Relay for Life 2012- ( PICTURE OVERLOAD WARNING!)

One of my absolute favorite times of the year has now come and gone. This year's Relay for Life was extra special because my little crew missed last year's event due to sick children. I was bound and determined to make it this year and luckily WE DID! Wahoo!! It definitely did not disappoint. Since I have approximately a million pictures, let's get to it, shall we?

One of the highlights of our team's efforts this year was our awesome photo booth. Chris's sister Chei made the booth itself and the props were courtesy of Chei, Che', Carlie, and Tim. We definitely got a lot of entertainment out of this thing, as you will see. Here are Mikey and Lara showing us how it is done. 

This is what happens when you tell the girls to act like they are surfing. "What's surfing?" 

Clearly someone should have helped me arrange my afro better. 

Like that...Steve, that's the way to do it! By the way, I hate to point out how awesome Steve is all the time, but I must. Here is Steve fully supporting and participating in an event in which our specific purpose in participating is to remember and honor Jennifer's first husband, Chris. Yes, he is that awesome. 

Hals also has the right idea with the afro. Poor me, the only one who looks like a fool.

How about some attitude there?

Can't forget a photo with Spiderman! Glad she made it.

Flor sure adores her Uncle Mikey. Really, probably her favorite person ever.

Can't believe how cute he is.

Chei also brought this wagon, which was a HUGE hit. Little did we know that slapping a sign on it saying that rides around the track would be given for $1 would be our biggest money maker. Poor Steve and Devin (particularly Steve, who got to haul three rather large adults around the track in the wagon and came back sweating bullets) who got the rough task of pulling the wagon over and over again. 

I guess poor Dev, too. He hauled Carlie and I around as advertisement. Bad idea. We didn't need to advertise. We had kids lined up the whole night.

Just cute

Landon might just be Hallie's favorite person. Or her boyfriend. One or the other.

And this is my handsome boyfriend.

The Survivor's Lap- the most touching and emotional part of the evening, along with the luminaria ceremony, which honors those who have lost their lives to cancer. 

Do you think we look a like? I am starting to think that we look less and less alike in our old age.

Working that track!

I know I look scary here, but this is reality, folks. Devin insisted that I walk around with him every time he pulled the wagon around...so we walked a fair few miles together doing this.   

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the ladies ran our booth and sold a TON of cotton candy, plus a large assortment of goods from our "bake shop." All in all, we made about $300 to add to our amount we raised for the Relay, which makes our grand total somewhere near $3000. I'd say that's a successful year!

"Strike a pose ladies!"

I really love the assortment of creative ways people come up with to raise money for their team. For a donation, you could sit on these pots and have your picture taken. That is awesomeness right there. 

But I still like our photo booth best. Definitely a winner.

The bags ready for the Luminaria ceremony. 

This HOPE sign lit up while we listened to a few people tell their stories about how cancer has affected their lives. One woman shared the story of her son, a boy I went to high school with, who lost his fight to a brain tumor (the same one as Chris's) a few years ago. The luminaria is always so touching. 

Then the middle of the night happens. What that means is lots of freezing people, lots of out of out of control laughter (everything is funny in the middle of the night), and LOTS of eating. I mean, LOTS. Eating everything in our camp site and every other, in fact. I believe about here we had just eaten scones, jumbalaya, brownies, chips, caramel apples, popcorn....must I go on?  Okay, cotton candy, diet coke...

Cute Hailie with her princess umbrella....because it started POURING. It was miserable. I mean, I know we need rain and all, but really? The one night of the entire summer that we are outside? Yes, apparently so. 

Probably my favorite picture of the entire event. I think this sums their relationship up well. 

The drowned rat look looks good on all of us, yes? We soon noticed that we were the  ONLY people sitting out in the rain while everyone else was covered in their tents and canopies (in our defense, we did have a canopy, but the wind blew it over and broke it before the event even started. Lovely.)  So, at this point, we decided to call it a night as it was apparent that the rain was not going to let up and we were all frozen solid. Good call, good call.

The Rest of the Weekend:

Wow, I feel like I almost need a separate post, but don't worry, we will plow forward.  Saturday night we went to Leo's Pizza for dinner. The girls, particularly Hals, had a great time on the maze of toys they have there. Just look at that pose. What a ham.

A rare picture of this girl and me! 

Grandpa Dave and Brookie girl. Isn't she just the cutest? She is adorable and basically the best baby ever. 

Sadie jumping on the toys with the help of her daddy.

Devin escaped and found himself some arcade games. Apparently Jacer liked them, too.

Getting stuck on the slide!

Sunday evening we had a BBQ at Sue and Judd's house after church. We had to choose between where to go to church because both Sue and Dave were speaking in different wards. We heard Dave speak and he did an incredible job, but we also heard that Suey was pretty amazing. Hopefully we will get to hear her another time since she is making the rounds in all the wards in the area (her talk is that awesome, apparently.)  We also debuted the Linda video at this event. We then watched it twice more at my mom's after. It's a relief to have it done and so special to have, though as we discussed, we now have quite the collection of these videos and hope to not add to it for quite some time.

I think I took this picture as we were having a conversation, thus the "what the heck?" look on Grandma's face. 

While we were eating, this crop duster was spraying the crops....and showing off. A lot. It was fun to watch our own little aerial show during dinner.

Flor found a new friend in my cousin Colby. He doesn't come around all that often, so  we definitely had to get their picture together.

Most of the crew

We noticed that we hadn't seen Hallie for a while, so we went searching...and there she was outside with Avery and Sadie on the deck, dancing their little hearts out. It was hilarious. Hallie has NO rhythm, which makes her dancing quite the entertainment. 

Just a random picture from our time at Grandma's (my mom's). Jace and Mikey were having a good time throwing the balls in and out of the pool. Jace is apparently not cut out for basketball as he cannot aim for the life of him...

And this sums up quite well how we all felt after the fun-filled weekend! TIRED.  Isn't it funny though that the other two kids are conked and Flor is just wide awake? Poor thing still can't sleep without rocking, so sleeping in the car is pretty difficult for her. But, that's another story for another day.

Phew. Done. I really think you are either A) my parent B) my parents-in-law or C) my sister or sister-in-law if you have made it this far. Everyone else surely dropped off long ago. What a great weekend though.

We have some more exciting things coming up this month in the form of the Strobel family reunion and then Flor's sealing. We are excited....