Beauty and the beast

Even the children at Rainbow Kids Preschool are getting involved in the Relay for Life. This is their third year to raise funds and participate. Ellie Jackson, now 8, was a Rainbow Kid and is also a cancer survivor. Director Valerie Anderson has survived both leukemia and breast cancer.

This year the Rainbow Kids' theme, chosen from a Broadway show, is Beauty and the Beast: beauty is the children and their pets, and the beast is cancer. They will be selling luminarias at their booth for whatever amount you wish to donate and providing markers, crayons, etc. to decorate them with.

A luminaria is a paper bag partly filled with sand that has a candle in it. You can write a name on it or decorate it, either in memory or in honor of someone or, in this case, a special pet.

Anderson lost her own dog to cancer this year and that's how she got the idea to focus on pets. "They need research, too," she says. During the Relay for Life there will be a special luminaria ceremony when all the other lights are turned off and the candles are lit as the names are read out.

On May 21, the last day of school, the 28 children from Rainbow Kids Preschool at the First United Methodist Church did their own mini-relay from the church all the way around the square and back again, raising money as they went.

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