Hey Dallas friends, we're taking this campaign on the road!!

Surprise?  How could an event be a surprise to me you ask?  Aren't you intimately involved in every step of this process so much that you have piles and piles of laundry and your kids have no fresh fruit to eat because you don't have time to go to the store and they will probably have 10 cavities the next time they go to the dentist because all they have had for nourishment this week is whatever they can scrounge up in their Easter Baskets? Well yes that is mostly true, but nevertheless this was a surprise!  Here's the story...

On spring break I got a text from my cousin's awesome wife Erin (I mean seriously Graham, best thing you ever did!) asking if we all wanted to get together on Good Friday since they would be coming into town.  "Yes, of course we would!  We love getting to see you!" was my response.  And then I didn't think much more about it.  Seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, getting together with family we don't normally get to see on Easter weekend.  And it was a great time!  The weather was nice, the kids were playing in the backyard, March Madness was on the TV.  And then all of the sudden Erin was making an announcement.  Something about a crawfish boil, everything is already planned and donated, and ALL proceeds are going to benefit your LLS campaign!!  What the what?!?!?!?! Yes people, my cousin Graham and his (can I say it again, awesome) wife Erin were telling me that they have already planned a crawfish boil, had EVERYTHING donated, including the people to cook the bugs, a date, a place, EVERYTHING.  All they asked me to do was get a flyer together, that's it!  And they are donating all of the proceeds for the event to my campaign! How amazing is that?  And then I cried (are y'all sick of that phrase yet?  I hope not because I feel as if its not the last time I am going to be needing it!).  So here are the details, and if you are in the Dallas area please, please consider coming!  I would love to see you and I would love to have huge turnout for all of the hard work Graham and Erin have put into this.

You can purchase tickets at eventbrite.com.  John and I are coming in for the event, and I am SO excited about it.  Its going to be a lot of fun, and all for a good cause - saying goodbye to blood cancers!  A HUGE thank you to Graham and Erin.  This was completely unexpected, but an amazing surprise.  Also to LA Blue Crab and Heads or Tails Cajun for supplying the crawfish and the labor.  I can't wait to meet these generous people and tell you more about them!  See what I was talking about in the last post about being overwhelmed by the support already???  9 more weeks to go friends!

This is Erin in all her awesomeness, and I am the one who looks like she was taken completely by surprise and then cried about it!  Yikes - where's the monkey covering his eyes emoji when you need it?

LLS Man & Woman of the Year Kickoff Week!

Hi friends and supporters!  It was a great first week! To be honest its been a lot of crazy week, but with 3 small kids, thats kind of my base normal now.  But, I was under the impression (and after talking to some of the other candidates, they were too) that our donation pages (and subsequently the launch of our campaigns) went live at midnight Thursday 3/24, when actually it was midnight Wednesday 3/23!  And we didn't find that little nugget of info out until about 3pm on Tuesday 3/22 (translates to 9 hours notice!).  I got the email as I was waiting in carpool line (stopped - not moving of course!), with ballet class, dinner, homework, and little league game still in front of me before I was going to sit down and pound out the final details on this campaign.  So much hard work, so much anticipation!  I got it all done, and that email hit your inboxes first thing in the morning...

And man did y'all respond!!!!!!!  Little did y'all know that the LLS team had given us an incentive.  The candidate who raised the most money between midnight and 5pm Wednesday received and extra $500 in their fundraising account!  And guess who won??  Straight cash money in the bank people!  BOOM!  It was me....so THANK YOU to all who have already supported me!  I don't want to give away too much in case we have some double agent spies lurking around, but we are doing VERY well.  I have been so humbled by your support, encouragement, thoughts, prayers, and kind words so far.  It has meant so much to me and has totally eased the basket case mentality I was sporting leading up to the kickoff.  We are going to do this friends!!!  We are going to raise a TON of money for LLS!!

My family at the kickoff

Team Awesome Team Members Catie Ross, Me, Lindy McGee, and Lori Huffman

Wednesday night was also the official introduction/kickoff event for the campaign at The Briar Club. It was a great time to mingle with the other candidates and their teams as well as size up the competition.  Ha!  No, seriously, I am up against a wonderful group of Houstonians who are all fighting just as hard as I am to raise money to end blood cancers.  I hope you click around to their pages and learn about who and why they are running too.  I am honored to be grouped with them for sure.  Check out the event coverage in the Houston Chronicle!

By far the biggest moment of the night however was the introduction of the Boy and Girl of the Year for 2016, Braedon and Makenzie.  Braedon is a two year survivor of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and Makenzie is currently in Molecular remission from Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.  They are such an inspiration and motivation for all of us candidates.  Makenzie even served as our entertainment for the night with her rendition of "Fight Song".  What a perfect anthem for all cancer fighters!  She had everyone on their feet and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

Women of the Year Candidates with Boy and Girl of the Year

Thank you again to all who have donated already!  Please remember to sign up for emails to get blog updates!  I have some great posts planned for next week, including a surprise (and by surprise, I mean even to me!  I'll explain in the post!) event announcement!

Patrick's $5 from the Easter Bunny's Golden Egg that he chose to donate to my campaign!  Sweetest boy!!

My campaign for LLS Woman of the Year 2016

Hello blogosphere!  Thank you for coming to my Katie Daily for LLS Woman of the Year blog page! I am so honored to be nominated, but more importantly, determined to raise a ton of money as a nominee for this amazing campaign that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has put on.  Many of you have received letters and emails explaining what this campaign is all about, but for those of you who haven't, here it is...

My mother, Ginger Kramer Upton, was a great mom.  I hate writing "was".  It makes me cry when I do it.  I get angry, I feel cheated, I am sad.  Lymphoma took her away from me, my dad, my sister, her grandchildren, and all of her family and friends way to soon.  Her illness was hard on her, and on us.  She suffered and we suffered her loss.  Those of us left behind have only survived through God's Grace and knowing that she rests in eternal peace.  Since we lost her I have longed to find a way to honor her and somehow capture a silver lining to our great loss.  That is where this campaign, which focuses on raising funds, awareness, and advocacy for those battle blood cancers, like my mom did, comes in.  If we can raise a huge amount of money, money that makes a difference, then all of this loss will not be in vain, and hopefully other families will not have to go through what we did.

This campaign is a 10-week long effort where every dollar we (my Team Awesome and me!) raise counts as a vote for me to be the LLS 2016 Gulf Coast Chapter's Woman of the Year.  Money raised is used to fund groundbreaking research and clinical trials that increase treatments, survival rates, and save lives.  The research funded by LLS not only benefits blood cancers, but is also being used to advance the treatments of many other types of cancers such as stomach, skin, lung, brain, and breast as well as auto-immune disorders like Diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Multiple Sclerosis.  It is a friendly competition that makes a real difference.

Thank you for visiting my page.  You can click this link which will take you to my donation home page.  I hope you also sign up for the email notifications.  I will be using this blog to update everyone on my campaign as well as doing a series of interviews with those people in my life who have impacted my personal Leukemia & Lymphoma story.  These are wonderful people who have fought, and/or are still fighting these cancers, but have all captured their own silver lining and I want to tell you about it!

Finally, the other day I picked up one of my childrens' books and inside there was a note from my mom that cited Philippians 1:3, "I thank my God every time I remember you".

The note from my mother I only recently discovered.  Written inside the book If I Could: A Mother's Promise.

I do thank God for all of my memories that I have of and with my mother.  Please help me honor those memories and make our silver lining brighter!

My sincerest thanks for your generosity and support,

Katie Daily