THON 2011!

$9, 563,016.09 RAISED!!

Comments twittered during THON's live webcast:

Statement made by a parent whose child who died from cancer: "Most of all, I want you to dance, I want you to THON, because I don't want you to ever -- ever -- have your child die in your arms." :*(

Statement made by a dancer: "There's a difference between dancing with your feet and dancing with your heart."

17 year old valedictorian, student council president and cancer fighter closing out his speech to THON participants: "I don't want to survive. I want to live." (Quote from Wall-E)

Penn State student dancer: "He was never a sick kid to me, he was just my little brother. Through 8 years of treatment, he was happiest here at THON."
Quote from Charles Millard, founder of Four Diamonds Fund: "When we do things for ourselves, they die with us. When we do things for humanity, they live on forever."
Unknown: "One day we will dance in celebration. Until then, we dance for a cure."

Khloe Kardashian: "How are my THON dolls doing?! Almost over!! "

Dr. Spanier: "Nothing makes me more proud as President of Penn State than THON."
THON dancer: "Our backs are sore, our feet our sore, but our pain is nothing compared to what those kids go through."
Joe Paterno: When they say, ‘We Are Penn State,’ this is what they are talking about.”
Unknown: "Its a great day to be a penn stater!" <3

Other comments:
Alyssa Geiger: $9, 563, 016.09 all for the kids, the families and the cure. What an incredible year. Thank you to everyone who made it possible.
Sarah Dickert: Waddup atlas and your $381,000!!! Oh btw, my school raised $9.56 million for kids with cancer, what did your school do?

LOVE!

I spent the day with my sister-in-law last Friday. She has this fabulous secret recipe for cookies that everyone just loves! I asked her if we could make a batch to send to Alyssa for Valentine's Day. She was kind enough to make the batch the night before (it has to chill overnight in the fridge) and when I got there Friday morning we (mostly she...LOL!) made the cookies, then while we went out to get a bite to eat and make a quick stop to Walmart to get a container and bubble wrap, they cooled. When we returned home we iced them.

As you can see, Alyssa was ecstatic! They received 30 cookies (note that they're fairly sizable) on Monday. Last night when I spoke with her, there were only three left!!! Now, they did give a few to one of the guys in their major who lives in the same complex, but I don't expect they shared too many with him :)

The cutest thing, however, was how excited she was that we had packed the box with PINK bubblewrap :):)

Now, THAT'S The Life :)

Green Thumb

.....or not so much :)

Ice Storm 2011

Brrrr.....

Yay!

(Rumor has it that there's gonna be another one of these coming for his sibling, too!!)

Oopsies....Forgot Two!

Pittsburgh Pics

These are sorta categorized, but not in order of how they happened. It's kinda tough when I have a lot of pics in a post to get them chronologically placed. So....just deal with it :)

ALYSSA!

ERIKA!

ALYSSA AND ERIKA!

PITTSBURGH!

Duquesne:

Some neat architecture:

Pitt:

There was a disabled car in the tunnel ahead. Traffic came to a total stop. I was regretting our plan to drive into Pittsburgh at this point :)

After sitting for about 10 minutes we heard a siren behind us. The road was two lanes, there were already cars on the shoulder. We had to make enough room for that huge fire truck to get through. I could have shook hands with the guy sitting in the passenger seat, lemme' tell you! I really should have folded in my side view mirror!

We stopped at the Monroeville Mall (our hotel was actually on the complex of the mall) for Alyssa to get a planner at Barnes and Noble. We hadn't had lunch at that point (it was like 2:30 pm), saw this alongside the book store and decided to take a chance. Man....were we glad we did!! It was phenomenal!

Chicken bowtie festival! We all had this...it was delicious!!

At one point we were just kind of randomly driving around and ended up in front of this church. You ask why would we be excited about this?!?! Well.....it was the church our niece got married in several years ago! As big as Pittsburgh is, it was amazing we ended up here!

Erika loves dinosaurs. When the girls saw this, they made me stop so Erika could have her pic taken with it. It was in front of a TV studio....we think it had something to do with Mr. Rogers.

Alyssa caught this on the back of the bus. The electronic sign alternated between the bus number and what you see below:

A beautiful building:

Way cool rhino:

Self explanatory :)

Neat pic:

Cool bridge:

We were at a traffic light and I caught this:

Heinz Field:

**Several of these pics were borrowed from Erika. She has a great camera....and great picture taking ability :) Thanks, Erika!