Eating oatmeal and eggs!

Thomas selling Sweet Sally Sunshine bracelets

And more bracelets…

Sally’s Grampa Kabel and her NYC cousins.

After the fundraiser we took a photo out front, Sally got to wave to the hundreds of people from the window before the game. Love these shirts!

Mommy helping Thomas count all the money he raised for his sister.

Hi all – Wow, what a whirlwind of a weekend. First off, after Friday, Sally was much improved on Saturday and today. Her color looked better, she had more energy, she kept her food down and was overall quite a happy big-cheeked little girl. The feeding machine is interesting, like with IV fluids it delivers small doses of breast milk directly into her stomach. We can also give her meds through this which makes life a million times easier. Nicole got her to eat some oatmeal and eggs normally today, hopefully there will be times where we don’t need the machine, but for now it makes our Sally happy, which makes us happy.

Last night was the big fundraiser at McFadden’s. 321 people showed up to support Sally! We packed the place and even flowed over into the bar next door. As expected, Nicole and I were like the bride and groom at a wedding and spoke to so many people we regretted not being able to speak more with everybody. Please know that we are humbled by your attendance and that we can’t thank you enough. We want to send our thanks to AnnMarie, Jenny, Karen and Steve for all of their hard work putting the event together, to all the family and friends who helped out and to McFadden’s for hosting the event. Most of all, we want to thank all of YOU for supporting our beautiful, tough and awesome girl.

Sadly, I just realized I don’t have any pictures of the event! If anybody could email me some, especially of the large crowd and the raffle items that would be awesome.

Today, another fundraiser was held at McFadden’s, this time with the Buffalo Bills club I helped start and run. Again, the bar was packed wall to wall, as was the bar next door, and fans bought raffle tickets for some awesome items of which every dollar went to Sally. She was actually able to wave to everybody in both bars from the window before the game. Special thanks to friends Matt & Phil for coordinating all the logistics and selling the tickets. Also, the #supportsally t-shirts started arriving this weekend, which our family wore ours as well as many fans. We want to send thanks to Store716.com, deargodwhyussports.com, buffalowins.com, and billsmafia.com for coordinating the 230+ shirts that were sold! Thanks to all who purchased one.

To this point, Thomas (our 7 year old) has felt left out and as mentioned yesterday upset he couldn’t come to last night’s fundraiser. I brought him with me to today’s and Nicole had the idea of letting him sell the Sweet Sally Sunshine bracelets. AnnMarie dropped them off late in the game and Thomas instantly went off with his cousins table to table selling them. He literally went to every person and verbally sold them for $5 on his own, half the time out of my sight. In less than an hour, he sold $61o worth of bracelets! He was so happy with himself, Nicole helped him count the money when we got home and could tell this made his day. He also said he gave some free ones away to people who said they didn’t have money. Nicole and I are happy about that, it was a good learning experience for him and we’re trying to maintain as much good karma as we can!

It was an overwhelming weekend of amazing support for Sally. There really are no words we can say to express the love and care we personally witnessed this weekend for our little girl. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We love you all.

Tomorrow, Sally begins the second of two weeks of intense treatment. She will receive a high dose of strong chemo on Monday, and MSK will spend the next three days flushing it out of her system. I will be leaving work early to cover the end of it as Nicole will be heading over to have her sit down interview with Katie Couric. We’re not sure when it will air (won’t be tomorrow) but we’ll let you know.

This weekend was a nice escape, but again, we’re zipped right back to reality tomorrow. Just as I was about to hit send on this post I received an email that Scarlett has been admitted to MSK with a fever. She was just riding a bike for the first time yesterday and her Mom and Dad came to the fundraiser last night. Yet another reminder of how cancer can change things in a heartbeat.

Please keep Sally and Scarlett in your thoughts and prayers.

Matt