice warm (and DRY) beds.

Thank You to all those who donated!!

We still haven't received official word, but as of Saturday night Francesca was the top fundraiser by a mile. We'll let you know the final results just as soon as we do. All those dollars are going to a wonderful organization. Thank you so much for your generosity!

Still no video uploaded. Sorry! Still having some technical issues with it. We'll get that to you as soon as we can too.

-Paul