Thursday, April 16, 2009

May's L.O.V.E. Club Evening Out


Our monthly meeting in May will be on a Friday evening - May 8th at 7pm at Pappasito’s in Arlington; 321 W. Rd. to Six Flags 76011. We wanted to give everyone an opportunity to come out and enjoy the food, fun and fellowship. Feel free to bring your families or to come alone. Please let us know if you can make it and how many will be with you by May 6th . You can leave a post here or send an email to Karen or Raelene.

The 2nd Annual Neuroblastoma Walk for a Cure on April 4th was a great success and raised $35,000 for the neuroblastoma program at Cook Children's Medical Center. The next big fundraiser we will be part of is A New Year of Hope's Motorcycle Fun Run on Saturday, June 6th. You can visit their website for more details - http://www.anewyearofhope.org/. They have flyers, registration and sponsorship forms there. If you were born to ride, come join the fun for a great cause...our kids!

Brandi also moved "Cowboyin' for A Cure" to September from August. It will be September 26th during National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We'll post more details as the time draws nearer.

This year The L.O.V.E. Club won't be compiling a cookbook, we'll retire that for another year. Instead, we are putting together a calendar with each child representing a month and raising awareness with facts about this disease. If you know of anyone who would like to sponsor the calendar, we will be putting their logos on each month for a $100 donation. Since we have so many families represented in this area now we will have enough photos for a sixteen month calendar, if we have enough sponsors.

The CNCF Neuroblastoma Conference will be July 16th - 19th in Chicago. Check out their webpage for registration and scholarship information - http://www.nbhope.org/.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

February L.O.V.E. Club lunch

We will be meeting this next Monday, February 2nd at 11 a.m. at Mimi's Cafe off of I-20 and Bryant Irvin. Our main discussions will be finishing up the wish list for the NB program at Cook Children's Medical Center and getting information out about the Walk for A Cure in April with the Sankarys.

This Saturday, January 31st at 7:00 p.m. A New Year of Hope Foundation will be hosting the Denim & Diamonds Appreciation Gala. You can check out their website www.anewyearofhope.org for more information.

Hope to see you all there!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

L.O.V.E. Club Christmas Party & Concert

Saturday, December 20th Ridglea Roundup will be hosting a benefit concert sponsored by 95.9 The Ranch country radio station. Doors open at 4 p.m. and tickets are $10 at the door. Ridglea Roundup is located in Ft. Worth off of Camp Bowie just past Bryant Irving Road. You can get more information at the following website.

http://web.me.com/bets3298/theridglearoundup.com/Home.html

Please come and join us and bring a posse of friends and family with you!!!! Hope to see you there!

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

October LOVE Lunch

Our next LOVE club meeting will be on Monday, October 6 at 1pm at Fudruckers on the south side of I20 and to the west of Bryant Irvin Rd. Last time we met there, we sat out on the patio and were able to have a lot our own space. Please let Karen know if your planning to attend.

Monday, September 8, 2008

September Meeting Notes

*LOVE Club MeetingSeptember 6, 2008Mimi’s CafĂ©**

*Hello everyone,

We had a good, well-attended meeting. Here are notes from the items we discussed.Cathy Mancuso’s surgery went well. She will be at Baylor for several weeks trying to rehabilitate her knees. Raelene is sending some flowers for her from the LOVE Club. We took up a collection for that today.

*Cookbook:*Please try to send in another 5 recipes per person for the cookbook. We must send them in to the printers by 9/20/08. There will be a “Continuing to inspire” section with information on the deceased children and all that we have done in their honor. Karen will contact the Saxons regarding a family update and photo.We will also try to add a celebrity cooks section, so if anyone knows of any professional chefs, please get them involved.It would be great if we could each contact schools in our areas about their yearly book fairs. This would be good opportunity to sell the Cookbooks to a wider audience.

*Ajla will likely be going through MIBG. We may need to help raise money for them as her dad will be out of work for a good month in order to travel with her and Sadie. They may be able to have treatment in Houston, but will know more on Monday.

*Calendar:*We need to find a sponsor or sponsors for each month. Raelene is going to try to work up the cost so that we will know how much it will cost to sponsor 1 month of the year.If you have not sent photos to Shannon, please do so soon. She’s 3 children short of having a feature child for each month.

*A New Year of Hope*This is the name of the foundation that Heather has started. Part of their mission is to help families who are battling NB. This foundation is a great fit for the LOVE club and they are willing to help us fulfill that aspect of our mission. So, here are some fund raising ideas so that we could begin to raise money to start our birthday club and help families who may need to travel for treatment.Applebees Pancake Breakfast: This is a fundraiser in which you and you friends/school/church sell tickets for a pancake breakfast. Applebees makes the pancakes, does the preparation, provides coffee, sodas, OJ, and a one-time serving of sausage. You can serve breakfast from 8-10:30am. They ask for $2 for each ticket and we set the price. So, a $7 ticket would yield $5 per ticket. One suggestion was to have a birthday breakfast for your child. The restaurant’s rules vary from place to place, but check at your local Applebees.A New Year of Hope will also have a golf tournament and walk event in November.Sadie’s husband’s company is having a company picnic on 9/21. She would like for us to use that as a fund raising opportunity. If anyone has ideas or wants to help, please contact Karen for more information.

*Stand up for Life*At the Improv in Addison on September 24 there will be a CNCF fund raiser. Please see www.nbhope.org <http://www.nbhope.org/> or www.improv.com <http://www.improv.com/> for more information.

*Cure Search*Do a virtual walk. Brandi will e-mail us more information.

*Birthday Club*We would like to get it going, but need to get some money in our account at the NYofHope foundation. Raelene has a number of the posters that Brandi used for Caleb’s rodeo. Please let us know if it’s OK to use it for A New Year of Hope events.

*Our next LOVE club meeting will be on Monday, October 6 at 11am at Fudruckers on the south side of I20 and to the west of Bryant Irvin Rd. Last time we met there, we sat out on the patio and were able to have a lot our own space. Please let me know if your planning to attend.

Thank you all!
Karen

Sunday, August 31, 2008

"Life Through the Eyes of A Child Living with Neuroblastoma"


Friday, September 5, 2008 from 6 p.m.-8:30 p.m.

Ft. Worth Community Arts Center

1300 Gendy Street, Ft. Worth



This portrait series by photographer Geno Loro Jr. juxtaposes the bitter truth and beautiful frailty of lives touched by this little-known, little-understood form of childhood cancer. At first glance, the children portrayed are deceptively ordinary – they play dress-up, they laugh, and some gaze curiously into the camera.
But a closer look reveals an unexpected wisdom in the eyes of each – a wisdom that comes from seeing much, suffering much, during a life that’s barely started. A wisdom that is, at times, laced with sorrow, and at others, with hope. A wisdom that will leave you with no doubt that these children are unlike any you have seen before – yet so much like any child you’ve ever known.“Life – Through the Eyes of a Child Living With Neuroblastoma” is part of an effort by the Children’s Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation (CNCF), along with Cook Children’s Medical Center and the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC), to raise public awareness of this dramatically overlooked disease. Throughout the years Cook Children’s has been the first choice for treatment of children with neuroblastoma in North Texas. With a highly specialized focus on this cancer, the neuroblastoma program at the Hematology and Oncology Clinic of Cook Children’s offers even more hope to children touched by this deadly disease, both in Fort Worth and around the globe.
Recently, with the appointment of W. Paul Bowman, M.D. as the department chair of pediatrics for the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, groundwork has been laid to bring cutting-edge neuroblastoma cancer research to the forefront. A Neuroblastoma Grand Rounds has already been planned and a neuroblastoma symposium is on the horizon. These newly forged relationships complete a trinity of patient support, clinical care, and research – which will only serve to hasten a cure.
We often say that art imitates life. As you will see from these stunning photographs, in this case art inspires life.

Friday, August 15, 2008

September Meeting

Hello All,

We decided to have our September meeting on Saturday, September 6 at 10:30 am at Mimi's Cafe. It is located at
5858 SW LOOP 820 FORT WORTH TX 76132 Phone: (817) 731-9644
Here's a link to a map
Link: <http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5858+SW+LOOP+820,+FORT+WORTH+TX+76132&sll=-2.811371,63.984375&sspn=169.844483,360&ie=UTF8&ll=32.687354,-97.42135&spn=0.036697,0.048323&z=14>

I also wanted to remind you of Geno Loro's exhibit which opens on September 5th. If you cannot make it on the 5th, you could take it in on Saturday after the brunch. I would like to challenge each of us to bring 10 people to the exhibit. I mean who wouldn't want to support such a cause and see these beautiful photographs?

If you are planning to attend on the 6th, please respond to this note so that I can make a reservation. I hope to see everyone there!

Karen

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Lunch for Life/L.O.V.E. Club Cookbook, Vol. 2 - set to debut in Sept. 2008

This year we will be compiling another cookbook to raise money for CNCF (Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation) for much needed research and family support (check out their new handbook for families on nbhope.org). The Lunch for Life Cookbook was a joint effort between The L.O.V.E. Club families and Lunch for Life. That is why we need you to help us make it a great success like last year's cookbook. Almost 3,000 cookbooks were sold at $20 each (for us non-math wizards that is $60,000). This year we will have a recipe form that can be downloaded and filled out for each recipe to make editing and printing that much easier and organized. To access that form please click on the following
link:http://www.nbhope.org/files/folders/lunch_for_life/entry52136.aspx

The sections will remain the same: Appetizers; Salads & Dressings;Soups & Sandwiches; Entrees; Side Dishes; Desserts; Kid-Friendly Foods. I am not sure that we will be able to include Celebrity Recipes unless someone is willing to be the contact person and has these relationships established. It would be nice if we could have maybe a different genre of celebrities or recipes from privately owned restaurants. If anyone has ideas please share them with me.There have been six or seven newly diagnosed children at Cooks since we printed the last cookbook so my idea was to do the story cards on them but then to have a short update on each one of our children with new pictures. For the children who are angels I thought that it would be great to include a page for each of the events that have taken place in their memory this year (ie. Michael Mancuso - 1st Annual Neuroblastoma Walk-A-Thon; Elesha Debenport - Lemonade Stand; Caleb Larson - Rodeo Event at Young Area). This is a wonderful way to show how their legacies live on. Also to include pictures of them on that page and maybe pictures from the events too. We will also include a precious poem that was suggested by Cathy Mancuso to honor the angels. I would like to include an entire information page on neuroblastoma, an information page on CNCF and then important websites for more information on neuroblastoma (the key one being CNCF and Lunch for Life).We will take recipes until August 21, 2008 and then I will need about two weeks to edit before sending them to the printer. This will put the release date sometime in the second or third week of September to honor Children's Cancer Awareness Month. It would be awesome if we had media, media and more media aware of the cookbook. I am even shooting for something to be available at the Geno Loro event so they can pre-order the cookbooks.Please post this on your websites so we can make this another great cookbook, even better than last year's.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Neuroblastoma Handbook

The new Neuroblastoma Handbook is now officially available online. Check it out and spread the word so we can get this to families, hospitals and support groups.

CNCF Handbook for Parents of Children with Neuroblastoma