Relay For Life, 2011

June 12th, 2011

How do you teach something as important as honor, to your kid? I have thought about it over and over. It's hard to explain to someone just how to teach something you feel inside like respect, honor or love?  It can't be easy or I wouldn't react to most of the kids today by shaking my head. I have seen many kids today and they only honor themselves, respect the Nintendo and love Hot Pockets or Jersey trash from MTV. Everything I have thought about leads to, 'it comes naturally' or 'teach through example'. So how do I teach Ryan such important traits like honor and respect? Since waiting around for it to happen naturally sounds lame and lazy, I guess I am going to make sure that I am always expressing the importance. How do I do this, I think to myself? I know, I will show him in through the wonderful world of cartoon. Yeah! I will draw a cartoon Anteater and his trials of being teased because he looks different and how he....no, that sounds too cliche. Maybe a cartoon praying mantis is fatherless (and headless) and tell about his battle of resentment he has towards his mother and how he misses his father and he does something special to remember his father and....WAIT!  What the hell am I doing? This is important. I can't "cartoon" my way through this, even if I did come up with a really genius children's book idea. (Any use of this entry or any pictures, cartoon ideas, characters, or children's book ideas without Chris "The Genius" Steeno's consent is strictly prohibited) Nope, I have to front this head-on. Verbal will be good. Expressing the importance is great verbally, but I will have to follow it up with action. This shouldn't be that hard considering we do about a trillion different charity events and volunteer our time to almost everyone in the world. We are like Bono, but with out the Celtic accent, red glasses and the ability to sell millions of records of moaning and whining to the Edge's ax.

This leads me to the subject of today's entry: Relay for Life. Relay for Life is an event that is very important to me, my family and friends. Every year some of my favorite peeps on the planet get together and raise money to fight Cancer. In June, we camp out our local school along with a bunch of other teams and walk the track for 24 hours. The idea is cancer never sleeps so neither do we. Our team is the Screwballs and we raise almost $4000 this season which puts us near $25,000 overall since 2007.  (See pics at "I am a Screwball" in Say Cheese )  

With all that said you may wonder why this is so important. Well besides Ang has been Relaying for 16+ years to honor her mother, Ryan's Nana, Ang is a Survivor herself (read about Ang's cancer battle by clicking here). In 2006 when Ang was diagnosed, I made a vow that I would fight so that one day folks won't have to endure the crap Ang went through. In 2006 I started the Screwballs of America, a charity organization, with my friend Brian. We didn't want it to be dark, depressing or sad, we wanted to have fun and raise money for charity. We felt that we needed to celebrate the lives of the ones we have lost as well as celebrate or survivors. Then our slogan was born, "Fun in the Name of Charity!" The team consists of my me, Brian, my brother, sister, Shanda, and a big smelly bunch of our great friends. Yes, we are a bunch of goofy idiots, but we have big hearts. Now Ang is a Screwball and I love relaying with her every year. This year was especially meaningful because this was Ryan's first Relay. Ryan is our miracle. Due to Cancer Ryan was our third shot and here he is, 18lbs of chub. It was so nice to have him out at Relay. He had so much fun playing with his friends on the Beekman, taking his laps around the track and experiencing his first Luminaria Ceremony.  Little man never fussed while he was out there and if he did, it was probably because had a huge blow out in his Relay onsie - gross dude!  It was nice too and it was hand made by his good friends Missy and Mel Gaddo......his Relay Aunts. How rude Ryan! I'll spank him, but I will wait until he takes a bath. 
In all, this year's Relay was fantastic. Not just because of all the success raising funds or the honoring our loved ones, but because Ryan was able to be a part of the experience. I loved walking my fat baby around the track, even if it was just a few miles of my 42 miles or a few hours in my 24 hour journey. As we took our Survivor Lap at the start with Ang, I remember thinking, "Can life get any better than walking with your son, honoring his mother?" Later that night we lit a Luminaria for Ang "4 Mommy!" and we walked along the track looking at all the people everyone was honoring or remembering that night. Ryan is living, pooping proof that miracles can happen to good people. Good people honor their mommy, respect what she went through to get him here and love her for it.............I guess my answer was right in front of me, I just needed to understand. Honor comes with having someone in which to respect and have a love strong enough to desire to honor. My guess is Ryan will be just fine as long as we keep doing things like Relay and I continue to surround him with big hearts like the Screwballs, the Gaddo's and his Mommy. Wait a second, did I just write my children's book? 

We Celebrated: 
Ang, Nana, G'ma Steeno, Aunt Chris, Gran, Pop, Aunt Diane, Tony Chaves, John Young, Steve Cooper, Mel 
We Honored: 
G'ma Carter, Shelly Sharp, Cory Cross, Wayne Milner, Jay Koontz