The month got started with a call that actually happened in November. We got a cryptic call from Mrs. Holden, (guidance counselor extraordinaire). It was something about a special award that she had submitted Tales for and a need for us to clear the calendar. It turns out that Taylor had been submitted for the 1st Annual Chairman’s Youth Recognition award from the Westchester County Board of Legislators for her work on behalf of kids with cancer and her efforts to raise pediatric cancer research funds. Well, she won! She was honored during an official session of the Board and was presented with an award as well as interviewed on television regarding under age use of tanning salons….guess what side she was on? What a proud moment! They recognized her as a courageous survivor, (imagine how we like to hear her described as a survivor), and for helping to fight the disease even as she suffered from it.

It’s been a while since we mentioned this so it is about time but our school community is awesome. For this particular opportunity, thank you Mrs. Holden!!! You”re the best!!! But Mrs. Holden is only our most recent hero. There have been many in the Edgemont School District. No parent could wish for more support and understanding than we have been afforded. It is one of those little miracles that go unnoticed. Caring and understanding from people without asking for it! Thank you Edgemont Union Free School District. And thank you Nancy especially!!!

Enough you say!? Not even a start I say! On December 1st and 2nd, we held the first annual tay-bandz holiday boutique. What a huge success?! With the help of some very high end vendors and some dedicated volunteers, we raised serious dollars for the Columbia Solid Tumor Research Lab. Hundreds of people dropped by and did a little Christmas shopping. This thing was a logistics nightmare and was only possible because lots pf people answered the call. We had friends shopping; counting, giving directions, selling and just buying like crazy. We also had some handsome donations. Thanks everybody!! They helped push Taylor’s wish along that some day no child will ever have to face cancer. The result was…Drum roll please…$48,000 plus was raised to help kids facing this torture every day!!!!! THANK YOU!!

Time to rest? Absolutely not! We are full steam ahead with plans to keep up the fight. Out newest heroes are the people at “Last Licks”. Last Licks is a spectacular sports memorabilia store in Scarsdale. If it is a famous sport collectible, they have it or they will get it. This place is awesome!! AND on December 17th, a portion of every sale will go to tay-bandz to fund pediatric cancer research. They are in the Golden Horseshoe shopping Center in Scarsdale. If you can’t stop by, try them at www.lastlicks.net, or call at 914-725-5932. Come spend a fortune…and try to imagine the kids that will benefit from it. They appreciate it and so do we. Thank you “Last Licks”!!!!!

If you thought last month was busy, you ain’t seen nothing yet!! November and December will set new land speed records. Let’s start with November

Tales had her birthday party. Things have changed a little since you and I were kids. For starters…no “pin the tail on the donkey”. In addition, when we were kids, we never worried about kids sneaking beer in to the party….at least for a few more years. Finally, we never needed D.J.s or sparkle balls and bubble machines. And this was in our basement!, (except for the part that was in the kitchen which included snow cone machines, cotton candy and popcorn). Check out the pictures on the “pics” website. I hate to get too sappy but you can’t imagine how happy we were to celebrate her birthday….any birthday.

For Thanksgiving, we are visiting with the famous Aunt Annie and of course little Sammie. Sorry Uncle Bill, second billing. Nothing compares with Aunt Annie except Sammie.

This brings up the theme of Thanksgiving. Perhaps no family in the world has as much reason to be thankful as we do. We’ve seen the worst that life can throw at you and we know what it is to make every minute count. Let’s just use some recent examples of looking for the good stuff. Tales had a big blow out for her birthday, but more importantly she had dozens of friends that wanted to celebrate with her. Lots of them had been with her through the entire process and they “get it” quite clearly. Her birthday was a “ball” She just got her report card…mostly As with a B or two. Not bad for missing 3 to 4 days each month while she goes to clinic! This is a smart kid. She started running today to get ready for Spring Track! Yep!, she is running in the cold and rain to be able to run in the cold and rain…The first practice run was 4.5 miles. Try to keep in mind that among her 7 surgeries she had two major surgeries to remove dozens of nodules in both lungs and had one of the lobes of her lungs removed. She finished huffing and puffing but she finished! Her charity season is just starting up. This month she will have her first holiday boutique in White Plains to raise funds for tay-bandz. This is a big affair with 25 vendors representing the best of holiday shopping but with 15% of sales going to tay-bandz. She feels some momentum! This could be our biggest fund raiser yet!! The Boutique is on Thursday, December 1st from 7:00 PM til 10:00 PM, (cocktails and H’ors Oeuvres) and on Friday, December 2nd from 9:30 AM; 4:30PM. The Club is located on Ridgeway Avenue in White Plains just off Mamaroneck Ave She also got her first corporate donation, her first corporate tie in, (with “Presents For A Purpose”), and her first joint venture partner. She will get a percentage of the sales at “Water Water Everywhere” in The Westchester between 12/1/05 and 12/31/05 when you mention tay-bandz and at "Last Licks", a sports memorabilia store in Scarsdale on December 17th. Last Licks is located in the Golden Horshoe shopping center in Scarsdale. A percentage of all sales goes to tay-bandz to fund research. Most exciting of all is an organization called “Presents With A Purpose” Read on to see the details.

Tay-bandz has been included as a charity with “Presents for Purpose.” Presents for a Purpose uses fashion to raise funding and awareness for charitable organizations. Taylor has designed an inspirational charm bracelet will silver message pendants of live, love, laugh, dream and hope.” ( see image on the “Pics” page) Through our partnership with Presents for Purpose, 25 % of the net proceeds from each “Taylor charm bracelet” sold will be used to support pediatric cancer research. For all your shopping and gift giving needs see www.presentsforpurpose.com where you will be able to pick a charity and donate 25% of the proceeds to it.

I hope you have much to be thankful for this holiday season and we wish your family the joy we will be feeling.

We started the weekend at a big trade show of sorts full of bike stuff and nutrition and people with really loud, form fitting clothes. Clearly these clothes were meant for much younger people on a hunger strike!!. No one else could ever possibly go out in public in this stuff. We were the only booth with a pediatric cancer fund raising theme and one of only two non-profits trying to raise money for some other organization.. The other one was the John Wayne Foundation which raises money for cancer research and had its roots in lung cancer which is what JW died from.

Now I have to tell you, we clearly had the superior sales staff…Tales, Ryan, Corey, and our all star, MOM, (I was supervising of course), but those guys had serious drawing power. They had Ethan Wayne, (that’s right JW’s son), and temporary tattoos!! They had a lot more customers and all of the hot looking crowd. Clearly we need a new strategy. Cute kids and key chains were no match. No matter. We raised some money for tay-bandz, met some new survivor friends and raised some money for Lance too.

After being cooped up inside for 2 days we were all ready to ride. So we saddled up and rode like the wind, (actually we kind of rode like the breeze) for 25 miles with Lance and about 7000 of his closest friends. It’s hard to spend a lot of time with Lance at this thing but to tell you the truth, he wasn’t the highlight anyway. We had a much more special moment.

At the end of the course, whether you were riding 7 miles or 100 miles you had to enter the compound by riding down a long lane past the grand stand and the cheering crowd. As you got to the last quarter mile, the road separated with regular people directed to the left and “Survivors” to the right. So as we approached, Tales peeled off by herself and road the last 200 yards alone. There were no other survivors for hundreds of yards so she was all alone struggling to finish. As she approached, the crowd erupted into wild cheering and they read her name out loud from the loud speaker. She was handed a single yellow rose and had her picture taken. She couldn’t stop smiling. We couldn’t stop crying. I’d have gone to Texas just for that. I’d have gone pretty much to the moon for that.

Check out the pics on the “Pics” site. The professional ones we’ll post later. These came from the weepy amateurs.

I know. Hard to believe I’m updating twice in one month, right? Well for those of you who are calendar watchers, it is time for good news again. This week Tales went through another two grueling days of scans. The count is now 18 for the good guys, 0 for the bad guys!! Tales was given an all clear on the scans which marks her 18th month in remission!!!! We’re high fiving and getting the most out of the next 90days!!

This odyssey is now almost 2 ½ years old since that terrible day in May 2003. Every month that goes by, the stats swing a little more in our favor. You’d think that scan days would start to get easier but it never seems to work that way. Sometimes it even feels harder. More to lose I guess. But sometimes ya just gotta believe!!

Each time we do this we are reminded how lucky we were to find our doctors at Columbia, to have been blessed with friends who pulled us through, and to have seen our prayers answered. As you know we spend a great deal of energy these days trying to help others through the process when they are afflicted and trying to fund the research that will make web sites like these a footnote in history. We are determined to make tay-bandz a meaningful participant in the campaign to end childhood cancer. Thank you to all of you who walked the path with us and keep us in your prayers.

Unfortunately, this week wasn’t quite as joyous as we had hoped. Last weekend, just before our scans, Tales lost a wonderful little friend that she made at the hospital. Her name was Dana and she was a beautiful, loving, and tremendously courageous little girl of 10. She fought valiantly against Leukemia for 41/2 years of her 10 short years on this earth. She and her family turned every stone and faced every challenge in pursuing a cure but in this case it was time for her to find a place where there are no needles, no caustic treatments, no pain and no fear. She was an inspiration. Please say a little prayer for Dana and her family. A little light went out in this world, but it’s never been brighter in the next.

Weeee’re Baaaaack! Yes just when you thought is was safe to stop checking the web site, we’ve started to add to it again…and boy do we have stuff to talk about.

Our last update was on July 25th. Summer was in full swing and Tales was just finishing up her latest year of sleep away camp. Yep, she went for the whole three and a half weeks, pill boxes in hand with only one night missed to return to Columbia for treatment. She had a blast and finished parent’s visiting day by showing off her new skill, water skiing on one ski. She was supposed to be taking it easy after the problems with her stress fractures but water is soft right? You might remember that last year she was scaring the heck out of mom and dad by waterskiing two weeks after spinal surgery.

She only had a few days to rest before we took off for France. We spent a couple of grueling days shopping in Paris, (grueling for me that is), before heading to Normandy for a biking trip. We couldn’t help but get a little emotional watching Tales riding three or four hours at a time, and sometimes all day, up and down the hills of the French countryside. There were times she had to walk but no more than the other kids and certainly no more often than her old man.!!!

The last few days of august were spent catching up on some deferred treatments and exams but by the day before school she had clearance from all doctors to do normal activities like any other kid. Turned out to be too late for field hockey, (we had some friction with the coach over missed practices), but it opens up her options for winter and spring sports.

No sooner were we back at school than we were reminded yet again how special the teachers and administration at Edgemont are. Cindy Moeller once again single handedly organized the second annual Relay For Tay. About two hundred students, faculty and friends walked the high School track and dropped money in the collection box for tay-bandz. This year’s total went over $4,000!!- Not including all of the tay-bandz merchandise we sold. Thanks to everyone who participated and a special thanks to Cindy. And yes! We’re planning on expanding the notification to a wider audience so we can set new records next year!

As I write this we are putting the final touches on the journal that we will hand out at the next big tay-bandz event, the Holiday Boutique. The journal has advertisements from local businesses and personal messages of congratulations to Tales from lots of our friends. The boutique will be held on December 1st and 2nd at the White Plains Women’s Club. Over 25 vendors will sell designer fashions, home accessories, jewelry and holiday gifts and 15% of the sales proceeds go directly to tay-bandz! If you’d like to add your best wishes, it’s not too late and we’d LOVE to have your message but hurry! And save the date for the Boutique. You’ll save money and save lives!!

As for tay-bandz, you wouldn’t recognize the new inventory. We now have lots of new stuff including leather key chains, new watches, and girl’s tank tops with inspirational messages. And we’ve got some new friendly outlets to help us. This month Body Fit in Scarsdale began displaying inventory in their exercise studio and they are running a fund raiser in addition. Thanks Michelle and Steve!!

Finally, we are putting the final touches on our trip to Austin to ride with Lance Armstrong in his Ride For The Roses fundraiser. The whole family will be riding and of course Tales will be fielding a team to staff her booth at the event. Over 25,000 people are expected and we figure they all desperately need key chains belts and tank tops!

As for the medical side, Tales still spends a lot of days in a treatment chair at Columbia getting part of the cocktail she is on and getting examined and scanned. It makes school and social plans tough to accommodate but we feel really lucky to be worrying about homework and parties! Everything is relative. We have a long way to go but we have momentum!!! As we start to transition this family to “recovery” status from a “crisis” status we are still amazed at the well wishes and support we have received and the continued prayers and encouragement. Thank you!! And one more favor? After you read this tell the people you know who may have stopped checking the site that we are updated. I‘ll try to keep it more regular!!

Tales spent the first 4 weeks of the summer at Summer Camp like lots of other “normal” kids. She had fun, played sports, ate horrendously and was terribly homesick. Half way through she came home for treatment and found that her stress fractures were a little worse but decided they would heal just fine and went back to rock climbing

For starters, chalk another one up for the good guys!! Taylor finished her scans today and marked her 15 straight month in remission!!!!!! I‘d be lying if I told you we didn’t sweat it our for a week or two before each scan but winning is getting to be a habit for Tales. This little routine of living 90 days at a time is a little grueling but each clean scan is another affirmation. This one was meant to serve a purpose. Say a little prayer for Tales and all the little kids looking for a champion.

Speaking of champions, Tales has finally made the leap to serious fund raising. She always wanted to make a difference in the fight to defeat pediatric cancer. tay-bandz, from the beginning, was Taylor’s way of fighting back. But now that she is feeling better and feeling like a fortunate survivor, she is turning up the heat...mostly on us!! Taylor has committed to Columbia that she will raise $1,000,000 to fund the Pediatric Solid Tumor Research Lab to be named the “tay-bandz Solid Tumor Research Laboratory” That’s a lot of hair bands!!! But steep hills are what Tales is all about. See what we’re up to already….

In June, Taylor was asked to contribute her face and her story to the Lance Armstrong “Livestrong Foundation” website as a cancer survivor. Try to imagine the quiet little smile that crossed her face as she realized that she was now considered a survivor! In the Fall you will find her up there with a lot of very brave people. And in the same vein, Lance has asked Taylor to ride with him in his “Ride for the Roses” fund raiser in Austin TX. in the Fall and has arranged for her to have a booth to sell tay-bandz. 25,000 people will be there and I’m guessing every one needs a key chain or head band. What do you think?

Additionally, this Fall, we are sponsoring a Holiday Boutique at the White Plains Women’s Club. Dozens of vendors are signed up to display their specialties with 15% of their gross sales going to tay-bandz. There is also a Journal for the event that will offer friends, family, supporters and vendors the chance to wish Tales well and cheer her on.

There is also a golf tournament organized by the maintenance staff at Edgemont Schools. It is scheduled for October. If you’d like to play, email taybandz@aol.com

And here’s a new one, In late August, at a new Hair Salon in NJ, we will be holding the first annual tay-bandz “cut-a-thon” . People will get their hair cut for locks of love and donate the cost of the cut to tay-bandz. Stay tuned ……………………

More importantly, tay-bandz has hit a new milestone. As of this week tay-bandz.org is officially equipped with Pay Pal for donations and is officially equipped to process credit card transactions on the website. We already got our first order…50 green bands! Now when people hear about Tales we can process their orders on the spot. We’ve also received our first donation through the site. We are hoping we can ramp the whole thing up and send regular checks to Columbia. Good things often come from bad.

We’ve had quite a month and a half since the last entry. If you are die hard enough to still be reading….THANK YOU! Here goes. May was a big month. Tales had her confirmation and formally joined the church. We had a celebration at home on the actual day and a party with some friends on the weekend before. Of course there had to be two parties! The kids went nuts in the pool and the tree house. She really had a good time. Look at the pictures on the website to see how it went.

But if you think they were excited, you should have seen her parents. I made a comment at the lunch following her ceremony that “today Taylor officially received God’s Grace, but something tells me she had it a long time ago.” The day was beautiful and we were thrilled to see her so happy and so healthy!

For those of you who watch the calendar, Taylor hit another milestone this past month. It kind of hits you as dark or celebratory depending on how you look at things. On May 29th, Taylor passed the 2 year anniversary of her diagnosis at Westchester Medical Center. That day a routine exam for asthma turned up the tumors that started our odyssey. I tend to see it as the day things started our way. Can you imagine if we hadn’t gone for a physical to see why she couldn’t play soccer? Or if the doctor hadn’t performed an X-ray as a precaution? We decided to celebrate it but it was kind of weird.

May also saw the culmination of Taylor’s move to explore her creative side. For starters, when Tales got sick and couldn’t play all the sports she loved, she decided to take up painting. And she is really good. She worked for months on a masterpiece for our house that is truly amazing and ended up in an art show at the town center. Pretty cool and much cheaper than shopping at galleries! The she appeared in a musical play called Starmites that was produced by a local theater group call PGT. I know you will find this hard to believe but she was cast as a “banshee”. Talk about type casting!! She had a blast and we saw all four shows!

But as May turned to June we had another grab at celebrity. Tales was interviewed on Fox News last Saturday morning for a piece on the money she has raised and her story of recovery. She was totally poised and articulate! We were thrilled and so was Fox. We’re hoping to combine it with some of her other press to solicit donations from corporations. Tales wasn’t kidding when se said she wanted to fund the solid tumor research lab at Columbia as a thank you. And we need a little help from corporate America to go with the hair bands and key chains.

Finally taybandz is alive and well. We hit a slow patch on the fashion accessories but the green rubber bands have sold really well. More than 11,000 have been sold!! We’ve seen them on people we don’t know in places we’ve never been and that just gets her going!

One little friend of Taylor’s has done a huge job that we have to mention. She is being treated at Columbia with Tales and they hang out in clinic together. Her name is Alie and she had had the same kind of rough time that Tales has had. But like Tales, you really can’t tell. She has energy and enthusiasm to spare. And she has really supported taybandz. She has sold 1100 bracelets by herself!!! And while she was sick!! Unfortunately, Alie isn’t done yet and she still needs support. She is in the same position Tales was in when she was getting high dose chemo. She needs blood and she needs platelets. If any of you have any blood left, stop by the NY Blood Center and leave a deposit for Alie. Her real name is Alessandra Hudgins. Her file number is 33996, and her patient number is 72986. Tell them it is directed and say hello for Taylor.

We have had many big days in the last 2 years. Days when we wanted to cheer. Days when it was hard to roll out of bed. And some days when we just felt numb like we would never experience emotions again. The days kind of merge together and yet some of them are as crystal clear as you can imagine.

Today is crystal clear. Today we finished the scans that amount to our one year anniversary of being in remission. AND THOSE SCANS WERE TERRIFIC!!!! Many times in the last 2 years, we have been cautioned on the severity of our predicament. Many people have offered their condolences assuming the worst…including some doctors. But Taylor never doubted this day would come. She never questioned that we would be celebrating one year or five years or that we would be asking how to adjust treatment for the next year or the next five. She believes that her doctors at Columbia will have the answers whether her scans are positive or negative. We believe now too.

The official anniversary of remission is May 1st, ( no I can’t explain how that was set but what the heck), but for us a year of response has passed and almost two years of treatment. We just want to celebrate with friends and colleagues the triumph of hope and prayer over despair and resignation. Taylor has no live cancer one year after she achieved remission. God bless Taylor.

It seems an awful long time since the “sea of blue” descended on Manhattan wearing Taylor’s team shirt for the PCF Walkathon, but it was just a year ago. This year’s event was much like last year. The day was bright and sunny and the weather was warm and inviting. The sponsors were thrilled to have 750 pre registered walkers which was a record….ALMOST.

One year ago the friends and family of Taylor swarmed over the walkathon site and created a benchmark that might never be reached again. One year ago the combined strength of family, friends and colleagues was over 600 just walking for Taylor. The total walkers surged to 1300 people and we almost couldn’t contain ourselves.

This year we walked in a small group of friends, (thanks to the Students who were right were they were last year egging us on), and reveled in the new teams that had been formed and the new kids helping to fight back. It is easy to get caught up in the emotion of the kids that inspire these walkers…but one look at the crippled, balled and sick kids reminds you that this is about saving lives that no one will save but those of us who fight the battle every day.

Look at the picture on the website today and look at Tales. She rode the Segway this year as well. Last year it was because she didn’t have the strength to walk, This year it is because she has the strength to exercise so hard that she broke her leg!!!!. These are good problems. Check out the pictures website to see the patient as survivor…and Thank YOU By the way, several branch managers of Smith Barney have ordered a green rubber bracelet for everyone in their branch. I can’t believe how supportive my colleagues have been at SB. Thank you to everyone who keeps the hope for Taylor and the other kids alive. Thanks especially to the Paramus branch, (thanks JR), and to the Jericho branch, (thanks Steve) who sent a really positive message. Taylor’s hope is that some day no kid will ever have to face cancer. Thanks for helping her reach her dream.

Things keep moving along here. Try to imagine how it feels to be a little boring!!! We move from clinic day to clinic day for 90days at a time. Then we all hold our breath for several days during scans. It may sound a little odd but we think it is bliss. Once upon a time we measured progress by how little ground we lost. Now we just cheer and exhale

There are some updates though. Green bracelet sales are going great. Lance Armstrong look out!! Every green rubber bracelet sold means someone will ask, "what are the green ones for?". So we feel pretty good. We also got a good suggestion form Kevin M, a good friend at Smith Barney, who suggested a button on the website that leads people to the opportunity to donate directly to tay-bandz. tay-bandz is a 501 c (3) corp so every donation is tax deductible. We're on it Kevin!

I also got the shock of my life when we got several orders from my old branch office at 666 5th Ave. I was asked to stay a little distant to allow new management to get ingrained but I don’t mind telling you that I was really touched by the outpouring for this new endeavor. Thank you 666 5th!!! I may not be visible but I’m watching. By the way, Thanks Bob A., that was a killer order.

We also keep up good relations with the Pediatric Cancer Foundation who was the original recipients of most of our donations. You might remember that last year Taylor's team of blue shirted volunteers almost doubled the number of walkers at the annual PCF walkathon. Many of you were there! This year we are walking as regular participants and hoping to see old friends. If you have nothing to do on this sunny Sunday, 4/17 from 10:30 to 12:30, come out and see us at Riverside Park, . The kids need you and we’d love to walk with you!!! See you there. Bob Keep an eye out for the announcement of the tay-bandz spring line...It is really coooool!!!

OK so you're thinking, "nut job", too much wine, or can't type worth a damn. None of the above. Just another normal week at the Matthews house.

Just over a week ago, Tales had some persistent pain in her leg just below the knee. It got better and worse depending on the day but it was clearly in a bad trend. Of course we stressed out because that is a classic location for a bone tumor for Osteosarcoma.

Of course the Docs weren't that concerned since she just had scans two months ago but no one was taking chances. So we popped down to Columbia for X-Rays and consultations with more than a little dread. After the first scan, they asked for a second more detailed one. Not an encouraging sign. But after the second X-Ray, we had a confirmed diagnosis...stress fracture. Apparently this very common in very active teenagers, and we certainly have one of those. You have no idea how excited we were to know she had a broken leg!!

How could this happen, you ask? Simple for Tales. She had some minor work done to her left foot which made walking a little sore. But she didn't want to miss out on her fitness class and physical therapy so she went anyway and decided to do the whole class and all of the exercises on one leg!! Poof! Stress fracture. She then took her normal pain pills and all was well until she went to gym and did some weight training with her now fractured leg. Now it was worse and the pills didn't help. That's when we called the doctor and ended up with crutches.

Now consider the timing. We were scheduled to leave this weekend for Colorado to go skiing. Ooops! We are having quality family time instead.

And how did Tales handle the crutches thing? By now you should have guessed. She loves it. She's always wanted an excuse to use crutches and now she has it. Not long ago she asked for crutches for a birthday gift even though she didn't need them...just for fun.

All in all a pretty reasonable result. So when you seen her hobbling past, congratulate her!

Thanks for the support on the new green bracelets. We’re getting some real nice volume. Now we’re going searching for corporate sponsors for tay-bandz

They're Heeeeeeeere. That's right the long awaited rubber bracelets from tay-bandz are here. These are Taylor's answer to the Livestrong bracelets but these are bright green, and have "Kids Curing Cancer" carved in the band. The best part is that the Lance Armstrong Foundation was very supportive. We have officially dubbed "bright green" the Pediatric Cancer color and thery're starting to fly out the door. See the picture on the Pics site or click on the taybandz.org link from the homepage. Some people are buying one. Some people are buying a hundred at a time for parties and offices. Already I've seen them around Edgememont and Smith Barney and we have several orders from Pediatric Oncologists at hospitals across the country. That's what we were hoping for. If you haven't gotten yours yet, go to www.taybandz.org or click on the link to the tay-bandz site from the homepage.

Maybe even more exciting is that Tales got some more good press. She is in this month's edition of "Teen Vogue"!!!! She's on page 96 in a feature on "do it yourself'ers". They point out all the tay-bndz merchandise she has designed and sold and also point out that most of is was done when she was going through all that terrible chemotherapy and all those surgeries. Most important of all is that they reference the tay-bandz website. And now we're getting orders from all over the country!! What they don't point out is that a big chunk of all those sales came from all the people reading this site. You probably all have enough tay-bandz to last a lifetime! Now we need new victims! (by the way if you don't have anything from the new line you are sooo last week). So if you know someone who doesn't have a green rubber bracelet or never had a tay-bandz...send them our way. And Thanks! |

Lots has happened since the last scan! I’m not sure where to begin, but here goes. Tales took her good news from the last scan and went about being another normal teenager. Can’t spend a minute at home. Constant plans with her friends. Repeated trips to the mall, and a fanatical obsession with IM. Email is sooo last week!

Let’s go in order. The PICs website has pictures of Corey donating her hair to Locks of Love, an organization that uses donated hair to make wigs for cancer patients. It gave us great pride. Nothing is more important to young girls than long flowing hair but Corey wanted to send a message to Tales and to everyone else that everyone can make a contribution to helping kids with cancer. Look at the pics. She couldn’t have been more proud to help. Tales was really proud of her sister too.

You’ll see a picture of Tales up there too. No particular reason. Just couldn’t believe how good she looked on her way to a friend’s Bat Mitzvah. Her hair is now long enough to have to start thinking about styles.

Lots of happenings at tay-bandz! She is off and running again with new merchandise and a Spring line that is the best stuff yet and she has the summer covered with sandals, beach towels and totes. She also has her first joint venture! A wonderful little girl named Dana that Taylor met in the hospital and has since changed to Duke Hospital has designed her own line of tay-bandz and is selling them at home in Rye and at Duke. Dana picked all the fabrics and hardware and we produced the pieces for her. We even created a label that says tay-bandz by Dana. It’s a big hit and she is having a ball with it! Now Taylor wants to spread it to kids at hospitals all over the US with each kid getting their own tay-bandz label. Stay tuned and let us know if you know a kid we can help.

But that’s not all she has working. After Taylor got her yellow Livestong bracelet she started thinking about creating her own to support pediatric cancer. It took a long time to get it started and in the interim some other cancer causes and other diseases got started as well. But Tales found a color she liked and someone to help produce them. Our friend Maggi who serves and suffers as our Executive Director extraordinaire even found a graphic designer to help us design the little bag it comes in. (He also got sucked into re designing the hang tag, creating posters for our Spring sales and standardizing our logo for future products). THANK YOU JACK! Never get too close to these taybandz people when they are working. You’ll get sucked into working really hard for free!!

SOOOO, Tales is now announcing the arrival of the newest item in the line, a bright green rubber bracelet that says “Kids Curing Cancer”. We ordered 20,000 and are already thinking we will need to re order. We got a few samples in so we’re starting to see a few around town. The rest are on a slow boat from China…literally. They were supposed to be air shipped but the instructions got messed up. They will sell for $2 and be available to purchase from our normal distributors, (otherwise known as friends and family), or through the Website, www.taybandz.org. Tales wants to ship them to pediatric cancer facilities all over the country to be sold so they can spread the word that pediatric cancers are orphans in the research funding world. And what Taylor wants, Taylor usually gets!

Speaking of the website, its getting an upgrade too. Mike Mione, our friend and volunteer tech Guru, is working to allow us to take credit card orders on the site. That should speed up delivery and make it more convenient as we grow sales. And make no mistake, Tales intends to grow sales! She was deadly serious when she set the goal of raising $1,000,000 for the solid tumor research lab at Columbia. That’s a lot of little green bracelets and hair bands!!

And if she didn’t have enough going on, Tales has decided to try her hand at tapping the corporate marketplace. Since she has official Federal status as a 501 (c) 3 charity, she has pressed Pop Pop DelDuca into action to write letters to big companies with foundations in search of larger donations. Those companies won’t know what hit them! If you know of a good “victim” to add to the list, let us know!

Today was just another day for Super Girl...Just another day of scans and stress and waiting for confirmation that we've got the upper hand. We had Bone Scans on Thursday and PET and CT on Friday. Things went mostly our way, (it never seems to give us 100% comfort but we're confident) and we're feeling pretty good about it. The scans were clear except for some odd readings which we put down to her cold and the inhaled drugs she takes. (Yes, we'll worry about that for 90 days more but the doctors are pretty confident) Score one more for the good guys!!! As you can imagine the days leading up to, (and following), the scans are pretty intense and stressful. Sue and I get wound up in a knot and super focused on the day. You might wonder how stressed Tales gets. Well she doesn't lose a wink of sleep. As a matter of fact she actually fell asleep in the bone scan and we had to wake her up to see the result. I think that's what they mean by sleeping like a baby. She just figures it will be all right and...it just always seems to come out that way. Keep praying. We think God has plans for this one.

This was one of the best New Year celebrations ever. Maybe it was better because of how tough last year was or maybe because things seemed to be going so well. Either way we were all smiles and dedicated to fun every minute.

We spent six days in Nevis with all the beautiful people on a white sand beach in crystal clear water. Think I’m kidding? We had sightings of John Travolta, Regis Philbin and Kelley, Oprah, (she has a massive yacht), and of course Tales had a personal table visit at dinner from Regis. We sent a note to his table and told him Tales wanted to meet him. When he got to our table, he saw “Hi Regis” spelled out in peanuts on the table. He was putty in her hand.

As ’05 starts on a truly positive note for our family, we’d like to take this opportunity to send our best wishes to all of the family and friends who have kept up with the story and supported us through this ordeal. New Year, new chapter, new outlook.

Check out the PICs site for more of the before and after series!