Unreal

I am sitting here at 11:00 at night waiting for Andy to get home from doing his Relay for Life walking. Me and the kids tagged along with him until 9:45... I don't even know how to describe how I am feeling about our experience there. It is being held at this great big park with nice long walking paths. Lining the entire walking paths are bags with peoples names that have either died from, have or have had cancer. Not only are they lining the path but because there are so many they have a ton of them set up in an outdoor hockey rink. Inside these bags there is a single candle. They hadn't lit them yet (when we left) but people that have done this in past years said its amazing to see all the candles burning together in the dark. I cannot believe how many people have had or do have cancer...let alone those that have died from it. And that's just people that family members in this area did bags for. We had 4 bags made up...One for my mom, one for Andy's mom, and one each for a Grandpa and a Grandma on Andy's side. There were hundreds of people there and a bunch of different teams put together that will all walk... Andy is on a team from the bank. At 10:00 (I'm guessing after the candles are all lit) someone from each team starts walking. There has to be someone from each team walking at all times and they walk all night long...until the first bird flies?? Since Andy has to work bright and early tomorrow morning he was only staying until midnight. How amazing would that be though to take part in something like that?? I bet its pretty powerful over there right now! To stay up all night walking in honor of your family members and/or friends. WOW. We walked the whole thing so we could find our 4 bags (which were all in different areas so very hard to find) and we took pictures. Unfortunately it wasn't our camera so i doubt I'll be able to share the pictures on here. I was so blown away though to see how many people cancer has affected in our community. If you ever get to take part in something like this I really recommend you do. It's powerful.
One little vent though...don't come to a cancer walk puffing on a cigarette. Doesn't make much sense. I realize smoking is a tough habit to kick but come on... There was one lady there that had one of the shirts that said something to the effect of "Had it, fought it, beat it"...something like that... So she has HAD cancer and she was puffing away on a cigarette. Seems a bit sad to me. I guess that's her struggle in life so I shouldn't judge her.
I'm very proud of Andy for taking part in this. He is so awesome. I'm glad he's walking in honor of our moms and in memory of his grandparents. If he didn't have to work in the morning it would have been a great all night date night.