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Calling All Good Cookies!

Dear Go Grier Go:

As many of you know, we had a Cookies for Kids' Cancer Bake Sale & Raffle in December 2009, raising over $15,000 for pediatric cancer research in honor of Grier Christenbury. It ended up being the biggest bake sale in Cookies for Kids' Cancer history! Glad matched our proceeds, so we were able to raise over $30,000 altogether! WOW!

I am coming to you once again in hopes that you are ready and willing to rally again in an effort to raise funds and awareness for pediatric cancer research. I have been working with Melissa Gibbs, the mother of Taylor Gibbs, on a Festival to honor all of these 'little warriors'. Taylor has Leukemia and was also diagnosed at the age of 2. He is currently scheduled to finish his treatment in April after a long period of remission...they are finally nearing the finish line!

Hence, Taylor's Finish Line Festival. Taylor is the grandson of Joe Gibbs of Joe Gibbs Racing. His family approached the Charlotte Motor Speedway about hosting a Festival there during Speed Week here in Charlotte the week of May 23rd. What better way to honor these children than to have a carnival?!

Taylor's Finish Line Festival will be from 2:30-7:30(carnival) and from 7:30-9:30(live stage shows starring Toby Mac and Fireworks). We will be honoring Grier Christenbury, Taylor Gibbs, Marnie Howiler and Cade Galombeck(who was just diagnosed a few weeks ago). These are only four of the many children in our area that are battling chilhood cancers. There will be a Kid Zone with carnival rides, midway games, inflatables, hot air balloon rides, live stage shows, appearances from Nascar drivers and much, much more. And, of course, a Cookies for Kids' Cancer Bake Sale Tent inside the Festival! There will also be a Silent Auction and an awesome fireworks show! Please go to www.finishlinefestival.com for more information.

I am looking for volunteers once again. We will be having a Bake-a-thon on Saturday, May 15th from 6am-6pm at Johnson & Wales. They have graciously offered to let us use their facilities for this wonderful event. We will be working in 4 hour shifts. We would like to have 75 bakers for each shift. The responsibilities will range from baking to packaging. The shifts will be as follows: 6am-10am, 9am-12pm, 11am-3pm, 2pm-6pm. Ideally, I would like to have volunteers from our WDS and their family and friends to cover the shifts from 9am-12pm and 11am-3pm. Of course, we will take volunteers wherever we can get them, but we think it would be fun to have Grier's peeps all there at one time. We have a wonderful WDS community and I think that our bake sale in December created a more amazing bond than many of us already had before. You can contact me at lesa.helbein@gmail.com if you have an interest in volunteering at the Bake-a-thon. Please let me know what shift you are interested in covering. However, time is of the essence! Since we are using the facilities at Johnson & Wales, we do have to have a list of names compiled for our Bake-a-thon. So, we will need contact info as well. If you could include your name, address, phone number and e-mail when you respond that would be great. We will need this info by next Friday, April 16th! If you can't commit until after that date, please contact me and we will make arrangements...we understand this is short notice.

For those of you who may be thinking..."I can't bake". Please don't let that stop you from volunteering. Jacqueline's in NYC is donating 15,000 already made up frozen pucks of cookie dough!

All we have to do is bake and package them! Whew! There will be 5 different kinds of cookies from 5 of the most popular race car drivers.

We are also contacting many of the local bakeries who helped with our CFKC bake sale. We already have a commitment from Amelie's, Great Harvest, Polka Dots, and Suarez. I'm still working on some others. So, if any of you know someone who owns a bakery...please let them know we are looking for more 'good cookies'!

Also, we will be having a Packaging Party at Joe Gibbs Racing on Saturday, May 22nd from 9am-1pm. We would love all the volunteers that we get to help with this as well. Please tell all of your family and friends! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

And last, but not least, the Festival itself! We will need volunteers for Taylor's Finish Line Festival as well. We will be setting up from 9am-2pm and then we will also need to cover shifts from 1pm-5pm and 4-8pm(with tearing down on this shift...men would be appreciated for this task:-)). Our volunteers will only be working the Cookies for Kids' Cancer Bake Sale tent. Our goal will be to raise awareness while collecting monies for our donated baked goods. 100% of our proceeds from the bake sale will go to Cookies for Kids' Cancer. While, all the proceeds from the Festival will go to Make-A-Wish and Levine Children's Hospital.

We are also wanting all the homemade baked goods we can get our hands on, so please feel free to bake some goodies for our big event!

We will let you know the details of drop-off location as the date gets nearer, but please don't hesitate to call if you have any questions.

If you have an interest in volunteering in any capacity, please contact me at lesa.helbein@gmail.com. We do need to have as many volunteers as possible in place by next Friday, April 17th. We will need to have time to obtain credentials for volunteers at the Speedway, as well as, Johnson & Wales. Again, we will need your name, address, phone number and e-mail address when you respond. Thank you so much in advance for considering to volunteer your time for this great collaboration of communities in an effort to raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer research.

I hope that some of you have seen the new Glad commercial highlighting Cookies for Kids' Cancer. If not, keep your eyes out for it!

Also, please go to www.cookiesforkidscancer.org and go to their Blog Section...scroll down and you will see highlights from our CFKC bake sale here in Charlotte in December. You might even see someone you know!

And a special 'thank you' to Janis and Melissa for giving us the opportunity to reach out to Grier's WDS community for support in our efforts to fight childhood cancers! Without them, none of this would have been possible...well, maybe...but it would have been a lot more work and we would have all been even more sleep deprived!

I'll look forward to hearing from you all soon! It will be fun to get back into full 'cookie' mode!

Please forward this to anyone you know that you feel would like to participate! We can never have too many 'good cookies' or baked goodies!