Monday, June 15, 2009

Relay For Life

The Relay For Life (cancer fundraiser) was this past Friday. This was the night that I've been working towards for the last 5 months and it was AWESOME!!


"Lilium" Carey Heaton, Me and Dawn Garrett. My dad (the botanist) helped us choose our group name. Lilium is the Latin name for Lily - a 3 petal flower.


My brother-in-law asked me clear back in Jan/Feb if I would be willing to sing as part of the entertainment in the park for Relay's festivities. Heck, YES I said! I called up my girls, Dawn and Carey (my singing partners) and they were totally on board. Every time I went to Payson we rehearsed, we discussed song possibilites, parts, wrote parts and practiced-practiced-practiced. They came up here and we played... ahem, I mean practiced. We even got another gig to sing at The Peteetneet 2 weeks before the Relay (but I've been to busy and LAME to blog about it. Sorry. I really am gonna try to do better.)



In Front of the marque at The Peteetneet. We were pretty excited to see "Lilium in Concert". Made us feel special...



This shot made my thighs burn...


The Peteetneet concert was a good run-through for the real deal. We had everything covered, ready and under control for the Relay except... the weather.

Anyone living in Utah for the past 3 weeks can tell you, it has rained pretty much every day. EVERY DAY!!

Friday night was noooooooo different. We were supposed to go on stage at 8pm. But as luck would have it, they were running 30 minutes behind schedule. Kelly V (the performer right before us) got drenched when it started pouring rain right at 8 o'clock.

Dawn, Carey and I huddled under a canopy making some last minute costume adjustments... BLACK UMBRELLA'S. Oh yeah, we were going on NO. MATTER. WHAT.

Just as Kelly V finished up her last song it stopped raining. We got up there, wiped the water off our stools and music stands and away we went! It was so much fun!! I don't remember what song we were on (maybe Loathing from WICKED) when I thought to myself, "I love being up here!!! This is such a BLAST!!" It helped that the audience seemed to enjoy each of our songs and there were a few sweet fans (little girls on the front row) that kept our spirits up by saying things like, "YOU ROCK!!!!" or "I LOVE YOU!" or "YOU'RE THE BEST SINGERS IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!". (I might have just imagined that last one.)



It was an amazing time. The crowd grew and grew (no, I'm NOT making that up!). In fact my brother-in-law later told me that they have never had such a big crowd stick around for the music before. (Insert BIG SMILE here) I loved every minute!! We weren't able to do our slide show due to the weather, but everything else went off without a hitch. It didn't rain a single drop our entire performance (PRAYER WORKS). 10 minutes after we left the stage... it was a DOWN POUR.






My dad (who is fighting Multiple Myeloma) holding Shelby in the audience.

The Relay was a HUGE success!! They raised over $34,000 dollars (last year it was onlt $14,000)!! I am so grateful that I got to be a part of it!!!

3 comments:

also known as shell said...

good job Afton! You guys look so beautiful and I'm so proud of you guys!

The Marlin's said...

I have seen all of the picture but I can't wait to hear you guys. When you end up with a CD let me know. You look like you're having a blast. Congrats!!!

RoMo said...

Should have been there...I just wasn't paying attention, I guess. Or needed a personal invitation. ;)
Sorry.