The Shuffle

The only pictures I am posting this year are of the Luminarias from the cancer walk. This year was a lot different then other years for a few reasons. Last I had heard, we had raised over $140,000 for the American Cancer Society. There were over 7000 Luminaria bags, which is what the pictures are of, even if they are hard to see. Our team raised a little over $2800, which is pretty good. Dion and I walked the path together, talking about how the past three years have been, how it seems so long ago, but at the same time, seems like yesterday when I walked my first survivor lap. It is such a bitter sweet event, and I can't say which is more prevalent.

We had our tent set up and thankfully it had cooled down a little so we weren't sweating all night. We crawled into our tent at about 1:30am for a quick snooze. A few hours later, our team mates were telling us that a rather large storm was rolling in...hail and 65 mph wind. This was the first year in all of the years I have been doing this that we left because of the weather. And it was just in time too. About a half hour after we left, the police came by and kicked everyone out as the sirens went off. This is the first year since my diagnosis that I haven't taken my Luminarias home. What is odd, is that this is also the first year, when walking the path, that I felt like I didn't need to take them home. Thankfully I came to that before the decision would have been taken away from me.

We have spent the rest of the weekend nodding off here and there. Dion's mom came up Friday night to help with the kids. Unfortunately, Claire came down with a bug and is just now starting to recover, although her eyes still look like she's sick. So we weren't able to do much of the fun stuff we normally would.

So, I guess that's it this year for the walk. Thank you so much to Mom & Dad B, Mom & Dad F, Kathy M, Paul & Cindy, Patsy Poopyhead, Brandy, Shari K, Susan H, Ben O, Fran J, Keri U, Jeff & Heidi, Kids Junction Kids, Gemini, and I hope I didn't forget anyone else.

Just a little side note.....Red Wing is the #1 raiser of money per capita in MN for the Relay for Life, and #7 in the nation. Not too bad for a little town of 16,000 eh?