Eli's Girl

Hello everyone! We are so excited about the progress our foundation is making and the impact Elijah is having on people's lives. He's become quite the public speaker lately. Even as his wife I find myself saying **WHO KNEW?**.
During the first week in June Elijah spoke at a cancer survivor event for Medical City Dallas. That was such an awesome day because we met so many people we could relate to. The absolute highlight of the day though was meeting Ms. Samantha. She's the little girl in the above slideshow with Eli. Her family is one of the ones that the Tackle Myeloma Foundation has been able to help thanks to our AMAZING supporters! Her mom told us that she was listening to Elijah give his speech and heard him mention the Tackle Myeloma Foundation and put two and two together. She came over and introduced herself and let us meet her little angel Samantha. She is so sweet. Talk about reaffirming your purpose. It's moments like that that make us know why we're here and why we must forge ahead.
I had to take Eli straight from the cancer survivor event to the airport so he could fly to Chicago for the ASCO convention. While there he met a young man that he has something in common with. His name is Ryan and he's also a cancer survivor. He and Elijah are both taking the one of same medications and thriving! It turns out that Ryan is a big football fan (his favorite team is USC), and his favorite players are Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. Hopefully Eli his one of his new favorites too. One thing for sure is that he really impressed Eli. Ryan is 15 years old and has been battling brain cancer. Eli got to meet him and his family and we're hoping to see them again this summer.
So then he was home a fews and off again!!!! This time he went to Clermont, Florida. Our friend and his former teammate, Tony McCoy, has a church there and he invited Elijah out there to come speak. Eli wouldn't dare turn Tony down. Tony presided over the ceremony when Eli and I renewed our vows in 2005 and when Eli was diagnosed he kept our family in his thoughts and prayers. Eli spoke at 2 services and he told me for the firt time, he was a little nervous. But he made it through. I'm looking forward to seeing the dvd from the services that day.
Before I close out for this posting I just want to say that TMF has an announcement to make pretty soon here. In addition to our new look (do you like our new logo? The helmet with the 58 and the drop of blood, myeloma is a blood cancer ya know, we just to make sure people remember that) we are about to spread our wings a bit to help more people. When everything is a go I'll be back to blog about it and make sure I send the info out to our database. If you're not signed up just go to http://www.tmf58.com/ . Ooh, and don't forget our golf tournament, if you've been before you know how fun they are and if you've never made it out WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Love,
Kimberly