Beat Cancer

This weekend is the big Iowa State vs. Iowa rivarly football game. Iowa has no professional sports teams, so this is "THE" football game of the year. Although there are many people in the state who cheer for other state schools, the majority cheer for either Iowa State or Iowa. Period. If you know me, you know which one we cheer for. ;)

For many years now the mantra for this weekend (and anytime the two schools meet together in sporting activities) is:

The students on campus get on board and even do things like this in the dorms:

But there is another reason why this weekend is significant. Saturday is National Childhood Cancer Awareness day. Families in Iowa have teamed together to do some fundraising at the game this weekend. You could get a shirt that looks like this:

(They do come in that "other" school's colors, but my blog and I won't post those colors here) ;) The whole month of September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month. You can see some of the families in Iowa who are battling cancer here. The athletic director at our university also has a son going through cancer treatments right now; the boy is in the same grade as Emma at school and she will often say hi and talk to him at sporting events.

Even on the vast world wide web, I'm finding more and more connections that bring people far away closer. After Emma was born I used to frequent a bulletin board site on Baby Center (and still do, I will admit). About 5 years ago there was a story that was "famous" on the bulletin boards about a family dealing with their infant daughter, Allie, who had leukemia. It seemed that everyone followed her story and every mother on there was heartbroken when Allie lost her fight to cancer. Since then, her mom has founded a non-profit in Texas to help families going through childhood cancer. I still follow her personal blog and come to find out one of my favorite CDH families know the family in real life.

On Saturday while you cheer on the Cyclones, take a minute to learn more about childhood cancer and maybe do something to support awareness and fundraising.