On May 25, 2010, my cousin Alayna was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. During the past year, she's been in and out of the hospital, receiving chemotherapy. Now 11 years old, she is in remission and is in the maintenance phase of chemo treatment until September 22, 2012. Alayna is a very sweet young woman and has handled the past 16 months way better than most adults would. Her diagnosis inspired Van and I to run the 2011 Disney Marathon last January to raise money for LLS.

Leukemia is a type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, the spongy center of bones where our blood cells are formed. The disease develops when blood cells produced in the bone marrow grow out of control. Not only are we running in honor of Alayna, but also for the estimated 957,902 who are living with or are in remission from Leukemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma and in memory of the 54,000+ that die every year.

This year, along with the wonderful Bill Silverio, we run again. Please help us. The smallest donation means a lot to those 957,902 people. Thank you so much for visiting our pages!