Dear Friends and Family,

It is that time of year when our family puts on our tennis shoes and goes walking to support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Thanks to your kind and generous hearts, last year our family had the best year of fundraising for the Foundation we've ever had in our eight years of involvement.

Many of you are new friends or old friends we've reconnected with through the miracle of Facebook (:P) and will be part of our team for the first time this year. You may not know that both my daughter Chloe and her half-sister Olivia live with Cystic Fibrosis, and Great Strides is one of the few events that allow us to take an active part in the fight against this miserable disease.

To anyone who knows her, Chloe is “the picture of health,” but there is a constant, unseen battle genetically coded into her little body that she wrestles with everyday. Cystic Fibrosis attacks both her respiratory and digestive system by overproducing thick mucus that is deposited into the organs of those systems.

Right now, there is no cure. However, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has been able to discover methods to treat many of CF's devastating symptoms and prolong the lives of kids like Chloe. In fact, Chloe has been part of a new therapy the second year that is supported by the research of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The treatment has kept her remarkably healthy; she had only one doctor visit that resulted in increased short-term treatments and has not had a full-service hospital stay since she was two-and-a-half. And, while constantly updating their symptom-specific treatments, the organization still continues to search for a cure. Ninety cents of every dollar you donate will go directly to research. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is an accredited charity of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance if you'd like to research it further.

Through the Great Strides event, there are a few of ways you can fight, too. The easiest way to help us is by clicking the button below and making a donation to our team. Or, you might decide to get involved by coming out to walk with us or by creating a team of your own. If you still have questions about CF, you can find additional information about the walk, the disease and the foundation at the website.

GREAT STRIDES is the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Foundation's largest and most successful national fund-raising event. This year, we’re walking in the GREAT STRIDES event at the University of Houston Central Campus --Lynn Eusan Park on May 16, 2009

Making a donation is easy and secure! Just click the button below to make a donation to my fund-raising page where your donation will be credited to my team. Any amount you can donate is greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Love, Jen