Thursday, April 29, 2010

Garage Sale Success!! Pictures!! And other Events!! <--- I sound like Danny from Tri-Sports :-)

We hosted our first garage sale of the year last weekend and it was a huge success!! We brought in over $300 and had some awesome help, Anna was there 10 minutes and was bargaining like a champ! Thanks to Kenny, Shea, and Anna for donating, and to Chris and Phil for helping clean up. Sorry Chris you always seem to secretly get roped into helping. :-)

Our next garage sale will be on June 5th, and the goal is to still beat are largest one from last year where we made $450!!! So if anyone has any "treasures" they would like to get rid of, send them this way!! You can write them off of your taxes as a donation (which is pretty awesome!) :-)

Here are some pictures from this past weekend...





As for walking, we are on mile 9 this week... with 13 weeks left of training... it has been fun so far...another month and the temp will be in the high 80's and we will be pushing 13 or 14 miles a day... then those will be the tough days :-) Luckily this year, we will be training in hotter weather than actually doing the walk and there are less hills in Michigan than where we are training. For that reason, I feel no need to conquer the large hills in the neighborhood after 9 miles if I am not going to have to do them in the 3day.

To avoid this, I bring Phil along...
In other news, for those of you who asked what fundraisers we are doing besides garage sales, we will be having a cook-off in June! I am very excited about this, three of the guys have volunteered to compete against each other in making full meals and we will get to choose which one is the best, (sort of like Iron Chef)...

Details are to follow, if you are interested in coming to this, please let me know and I will make sure I include you in the invite!!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Another Walker's Letter --- 60milegirl

  I read this on the facebook 60 mile/3day group and thought I would share... :)

 

Every Minute Counts

Last night, I decided it was time to write a new fundraising letter. Each year, I write a few different letters, depending on how I’m approaching our fundraising. It’s important to change it up, and after 10 years, that sometimes gets difficult. After all, how many different ways are there to say, “Please help”?

For inspiration for my new letter, I decided to review the facts sheet that the Komen folks sent to me when I agreed to be an “online ambassador”. One fact I hadn’t seen before reached out and hit me in the face.

>> A person dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds. <<

68 seconds?! Every minute another person dies from breast cancer.

In the ten minutes that it took to brew my coffee this morning, someone’s daughter died. A young man lost his only sister. A husband held his dying partner’s hand. An older woman had to tell her granddaughter that mommy wasn’t coming home. A woman said goodbye to her brother forever. A man died quietly, ashamed of his body. A single mother died wondering who would care for her children. A woman with no family died alone in a sterile hospital room. A family gathered around their matriarch to say goodbye. Somebody’s best friend died. All that loss while I waited for my coffee.
This litany of loss could be devastatingly depressing. But it doesn’t have to be. Instead, I choose to use it to inspire me to be stronger in my training and more intentional in my fundraising. Every minute that I am walking in The 3Day Walk, I am saving lives and supporting people who are living with breast cancer. By raising money with my footsteps, my minutes are counting in this battle. I am waging war by using my feet, and engaging the hearts – and wallets – of my family and friends.

Walking at full speed, it would take me about 950 minutes to walk 60 miles. The 60 miles of The 3Day will actually take a lot longer than that because I need to stop and stretch and eat snacks and visit those beautiful porta-potties. So, it will take me around 1500 minutes of walking. And in those 1500 minutes, all across the world, 1500 more people will die from breast cancer. But in those same 1500 minutes, the money that my feet helped to raise will help to change the face of the disease.

I have raised at least $3000 each of the years that I have walked, so each minute that I walk is worth two more dollars towards the cause. Two dollars might not sound like much but those dollars really do add up. Each minute that I walk, I will be walking with thousands of other people, so my dollars are matched by all those other dollars.

Just last year alone, our minutes were part of $93 million in grants offered to 1900 community organizations. In 2009, our minutes helped 3.9 million people to receive breast cancer education materials. Our minutes helped more than 260,000 women to receive a potentially life-saving mammogram. Our minutes helped approximately 5,000 people to be diagnosed with breast cancer who otherwise may not have been diagnosed, and our minutes helped more than 100,000 women to benefit from treatment assistance.

My minutes, multiplied by the thousands of 3Day Walkers and Crew in fifteen cities this year, will lead the fight to change the statistics and transform the litany of loss to a celebration of hope.

Another person dies from breast cancer every minute? That may be true, but it is also true that every minute, there are also thousands of us all across the world, walking towards a different future. We all get to decide which minutes of our lives to make count. Make your minutes count.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Curing Breast Cancer, Promoting Skin Cancer

Not really. But I didn't realize how sunny it was outside today. (I know Laurie, you are shaking your finger at me right now). :-) Tomorrow, there will be sunscreen involved. And tonight, aloe. =)





Today was the first of the official training until August 1st, this week is the 6 miles, then it goes up to 7 miles... and so on. There is 16 weeks until August 1st, and based on training from last year, the weeks that were the hardest were mile 11, 15, 18 ... so those will be repeated for two weeks.

Basically training is broken down into M,T,W - long walks (the same everyday for that week, so this week it is 6 miles), Thursday is a break day, Friday is a short walk, this week will be 3 miles, the most the short walk ever becomes is 6 miles. Then Saturday will be a swimming/elliptical day, and Sunday is off.

If anyone is ever interested in walking with me during my short walks, I will switch my Friday and Saturday so just let me know! :-)
Thanks to everyone who has already donated this year, you guys kick butt!! My mom and I will be looking into our shirts soon, so if there is anyone you would like us to walk for in memory of or in honor of, please let me know and I will be happy to add their names to the back of ours shirts!

Time for many, many papers, almost done with spring semester!! =) I promise I will update with more exciting adventures!!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Saturday, April 3, 2010

4 months.... WHAT?!!?!!?

I received the April newsletter from the 3day today and realized, I only have 4 months left to train and raise $$ for breast cancer!! 4 months!!

I started talking to my mom about it, and told her I would be happy in the future that if I continued to walk the 3day every year, I would be working and could donate the money myself. Then, she made a really good point. As much as I hate asking everyone else for money (even though it is required to walk) she pointed out  that through fundraising, it is making others more aware of the fact that more than 465,000 die from the disease each year. If that is not scary enough try this fact: A woman dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds. So in other words, the donation hair cuts have started, the garage sales are about to start, and thank you to everyone who currently has a coin jar. Thank you for making others aware and for continuing to donate to the cause. Last year alone the 3day, which had 15- 3 day walks... raised $91 million!!!!! IN ONE YEAR!!!!

I heard on the radio the other day that breast cancer pre-scanning for cancer has pretty much gone as far as it can go, and now the focus is on nutrition and exercise. Taking care of yourself is the largest preventative. So with that, here are my goals for through August, and as a few friends informed me last year that they started walking more after reading the training schedules, I challenge you (guys and gals) to take out two things from your diet that are not healthy and make at least 3 goals.

Until August these are my goals:

3 long walks per week
3 short walks
weight training 2-3 times a week---  (for this I had Adam put together a short program for me using almost nothing-- if anyone wants a list of things to do, I will pass this on to you)

Deleting from my diet:

Soda
Sweet Tea (I have an addiction)
Sweets/Desserts down to 3 times a week (yes, this is cutting down A LOT)

So if you are around me, yell at me if I try to order sweet tea at a restaurant. This is really my largest weakness. :)


** Thank you everyone who continues to read and support, love you guys!!! :) I'm so excited this year to walk in Michigan, and I am currently trying to convince Phil to walk with my mom and I as well. He has been training (and entertaining) us... I'll keep you posted if he becomes one of the fifty guys to walk among the thousands of women. :-)

If anyone happens to have anything left after last year :) we are having our first garage sale on April 24th.... so please contact us, and we will come pick anything you have up and take it off of your hands!!