What a weekend....

Well, what a weekend.  We enjoyed a nice Father's Day yesterday, and the day before, we participated in the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life.  This was somewhat fitting for me that these two occasions would fall on the same weekend.  As many of you know, I lost my father last year to pancreatic cancer.  So this year, I participated in his memory, the day before Father's Day, at Relay for Life. 

For those of you that follow me on Twitter, you would have seen some of my pictures from the event, but I thought I would share them here for anyone who didn't see my pictures, or haven't experienced this event before.

Unfortunately, we got quite a bit of rain on Saturday, so the Relay was moved inside a hockey rink.  Don't worry, no skates required.  There were some plusses to being in side:
1 - We weren't wet
2 - It was actually pretty warm
3 - All the teams were set up pretty close together, so it created a real sense of community
4 - No porta-potties... real bathrooms.

We had a new format here at our event this year... 12 PM to 12 AM.  It used to be an overnight event (7 PM to 7 AM).  This allowed for more children to attend the event, and not so many tired teams.

We started the event with a team lap, and got in to some entertainment, including Zumba!

 

 

My daughter decorated some luminary candles for cancer survivors (more on the luminaries later):

 

 

 

 

There were bouncy castles, games, crafts, musical entertainment, dance schools that danced for everyone, and lots of walking the track (forgive the blurry pictures, my phone camera is not good at capturing "action shots).

 

 

 

The Survivor's lap kicked off at 7.  Cancer Survivors circulated and we clapped and celebrated their victory over cancer.

 

Then at 10 PM we honored those still battling, and remembered those lost to cancer:

 

 

These were some of our luminaries for my dad:

 

Overall a fantastic event.  The organizing committee and Cancer Society staff for a job well done.  My team is excited to come back next year (which will be our 10th year participating in this event)!

And Happy Father's Day to my dad.  I'm sure he was with us this weekend.