"Celebrating Seven"

As some of you know, Anna will be celebrating her seventh birthday in a few weeks.  More than once in the past few months, we were unsure if this celebration would happen for her, but now we're pretty confident that it will.  Only God knows what next year will bring, so we'll enjoy number seven for what it is.

However, since June 27th falls a few days after Anna's second round of chemo, we're planning on keeping things pretty low key around here, as we did for Kate and Matt's birthdays this year.

Feel free to send Anna a birthday card because what kid doesn't love getting birthday cards in the mail?  Gifts, however, are not necessary.  In fact, last year Anna asked friends to give a donation to a charity through our church instead of bringing her a gift for her birthday party.  And, to be honest, we have received enough gifts over the course of the last several months to last us several birthday seasons :)

Anna and I talked things over on the way to a doctor's appointment this past week and decided that she would like to set up a fundraising site through the Children's Hospital for her seventh birthday.  We found a great fund on the UW Hospital website called the "Beat Childhood Cancer Research Fund" that she chose.  Originally, she picked $100 as her fundraising goal, but I encouraged her to shoot for the moon and pick $500 as her goal.

So ... if you would like to give Anna a birthday present this year AND indirectly help another child by furthering childhood cancer research, please visit Anna's "Celebrating Seven" fundraising website at the link below.

 http://connect.uwhealth.org/goto/Anna_Mischnick

Anna (and the rest of us) thank you in advance.