How We Found Hope

I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who came out to Relay for Life this last weekend. We raised a lot of money, and we just had a wonderful time out there, walking, getting tattooed, being locked up in jail, staying awake at all hours, sneaking the boys Diet Mountain Dew when they showed signs of drowsiness, watching them eventually succumb to fatigue in the strangest of places (the pole-vaulting mat?), and just enjoying each other's company.

Thank you to: Maria Spratford; Tom, Susan, and Madison Linkmeyer; John and Bernadette Hengesbach; Rusty and Kathy Carter (aka my parents); Susan and Hannah Woodhouse; Ann and Julie Larson; Janet, Kaitlyn, Josh, and Jacob Vahle; Kevin and Caroline Coss, Megan and Kate Elisha; Kaleigh Coltrain; Dino, Nancy, Alessandra, and Nick Sarpa; Matt and Laura Rhode; Michael and Christian Viktrup; Ryan Karpinski; Jim, Jennifer, and Jonah Simone; Jack Johnston; Patrick Hawkins; Danny Petruzzi; Jim, Jodi, Sarah, Phillip, and Will Weghorst, and anyone else whose name I neglected to mention! And please let me know if I skipped anyone--I can edit this post! Thank you to the Simones who brought us roughly 56,348 hotdogs to get us through the night, as well as for taking great pictures (like the one above). Thank you to Lisa Fox, who sold her jewelry on the track and gave the proceeds to the cause. Thank you to the boys who became a makeshift fire squadron during the luminary ceremony. Thank you to Christian, who sleep-walked all the way across the field at 5:00am to get us donuts. I especially want to thank Jodi. To call her my co-captain this year would make it sound like we each pulled an equal share, which isn't true at all seeing as how she did almost all of the prep work. You're the best.

Cancer patients present and future have you all to thank. Your work brought money to the American Cancer Society and, in turn, to a future hopefully free of cancer. I hope you all continue to have a fantastic and rewarding summer.