Relay for Life 2013!!

Another Relay year has come and gone...can you believe it? It is seriously my favorite time of the year. I love it all. The fundraising, the garage sale prep (Devin and I's biggest fundraiser), and the actual Relay. This was our 5th year in a row participating in Relay for Life and it just keeps getting better and better. We had a great time as usual remembering and honoring Chris and others who have battled or who are battling the terrible disease of cancer. Our team raised over $3900 this year-- our biggest total yet-- and we are so grateful to ALL who helped in some way to make that goal. It means so much.

Now, for the obligatory picture dump of this year's event. Be prepared! :)

Each member of our team brought a baked good to sell at the Relay to add money to our team total. Devin and I decided to make homemade donuts. They were delish-- as was everything else our team sold! 

Very nearly my favorite woman in the world and my favorite man in the world. My grandma is so cute-- when she saw Devin, she rushed right over and said "oh, my favorite boy! How is my favorite boy!?"

Claire bear is so stinkin' cute. She loved my glasses apparently...

The cotton candy machine was a BUST. It lit on fire at a few points before we decided to give it up. Boo!

Brookie's cute "cheese!" face

Not the best picture-- I blame the setting sun-- but still cute. The theme this year was "Re-lei for Life" thus the Hawaiian gear we have going on.

Grandma Lisa was nice enough to take these girls to get glitter tattoos-- such a dream come true for them! Hallie's lasted a week-- seriously, she would not let me scrub it off until I finally insisted. 

Hailie and Mari are always such good supporters. Hailie stayed all night this time too! Whoo hooo!

The luminarias for just our team. Amazing.

Just some middle of the night man talk. Devin actually went to bed and slept most the night, but that's only because he had only had 4 hours of sleep the night before. I made it until 4:30 or so and then I thought I was going to die (this getting old stuff sucks!) so I laid on the ground and was OUT. I slept for maybe an hour and it did wonders. :)

I stole some of Lara's pictures too-- thanks Lara! Grandma Lisa with some of the kids

Oh these sassy girls...too cute.

Not sure what is going on with Mike's face, but we do need to definitely give a huge shout out to Lara's sister Alyssa (the middle one) who walked for our team the ENTIRE night through. Not kidding. She probably walked for 6 hours. I think I walked around the track for maybe 5 laps total the entire time. Sweeeeet- thanks Alyssa!

Isn't this just to die for cute? Flor and Claire. 

I especially love the double chin in this one, but Claire looks cute, so it's going up!

I was TERRIBLE about taking pictures this year and have zero of the Yorks! I am glad Lara has some. 

Uncle Mikey and Jacer

Grandma and Grandpa Strobel with Hals and Jace. Love that Hallie is stuffing her face...

That's all! Until next year....

Happy birthday Chris!

Jace is named after our brother-in-law Chris. We planned on using Christopher as a middle name all along as a way of honoring Chris and then Jace was born on Chris's birthday, making it extra special (Birthday post on Jace below!).

While Jace never met Chris in this life, Hallie did get to spend some time with him before he passed away in April 2009. This would have been shortly after Hallie was born, so around November 2008. 

As you all know, Chris lost his fight to a brain tumor. He was such an incredible and giving person that my sister has instituted a day of service in his memory every year on his birthday. She asks friends and family to just do something nice for someone else as a way of remembering him and the legacy he left.

Chris is the reason that we as a family participate in the Relay for Life every summer in Idaho Falls. There is no better cause than this one to help other families find relief from the horrible disease that we call cancer. I watched my sister and Chris suffer so much as they endured months of chemotherapy,  radiation, and Chris's declining abilities. Even though it has been four years, looking at pictures of Chris reminds me again of all the rough things that surround cancer. I know that many of you who read my blog did not know Chris, but I am sure many of you know someone who has battled cancer. If you feel so inclined, here is one simple way that you can help us honor Chris's special day:

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=50614&pg=personal&px=15187204

You can consider donating to my Relay for Life fundraising goal. (click the link above and then click the "donate now" button).  I know I have asked you all a lot of times in the past to donate to different things, so I am sorry for that, but this is a cause that I really believe it. Even a $1 donation would mean a lot to me. Every little bit helps. Thank you!!!

Happy birthday Chris. We sure miss you here but know that you are accomplishing great things on the other side!

(also, for those who are local or who live in Idaho Falls, Devin and I are going to do our annual garage sale as our main fundraiser again this year. If you have any items that you plan on getting rid of or donating to the D.I. anyway, would you consider letting us pick them up to sell at our garage sale? Thank you!!!)

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....