Relay for Life = AMAZING!

Posted by Sammy on Apr 30th, 2010 | 2 comments

Sorry for the long overdue post regarding what happened last Saturday during Relay. I know I promised pictures but I’ve been so busy with work that I just haven’t had the time to catch up with my blog. I know tisk tisk tisk. Such a bad blogger!

Well, Relay was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!! It’s so hard to describe in words and even via pictures what it was like. You really had to be there. The energy alone of all of the people there being there for the SAME exact reason as you are, was just breathtaking. Seeing the survivors open up the Relay with the first lap was so touching. Made me wish that Gary could have been walking that lap too even though I’m sure he would have bitched and moaned about wearing the purple survivor t-shirt. The 2nd lap was for survivors and their caregivers, since I still consider myself having been a caregiver I decided to walk that lap with Mikey. He totally enjoyed running around the track.

My favorite part of Relay was the luminaria ceremony. Partly because I got to help with it. I got up on stage while all of the teams were working on lighting up their luminaria’s. In mid-speech, once all of them were lit up, they turned the lights off and it went pitch dark. And my speech got totally jumbled up because I had the most amazing view from where I was. To see the track illuminated with these bags dedicated to individuals that lost their fight, successfully fought, or those that are currently fighting. It’s a site, like I said, that can’t be described. Here are some pictures from that amazing event.

The beginning of the survivor lap:

Mikey running around the track for the survivor/caregiver lap:

The 4 luminaria’s that we worked on (one from Me, Mikey, Gary’s mom, and just a generic one for Gary):

Oh and I can’t forget the pictures of the amazing flags that were decorated by the classes at Mikey’s school….

Mikey’s room (the best one but I’m biased), Mikey has a special bumblebee in the middle:

Never in million years

Posted by Sammy on Apr 15th, 2010 | 3 comments

Gosh I feel like those 4 words define my life right now. Ya know, start off every sentence with those 4 words and just add whatever you want to it, and that’s ME. Let’s see….

Never in a million years….

….would I have thought I’d be a widow at 30
….would I have thought I wouldn’t grow old with Gary
….would I have thought that I’d be forced to raise Mikey on my own
….would I have thought that I’d be an advocate for raising money for finding a cure to cancer

I seriously could go on and on. But that’s not the real purpose of this post. Today I had another one of my “Never in a million years” moments. As I stated in a previous post, Mikey’s daycare is raising money for my Relay for Life team. Well today when I got to work after dropping Mikey off I got a call from daycare. Apparently another mom wanted to join my Relay team and had some questions for me so they wanted to make sure I was ok with them giving out my number, which I was. Well they then stated that one of the news stations was coming out tomorrow morning to do a story on our fundraiser! How freaking cool is that.

NEVER in a million years would Gary or I have thought that Mikey’s daycare would be doing any kind of fundraiser like this for my Relay team. Let alone, we’d never ever think that a news station would even care about something like this. I mean there is a pretty good possibility that Gary’s name and story is going to get on the news. How awesome is that!?!?!?? HIS STORY!

I’m so excited to go to daycare tomorrow morning to see all of the wonderful banners decorated. I’m bringing my fancy shmancy camera to take pics so that I can post them here. I plan on finding out the details of when the news plans on airing our segment so that I can somehow get that on video so that I can post that on my blog too.

So yeah, never in a millions year, that’s the story of my life.

Countdown to Relay!

Posted by Sammy on Apr 12th, 2010 | 3 comments

We’ve got T-minus 12 days until our first Relay for Life event as team Gary’s Guardian Angels. I’m super excited about the event for many reasons. I would have loved to have Gary walking with us, but I know that he’ll be there in spirit. He would have loved to walk that first lap with the survivors, I know he’ll be walking it in spirit. But I’ll be proudly walking with Mikey for as long as he’ll tolerate it

One thing that I’m very excited about is a fundraiser that Mikey’s daycare is doing for our team. On Friday afternoon all of the kids were sent home with a letter from Mikey telling everyone about our story. It was very personal and very touching. It was perfect. Not many parents know what happend to us, but most of the teachers do know. The fundraiser that they are doing is turning into a competition between the classes, its rather funny walking into a classroom and they have their work covered up. Basically each class is decorating a flag that will be silent auctioned this Friday. I promise to take pics on Friday and will post them here so that you all can see the fabulous work. I’m especially excited about Mikey’s class’ banner because they are having something special on there just for Mikey. When his teacher showed it to me today I got all choked up. It’s just so very thoughtful. I know Gary would be completely floored to know that Mikey’s daycare is doing this in his honor.

If you haven’t done so already, I’m still not done collecting money Even if all you can spare is $1, realize that whatever you can give makes a HUGE difference. To me its important that Mikey never has to hear that someone he loves has cancer EVER again. So I’ve vowed to help raise as much money as I can to make that possible. You can donate by clicking on this link, please feel free to pass this along to everyone you know Donate Here

I Relay for…

Posted by Sammy on Feb 12th, 2010 | no comments

Last night I had the honor of speaking at the kick-off event for the Weston Relay for Life fundraiser that is coming up in April. It was a great turnout and I’ll admit I wasn’t nervous at all getting up and speaking in front of everyone to share our story. Yes there were moments when I myself started to get all choked up, but somehow I got the strength to keep going, just like I have for the past 6 weeks (yup it has officially been 6 weeks!). Overall it was an honor to speak at the kick-off event, and now I’m more motivated than ever to make a different with Relay for Life.

One of the most powerful words spoken last night was by the chair, Ross Sabath, he said something to this effect “I Relay for my children, so that they never have to hear the words you have cancer”.

So to piggybacking on that, I Relay for Gary and Mikey. I feel like its my mission in life to help raise money to get us closer to a cure for cancer so that Mikey never has to hear me tell him that I have cancer, and more importantly I never want Mikey to have a doctor tell him that he has cancer. With your help we can get to a cure. I never want another family to be broken apart like my family has because of cancer. Gary’s story has woken me up and it taught me that anyone can get hit my cancer, even someone that looks relatively healthy.

If you want to donate or Relay on my team you can by Clicking Here