Fall Garage Sale

trying to pass the time...and let out any frustrations!

the younger Friends pitch in

2007 Wrap-Up

Last night the ACS had the 2007 Relay Wrap-Up. Here are some of the stats:

• Cobb County raised just over ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!
• We are the 4th largest Relay in the nation - one of only 5 to raise a million!
• Raised $177,616 online - 10th in the country!
• One of only 42 counties in the US that raised one million dollars!

We also had a few individual awards handed out:

• Individuals that raised the most online - 2nd place, raising $3,055 online, is Ty Harvey!
• Overall individual fundraisers - in 3rd place, raising $5,176, is Jennie Harvey and in 1st place, raising $6,040, is Christie Blair!!
• We also had MANY team member receive their grand club shirts for raising at least $1,000!

Now for the Friends for LIFE stats:

• We received an All-Star Award at the Diamond Level (which means that we raised an average of $1,000-$1,999 per team member).
• We also received our 1st place (Top Ten Team) Award and our name will be printed on the back of the 2008 T-shirts...AGAIN!!

Friends for LIFE amazing list of accomplishments for this year:

• 5th highest fundraising team in the Metro Atlanta Region!
• 13th highest fundraising team in the South Atlantic Division (Georgia to Delaware - 6 states and the District of Columbia)!!
• 50th highest fundraising team in the ENTIRE United States!!!
• #1 Cobb County Friends and Family team and #1 overall...raising $57,421!!!!!

Oh yeah, and my personal favorite....we were called "the machine that is Friends for LIFE" by the chairs of the event. I could get used to that :)

Wow!! What an amazing year! You should be so proud of yourself, of our team, and of the county! Let's make this year even more unbelievable!

** The garage sale pictures will be posted soon (I just got them last night). **

garage sale recap

our fall garage sale was a great success with a grand total of $1,330!!! that is a great way to kick-off the year. the "younger Friends" set-up a stand and sold cookies and lemonade to contribute to our overall total. they raked in $25.50...great job guys!!! we had a great time this weekend and we are really looking forward to out next fundraiser :) a big thanks to everyone who donated and to everyone that came out to work!

check back for pictures from the weekend (which include your Friends and a fur coat, a sledge hammer, and some exercise equipment...yes, it was an interesting weekend)!

also, don't forget to RSVP by tuesday for the wrap-up on thursday...hope to see you there!

Fall Garage Sale - September 21-22

Our first fundraiser this Relay season will be our fall garage sale on Friday, September 21st and Saturday, September 22nd at Tracey's house. We will be around from 8 am until 3 pm.

Please price your items and get them to Tracey's no later than Wednesday the 19th!!

New Season Soon!

The new Relay season begins September 1st. Check back for more information about the Friends for LIFE kick-off party and details about the fall garage sale in September. Start setting aside your stuff to sell!!

Directions to Bike Ride

Double Vision is on the corner of Hwy 120 (Dallas Hwy) and Atlanta Hwy. It is one light past Hardy Chevrolet on Hwy 120 if you are traveling West.

When you get to the intersection you will turn Right and Double Vision is immediately on your left. There is a strip center with a Napa in it and Double Vision sits next to the road in front of the strip center.

The address is 3716 Atlanta Hwy if people want to mapquest it from their location.

From Kennesaw I would take Kennesaw Due West to Mars Hill and turn left. Go to Hwy 120 and turn right. Take 120 to Atlanta Hwy and turn right

Friends Update

Hi Team,
Just a reminder that we have the bike ride THIS Sunday. If you have already responded that you can help, we will see you there. If you can bring a cooler, please bring it with ice inside. If you said you could bring a table, please pack that as well. You may want to throw a couple of those bag type chairs in your car to sit on, not sure what we will have available at the stops etc. Also, PLEASE wear your red team shirt so that we all match and folks know that we are the ones running the Ride. We are all meeting at Double Vision, and then people may go to the water stops from there. We need help setting up and we also need to make sure that we have all bases covered with helpers before we "dispatch".

12:00 arrive to set up
1:00 registration begins
2:00 ride begins
4:30+ riders arrive back at Double Vision
food will be served when we arrive back
raffle prizes will be awarded while people are eating...probably about a half hour to an hour...
People are welcome to stay as long as they want

I also wanted to take a second to thank you for being such a wonderful team. As many of you already know, Jennie and I are moving onto the Steering Committee to help the ACS run the actual Relay. I am actually going to be the co-chair of the event and Jen will be on one of the committees. Christie will stay on as a captain and Jennie's two sisters; Angie and Stephanie have graciously offered to step up to help Christie run the team. Jennie and I wanted to make sure you were all in "good" hands before we moved over, so we are confident that the team will be even better then ever. Meetings will still be at my house and so will the garage sales. You may still hear from me occasionally via email so watch out!

I am looking forward to this Ride for Relay, I am so thankful for all the hard work that has gone into this from Angie N., Angie C., Jennifer H., Stephanie M. and many others. You all have done a tremendous amount of work to get this ready and I really hope it does well!

See you Sunday!
Tracey

Scrapbook Fundraiser

I just wanted to let you know that I am cancelling the scrapbook fundraiser scheduled for July 21st. I made this decision for a couple reasons. There has not been a good response, and I fell and injured my knee and don't feel like I can continue with it at this time. I would love to try it again some time in the future.
Thank you,
Stacey :o)

FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!

Hey Team!

GUESS WHAT?!?!?! We have broken $50,000.00 this year!!!!!! Last night another donation came in for $1,000.00 and that pushed us over the $50 K mark!!! Awesome job and way to go, SUPER!

Wanted to again remind you of the Bike Ride on the 24th of June. This is a Sunday, and you should have all the info you need about this. If you have any questions please contact me. We could always use volunteers to help with handing out water, registration, ACS give aways and Raffle items. If you have anything that you would like to donate as a raffle items, please let us know. Please remember that these folks are on motorcycles so no large items (no way to get them home)...gift certificates and small items are great. THANK YOU!!

Also a reminder of the scrap booking fundraiser, see the flier below.Enjoy your summer, and see you on the 24th!

Relay for Life 2007

2007 Pictures

Please send any 2007 Relay Pictures that you have to friendsforliferelay@gmail.com.

Thanks :)

Ride For Relay Flyer

New Pictures

There are new pictures up of Friends For LIFE and the past Relays....you can really see how we have grown!!! Scroll down to the bottom and check them out!

If you have any pictures you want to share with us, please send them to friendsforliferelay@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Saturday Relay Update

Hello Team!

Two weeks from now we will be so tired! Hard to believe that in just a few days we will have had our 2007 Relay. I wanted to give you an update from last nights meeting. I would like to thank the 22 people that came over to decorate luminary's and to turn in money. We made over 115 Luminary's so our camp will have lots of candle light. This also means that we will need plenty of people on the luminary committee (these folks fill the luminary's with sand and a candle on site and help arrange them in front of our campsite).

We have awesome news about the breakfast...Diane Grimsley was able to get 6 cases of breakfast sandwiches to sell in the wee hours. This is excellent news since John's and Jack's will not be there. Thank you Diane!!! We will start selling Pizza around 5 pm, hot drinks around midnight and breakfast/juice around 4 am. We are working with Publix to try and get some drinks for free. I will keep you posted.

I have even more good news. The Motorcycle Ride committee has been working really hard to get sponsors, water stops scheduled and routes planned. They have been working really hard behind the scenes and is slowly seems to be pulling together. I got this from Jen Hewett last night:
I got word today from the electric co-op (GreyStonePower) that they will allow their Paulding office tobe the water/restroom stop on our Relay Ride. They don't normally do things like this, but because they had such a super relationship with Ty Harvey (and as they said, because he was who he was!), they agreed it would be a good fit. Guys, I will try and get us some extra press in the magazine as well for the Ride. (Especially now that there is an EMC connection to sweeten the deal!)

This is fantastic news, plus a little publicity...great work bike crew! I know that they would love for me to ask you to consider helping with little details for the bike ride. We will need things like giveaways, more sponsors, advertising etc. The ride will be on June 24th, it's a Sunday. You don't need to be there to help out. Most of the help they need is in the next couple ofweeks getting things nailed down. If you would be willing to help, please send me an
email.

We will be getting the relay shirts and the red team shirts before Relay but we will hand all of them out on the night of relay. This will be much easier to control to make sure everyone gets their shirts and also decreases the chance of it being left at home by mistake.

I have Pampered Chef stuff for Jen Hewett, Angie Nails, Helen DuVall, and Karen Davis. I also have an order for a Kimberly Aquino...I do not know this person, so if you do, please let me know. I will try to get with you to schedule a pick up or else I will bring it to Relay.

Last night we also had the sign ups for the on site committees and for the list of items to bring the night of. Alright, are you ready for the EXCELLENT news? We collected $2,860.02 last night, plus the $725 from people who couldn't make it...added to our on line totals, we are at $16,277.47!!! First place is at $16,095.00 as of this morning. So technically we are in first going into bank night. A matching check of $17,000 has already been sent in the hopes of it being deposited before Relay night. Our total is now at $33,277.47!!! We need to raise $1,000.00 more dollars to be over $100,000.00 in four years.

Thank you all, this wouldn't be possible with out you!!! We still have on site fundraising and the Ride for Relay in June, so I am certain that we will reach our goal.

Thanks for all you are doing! We will let you know what campsite we have chosen when we go for bank night on Thursday.

The Younger FRIENDS!

Our Luminary Decorating Entertainment...

Number Two!

Hi Friends!!

We are in second place online!!! Way to go team. We still have $1500.00 yet to be posted to our site. We are also waiting for a check from the Pampered Chef Party, we made $350.00 from that fundraiser!!! Also, go to the site and check out our very own Christie Blair who is currently top individual fundraiser, awesome!

Also wanted to let you know that you may come over Friday anytime, but I know some people will start coming around 5 pm. We will have some food & drinks as usual. I will also have more kids friendly stuff since quite a few little people will be in attendance. Bring your list of luminarys to make. If you don't have any of your own to make please come and help those who have really long lists. Thank you for all you continually do to help win the fight.

Team Update

Morning Team!

Last night we had a captains meeting and I wanted to go over some things with you.

First we were recognized as TOP FUNDRAISING TEAM from the auction. We kind of already knew that, but it was still really great to hear. We also received $500 from the ACS for bringing so many people to the auction. We were in second place, Sedalia Park Elementary bought in the most so they got $1,000.00. That is one reason why ticket sales are so important. Thank you to all that came out to the auction!!!

We may have some more people joining the team, we are working on mentoring another team who's captain got sick with her new round of chemo, so they may need to come under our wing. This is their first year and that makes it tough in itself. Hopefully they will agree to come with us and we can help them out. It will add about 13 more people to the team. Last night it was mentioned that we mayget 1 site for every 10 people instead of 1 for every 15. ACS will get back to us on that.

We did have someone volunteer to be our "Giggles the Gorilla" for the night of Relay. THANK YOU to Cory Grimsley for stepping up to do this. Mr./Ms. Relay is one of the most fun activities the night of, I just need to remember the bribes for the judges...

They did mention that there will be a Survivor Pancake breakfast. We had this in the past, before the days of John and Jack's, so I think we should still go ahead with doing breakfast. The years that the ACS did it were the ones were we had made mental notes that we should have done something for breakfast as well. What we had made us so woozy, Pillsbury biscuits cut up and thrown in a fryer, rolled in sugar. It sound good, we thought so too, but it sits like a lead weight at 4 am. So we are trying to get maybe some muffins and maybe something like we had last year~pastries and bacon, egg & cheese; sausage, egg and cheese, etc. THANK YOU to Diane Grimsley...she was able to get coffee, cocoa, cups, lids, cream &sugars donated. AWESOME! We also have two large coffee makers that we will use on site, one for coffee, one for cocoa. We should be pretty popular around 4am when the chills set in...

We got the design in for the tee shirts. I hope to wrap that up today and get the shirts ordered. THANK YOU to the Carley's-- Joe's brother designed the shirts. We are thinking about designing a logo for Friends for LIFE...boy are we getting fancy or what?!?

In the next few emails I will go over some housekeeping for the night of. The information that comes to us as captains is available to all of you this year on the Kintera, http://www.cobbrelay.org/, site. If there is anything you need, look here. They are also asking people to write about why they relay. There is a big section for that on the homepage for kintera.

We are less then a month away. Relay will be here before we know it, but now is crunch time for getting details worked out. I will be increasing my emails as important things pop up that you need to be aware of.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the luminary party (bring your money to turn in) next Friday the 27th. I will be home, so come whenever~after work, after dinner, after the kids go to bed. Kids are invited though so don't let the last thing stop you from coming and having a good time with team members. Use this chance to get to know your fellow Friends before the night of. If you cannot make it then we will see you TWO weeks after that for Relay!!! Please, please, please try to stay all night long. The entire point of relay is to stay the whole night. I have a poem about this that I may send later (hand is starting to hurt from typing) about why we relay all night long, what is the significance and though it's not easy..there is a point to it. Plus I need folks to help with breakfast duty and for tear down. Closing ceremony is neat too when we get to hear names called out ( hopefully ours will be one that get recognized for oodles of things) for top fundraising teams, top individuals, grand club members, campsite decoration awards, trivia winners, team spirit etc.

OK, that's enough. Tune in next week for "8 Rules Set by the ACS for the night of Relay" and other exciting topics like "Committee Sign-ups" and "Sign-ups for items to bring to relay". You don't want to miss it. This has been your host, Tracey...until then~ keep workin' ! We're so close to number one overall~ before matching.

Update

The Pampered Chef closes out today. If you have not done your order, and plan to do so, you have until tonight to get it in. www.pamperedchef.biz/lynntaylor click on "order products" and search for "Relay for Life".

We are finishing up the tee shirt design and hope to get those ordered in the next day or so. If you have not told me your tee shirt size, you will not get a shirt. These are the red shirts that we will wear the night of as our team shirts, and will stand out from the free white tee shirts that the ACS provides for all walkers. I have not heard from these people: (the last names were removed to protect the forgetful)

Brandon
Colleen
Helen
Isabelle & Michelle
Jeannine
Jennifer
Kelli
Nancy,Sarah & Nicholas
Stacey
Stephanie T.
Susan William

We got confirmation on the Papa Johns Pizza for the night of. They will be sending out their "Pizza Mobile" (they called it a trailer...) to be onsite. This trailer does not make pizzas, it just stores them and keeps them warm. It does open up to serve the pizzas and serves as a nice attention getter seeing as it is about 15 feet long. Papa Johns is giving us plates and napkins which saves us money and we are getting the pizzas for $6 each and we can charge what we want. If we charge $2/slice we will make $10 per pizza. I was hoping to get the pizzas for free, but it should still do well. They are giving us over 50% so we are happy about that. We will just have to keep an eye on the pizza supply and order fresh when it is running low. We will have cheese, pepperoni, sausage and pepperoni/sausage. Since it is just slice and serve we will need folks to volunteer to hand out pizzas.

We will have sign ups for committees that I will send out soon: (set up & tear down~need lots of help since I broke my arm and can't lift anything, Pizzas, decorating the site, luminary bags (filling and placement of luminarys), face painting/tattoos, lap bead sales, Mr & Mrs Relay (need someone to wear the gorilla costume), breakfast (we are working on getting coccoa, coffee and food for breakfast since John & Jacks pancake shack will not be there. This could be a big money maker since there are usually very few teams that do breakfast items) and finally, advertising (put flyers for our campsite on the back of restroom doors and hand out on track).** We also need to have at least 1 person on the track at all times. I will get that list done next week for the Luminary Decorating Party. I will put the list on email after that to make sure it gets filled. If everyone does a little, then no one does alot.

I think that is all for now.

Car Bash 2007