About Me

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Bakersfield, CA, United States
Hans was a busy, happy, sweet and fearless three year old when he was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma. He fought his disease like a "gladiator" for nearly 6 years. Hans was an animal lover to his core. He was 'guarded' at home by his three cats, Black, Orange and Cotton. He also had his Golden Retriever, Honey, to keep him company. Hans enjoyed swimming, biking, gardening, grilling (he had his very own grill!), horseback riding, playing video games, building Legos, and flipping between Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Animal Planet. Hans loved all members of his family and he was a loyal friend. He had to go through a lot of treatment in his life. But Hans powered through it. His attitude was let's get this done! His motivation was always to get back home, to his family, pets, favorite foods and pool.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

A Few Things...

Hi guys,

I wanted to tell you all that we got a very nice thank you card from Lunch for Life. Enclosed was a gift card from Toys R Us. We might just use it to go toward a Wii, if they ever come in! The note from LFL said that over $250,000 was raised just over the Holiday season - for a total of 1.2 million raised so far! So that you can know where your contributions are going, I'm going to quote:
"The CNCF will work tirelessly to fund promising new research in an effort to hasten a cure. We will continue to dedicate ourselves to advocating on your behalf. We will be closer to a cure this year because of your help. This year we will be funding research at the NANT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Texas Children's Cancer Center. The includes the funding of at least 4 clinical trials that would likely not be available if it was not for these lunches. In addition, we will continue support the CNCF's Junior Investigator Program by supplying research funds for 3 more 2 year grants. We are creating change."
I thought that was all amazing. Thanks to all of you, and your friends and family who reached out to give to Lunch for Life. I have been pretty inspired by your generous giving and have started working on my next project. We are doing a Valentine's Day Bake Sale at TCH on Feb. 13th from 10 - 3. I have recruited between 30 -40 bakers for this event! If you're in the area, please come by for a sweet treat. Any unsold goodies will be donated to the 8th, 9th floors and to the PICU... All proceeds will go straight to Lunch for Life, and will be split among all the TCH kids with LFL campaigns. I can't wait to see how it goes! I'm hoping to try out more fundraising ideas this year, and then do another big LFL email push next Fall, as Hans hits his 2-year anniversary of Diagnosis...

On another totally unrelated note - I want to say Congratulations to ELLE! She completed a major achievement this past week. Her school participates in a reading program that challenges students to read a large variety of books selected each year by Texas School Librarians. Elle rose to the challenge and completed all twenty of the books. She highly recommends Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix to readers of Jr. Lit out there! The kids get to vote for their favorite and Haddix won E's vote. Congrats to her classmates Amber and Morgan who also hit the 20-book mark! Way to go, girls! For a complete list of the books check out: http://www.txla.org/groups/tba/masters/masterlists07_08.html It was a feat that we have been working on since August. Many of these books are hefty novels! I'm mostly proud of her that she didn't complain once throughout this whole process. It's neat that her school supports these extra programs and we're fortunate to have a wonderful librarian. Elle sure loves her school.

Okay - I think that's about it for today. We're going in for labs tomorrow, so I'll post the results as I learn them. I may try to post more pictures this afternoon...

Love, Lara

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hooray to Elle on meeting her reading challenge! She is a pretty dedicated little student.
Your cookie fund raiser sounds like lots of fun and certainly a great cause. It's nice to know that TCH will benefit from the LFL funds. The generosity of people has been so heart warming.
Enjoy your mild TX weather - we were a MINUS 9 degrees this morning and our highs have only been in the mid twenties. Makes the mid thirties sound warm!!

Love and Hugs, G.Kathy, G.Dale