IRONTEAM we MADE IT to $5000

Thank You to everyone (my IRONTEAM) who came out to Thyme for a Cure on Friday at Thyme in Your Kitchen in Sharon Pennsylvania! Thyme in Your Kitchen is a culinary boutique that offers quality dinnerware, bakeware, kitchen accessories and artisan-made gift ideas. Cooking classes offered for all cooks, from novice to expert.

Pat and John Evans hosted our fundraiser by offering an amazing event for us and we are SO THANKFUL!! Chef Bryce Stanford and Garron Birdsall showed us how to make some delicious summer appetizers (and drinks), The James Willaman Situation played some FABULOUS music, and we even had wine tastings, a candy bar and Chinese auctions! I have to admit that it was a night to remember!

We raised well over $800 for Team in Training! Which will put me at $5000 raised since September. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, $5000 we all have helped to raise.

When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a wonderful treasure of a life so beautifully lived & a heart so deeply loved. My mom, Robin Louise Budzowski would have been 49 years old this year. I think of all the things that I want to be doing when I am 49 and of all the years to live I hope to still have. But how much time do we really have? Do we know what tomorrow brings?

Life can change in an instant though. Cancer is a disease that knows no boundaries of class, ethnicity, or gender. It's a disease that affects us all at some point in our lives. The funds raised through my TNT journey are used for research, education, and advocacy. I believe so much in those resources because they are the same ones that my family used just ten years ago when we found out my mom had cancer. Also again when Ava had leukemia they are the same resources that may have saved her life. At 6 years old she now has many years to live and a life full of joy ahead of her.

It's important to keep working towards a cure so that generations to come will never know the devastation that we have and the wrath of this disease. Team in Training to me is……It's . . . a way of giving back to the people (organizations) who helped my family, it’s been a way to say thank you to everyone who put their best foot forward in helping to cure cancer and make the lives of those diagnosed a little better.

My IRONMAN journey on August 17th time won't matter at all to me in terms of time or how I place. The only number that matters today is this: $1.4 billion raised by Team in Training for blood cancer research since 1998 and more than 600,000 participants in it for the LONG haul to help fund and find a cure.

xoxo
Coach Mandy