Sunday, April 26, 2009

Relay For Life - Team: Sweet Success


Friday, April 24, 2009 American Cancer Society Relay for Life
Sweet Success - the name of the team. A group of 10 co-workers and a friend. We had 3 Survivors in the group, 3 caregivers and the rest - people who just care.
The entire event raised $85,000. Our team raised $9,278. Our goal was $1500. I am impressed and very thankful for all they did.
The theme this year was "Cancer doesn't take a vacation." We toyed with a couple ideas. First we wanted to do Las Vegas and have a casino night. Somebody else had already chosen that one. Next we thought about Alcatraz Island and have a jail. We had two teammates who each had a cop halloween costume and I wanted everyone elso to wear black and white striped shirts. I think I was the only one who was up for that one. We talked some more and places like Bora Bora and Jamaica and a few others came up but we couldn't figure what it was we could do with those places that would give us an on-site related fundraiser. Then....CANDYLAND was suggested. Everyones eyes lite up. We had a Winner. And, it matched our name, Sweet Success. So CANDYLAND it was. We decided we would sell candy at the site to raise more money. We would have a Lollipop Pull. I had never heard of it. We made a "tree" for the pops to be displayed on. Painted the bottom of the sticks with a highlighter and made a chart for the colors. Red got them a Garfield Coffee cup (donated two years ago by the Company), Blue got them a bag of 6 mini chocolate chip cookies, Green got them a bag of 10 peices of candy, Purple got them another pop, and white got them one extra piece of candy and, of course, they got to keep the pops. I think we kept a lot of kids going all night long with the sugar highs. We also had 18 giant chocolate chip cookies and icing for them to decorate. The decorators had great fun with that one. Our sales total at the end of the night was $202. We had $73 in votes. We gained $21 for the Brookstone card and $50 for the beautiful Candyland Cookie Bouquet both of which were part of the evenings silent auction. The rest of the total was from on-line donations from friends, family, co-workers and the bosses.
We got some great pictures, had some big laughs, played some games, walked some laps, shed some tears, didn't get any sleep, grateful there was no rain, and most of all we raised money for the research and aid to find the cure and assist those dealing with Cancer.
I AM A SURVIVOR!