September

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Just wanted to remind you all that "The Big Day" at Chili's is Sept. 27th. On that day Chili's donates 100% of its profits to St. Jude's. Pretty amazing. So, eat at Chili's!! Not only are they extremely generous but they also have the best strawberry lemonade this side of the Mississippi.

If you feel like eating at Chili's just isn't enough for you, we've come up with a few lesser-known places we feel are pretty deserving of donations:

Give Kids The World: This is the resort where we stayed when Make A Wish sent us to Disney World. They provide beautiful comfortable accomodations for children and their families who are battling cancer. It is also a mini-Disney World in itself, with many fun activities for all ages of kids, along with free ice cream any time of day, pictures with Disney characters, and an indoor play castle.

Rally Foundation: This organization, through volunteers across the country, raises awareness and funds specifically for childhood cancer research to find better treatments and cures for childhood cancers. We did the Joe P. Rally Run with them last year and raised $20,000 for childhood brain cancer research!

Aflac Cancer Center in Atlanta: Recognized as one of the top childhood cancer centers in the country by U.S.News & World Report, the Aflac Cancer Center treats more than 350 new cancer patients each year and follows more than 2,500 patients with sickle cell disease, hemophilia and other blood disorders. Joseph was treated here after he was diagnosed.

Another way of giving is simply donating toys to the children's hospital in your city. This is a great activity to do with your kids. They can help pick out the toys and imagine how excited a child will be who is sick in bed and can't get outside to play.

We also wanted to let you know that the Joe P. Rally Run has been postponed until April 16, 2011. It will be in Nashville again.

Thank you for all your support last year. Because of you, we were able to send $20,000 to the University of California San Franciso. They are testing new drugs to treat pediatric malignant gliomas (including glioblastoma multiforme) and are showing some promising results in the early stages of testing. We were so excited to hear this as very little is being done anywhere to research pediatric high-grade gliomas. Let's help to keep this research going! We will let you know when the website is up and you can sign up for the race.