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!!