It's that time of the year again.

The time of the year when I hit you all up for donations for The Force's 2008 ACS Relay for Life.

For you newbies out there, the ACS (American Cancer Society) Relay for Life is a 24-hour event used to honor and celebrate our friends and family that have survived or passed from cancer. We raise money for five months then in May we camp out, walk, and have a huge party all in the name of fighting cancer. Every year I look forward to this day. It's an terrific event that's a blast to participate in, and it's for a good cause!

A brief history on my participation in the ACS Relay for Life.

At left: Our team poster featuring Lis, Lukas and Gramps!

We started in 2005 a few weeks after Lis was diagnosed with leukemia forming the team "The Force" after the hype from "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," which premiered in May 2005. Our team was formed from friends and family. We raised a couple of hundred dollars, walked a lot and had a great time. It was an emotional and eye-opening experience for me. I never realized how many people were affected by cancer until that morning. Another big part of Relay for Life is the luminaria ceremony. The luminaria's are bags with sand and a candle in them that we decorate for our loved ones. When the bag pipes began to play the tears began to flow. And I'll always remember the following song, Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on that Mountain." 

Here are photos of our 2005 Relay for Life:

Above left: Lis, Kevin, Uncle Erik and Lukas. Above right: Lis and Lukas in their hey days!

Above left: The Survivor Lap. Above Right: Team Force: Year 1

In 2006, we raised almost $1500 and ended up making a name for ourselves by finishing second in the Team Spirit competition. Randy won the karaoke contest (which he'd repeat as champ in 2007) and finished second in the Mr. Relay Competition, a contest where one guy from each team dresses up like a girl and does his best to entice the crowd to pick him as champion.

We had a ton of participation and had a great time. Where 2005 was an eye-opening experience, '06 was the first time we really partied!

You can watch the 2006 Mr. Relay Competition here:

Here are some more photos of the 2006 Relay for Life:

Clockwise from top: Erik gets ready to blow a balloon, Erik's luminaria for Lis, Grandma wins the cake walk, Survivor Lap '06, Dad in the dunk tank, Randy and his bag.

In 2007, we returned with a bang. We had our most successful Relay since we first started raising over $2,000 and taking home the plaque recognizing us as Team Spirit champions. We rocked the house, came up with our own battle cry (What! What!) and in turn became the team everyone wanted to party with. Randy won the Mr. Relay competition (see video below), and karaoke and I even made it the full 24-hours - so did my Mom! It was the most fun I had in a long, long time.

Which brings us to 2008. It's time for me to hit you all up for some serious donations. My goal for the team is $3,000. My personal goal is a weak $300. I'd like to shatter that goal, so I need your help. You all know I'm good for it.

If you'd like to donate to this worthy cause and help The Force get more recognition with their fundraising then please click here. Please put your name on there and I'd love to send you an email thanking you for your donation. If you'd like to do a luminaria then please click here.

I thank you all for your continued support of my family and especially Lis.

She is doing awesome, so much so that the whole cancer thing is an afterthought. We're only reminded when we meet new people and share our story, or I accidentally bump her third nipple (the titanium port permanently attached in her left bicep). She's doing an amazing job in her recovery and we're all very proud of her.

Thank you all again and I hope to be emailing you all soon thanking you for the donations you've given us!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out in the blogging world.

Valentine's Day is always a funny "holiday" for me and part of it might be that Lis and I don't go all out with gift-buying or going out on dates. Could it be because we're married?

This year I did surprise her by buying her a couple of roses, a heart balloon, a card and a bag of Oreo's. I bought them last night while on my way home from work and surprised her by having them on the kitchen table when she woke for breakfast. Maybe I earned a couple of bonus points!

Valentine's Day usually brings out the romantic in people. Unfortunately, I haven't felt as romantic as I have felt years ago. Maybe it's because I'm hitched and you don't have to try as hard to impress the one you love. Sounds silly but isn't it true? I don't feel I have to earn her love because I already have it, though sometimes I do have to try to earn more of her love - if you know what I mean.

Years ago I would write poems or stories about our love. I'd make mixed CDs or make photo collages, now I struggle to write an entire card (I'm not the kind of person that signs there name then gives a card away I have to personalize it) expressing my love. Sure, I wrote it at midnight after watching a high school basketball game but still it frustrates me.

I think part of it has to do with what I wrote above and part of it is that our lives are so busy with Lukas, and working two jobs. We don't have much time to enjoy each other's companies. On nights I work I come home and she's zonked out. On other nights we fight with Lukas to get to bed and by then its nearing 10pm and we're both exhausted.

Anyway, I'm done frustrating myself, let's recap the Valentine's Days that Lis and I have spent together.

2003 - Pre-Marriage - Lis and I spend Valentine's Day many miles away from each other. Sure, we're engaged but we're on different continents. I don't remember what I spend the day doing. Being depressed sounds good.

2004 - Our first Valentine's Day together hitched. Lis is a little over a month pregnant. I buy an ice cream cake that says "Our 1st Valentine's Day", a card and a dozen roses. We probably went to dinner.

2005 - We spend Valentine's Day on a plane home from California after my friend, Dennis, got married the day before.

2006 - We spend 1/2 of our day at the beach in California and 1/2 on the plane home from California. We were granted a Christmas wish from a local radio station and used the free trip to go to Disneyland.

2007 - Last year's Valentine's Day was spent at work as I pulled a double duty.

2008 - Lis woke up with roses, a balloon, card and Oreo's on the dining room table. The rest is yet to be determined.

The talk has already begun about whether or not Sunday's Super Bowl XLII was the greatest Super Bowl of all-time. In my opinion, it's well deserving of that recognition. I can't remember a Super Bowl that the minute the game ended I wanted to go back and watch it again, or at least the fourth quarter of it. That even includes last year's Super Bowl that the Colts - my favorite team - won.

That's how good Sunday's game was.

It was slow for the first three quarters, like two boxers trying to feel each other out. Then the Giants jumped ahead 10-7 and you just knew that the real Patriots were going to show up on the next drive. They did as Brady marched his troops down the field and into the end zone giving New England the 14-10 advantage.

Before the game I had chosen the Giants as the team I'd root for. After all my Man-Crush's younger sibling was playing for them so I figured I owed it to Peyton to root for little Eli. But on the last drive I just wanted something magical to happen, I wouldn't have cared if the Patriots were down 14-10, I just wanted to see something special. And we did.

Eli made play after play. He hit Amani Toomer for a 9-yard pass on third-and-10 setting up a 2-yard Brandon Jacobs first down. Then on third-and-5 he made one of the most incredible plays I have seen in football, both by a quarterback and receiver. The play left me wishing I was an Eli Manning fan.

With two Giant defenders over him, Manning ducked one, pulled away from another, stopped and shot a bullet of a pass towards the middle of the field where backup receiver David Tyree leaped out of nowhere pinning the ball against his helmet and falling to the ground with a Patriots defender all over him. The pass and the catch left everyone at our Super Bowl party going, "How'd he do that?" You can view that play here.

Most in attendance leapt out of their seats knowing we were watching something special unfold. Two plays later, and no timeouts remaining, Giants receiver Steve Smith made a catch along the right sideline then took two steps to a first down before going out-of-bounds. A smart play that set up Manning's 13-yard TD pass to Plaxico Burress. Oh yeah, the Hotel Johnson crowd erupted!

The Patriots weren't done and we all figured they had one more break to catch before their perfect season ended. Tom Brady launched two passes, one a perfect spiral 77-yards to Randy Moss that the Giants defender was able to get his hands on at the last minute.

The perfect season ended and the Giants prevailed with the biggest upset in perhaps the greatest Super Bowl of my generation and possibly all-time.

I guess that's all of the play-by-play for now.

Let's get to the Super Bowl party highlights:

Party Pool Winner: Lis and Alexandre, the two native Brazilians who know close-to-nothing about football split the $13 party pool winnings. It was Lis' second consecutive party pool title. Nice job wifey!

Best Party Snack: This was a hard one to choose. In the past we had mostly had junk food, chips, dip, and meatballs, oh, those were all there but there was also Tirimasu, cheesecake and fried chicken. It was all so good.

Commercial: I don't recall them all but I thought the giant mouse attacking the dude with the Doritos bag was interesting.

Biggest Oops!: At halftime my parents showed off Koby on Animal Planet. We had to switch over from the regular TV to the TiVo. When we returned we had the TiVo on for the halftime show but the audio was still on the regular TV, causing a 2-3 second delay. This delay made Mr. Tom Petty look as though he was in a Japanese Godzilla movie and made most of us claim that this was one of the worst halftime shows ever. Chris went as far as saying, "This is awful! They'll be talking about this for years!" When the show was over the commercials returned and those too were off. Oops, we had our audio screwed up. Sorry Mr. Petty!