26.2

26.2 may not mean much to you, unless you're a runner. Then you probably know that 26.2 is the number of miles in a marathon. And that is exactly what we have begun training for. It won't be our first one (we ran the Twin Cities Marathon in 2001) and Janice said then if she ever did another one it would have to be for a good cause!

Well, a few weeks ago we joined a Team in Training team to train for the San Antonio marathon on November 16, 2008. Now for those not familiar with Team in Training, it is a team of people raising not only money, but also awareness for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society and are coming together to Race for a Cure!! Here is a picture with just a few of the team's members. Both of us are looking to raise over $4100. We both have set up donation pages that make it easy to give online. Click here for Steve's page; and here for Janice's page.

Our family has been personally affected by these diseases in the loss of 3 very special people, who I will share about in future posts, and who we are running in memory of. We also run in honor of a local 'hero' who we got to meet tonight.




Jared is a 6 year old, extremely energetic boy who was diagnosed with AML (Acute Myelogenous Leukemia) in August of 2007. He has been in the hospital most of these past 8 months receiving intensive chemotherapy. He is in remission now, and is home with his family planning on going fishing and camping this summer. You see him here with his 304 'bravery' beads that he got for every test; procedure; stick; poke; ambulance ride etc.. that he has been through since his diagnosis. (He is VERY proud of his beads!!) There is even a little bald head bead for when he lost his hair. (Click on the picture to enlarge it and get a closer look at Jared's beads....there are a lot of them!!)




As the front of our team t-shirts say "If you think training for a marathon is hard - try chemo- therapy!".








Stay tuned as we will update weekly.