This is shaping up to be quite the week, a week that’ll undoubtedly be filled with smiles, tears, laughter, hugs and maybe a blister or a few cramps.
As I write this I’m sitting the Westin hotel just off Beale Street in Memphis. I’m looking out at the morning sky above the famed Peabody sign and the light rigs of a minor league ballpark as darkness yields control to a peachy hue and before long, a delicate shade of baby blue only found in the south. I’m minutes away from volunteering alongside the fine & friendly crew of Carnival Cruise Line at their Dr. Seuss themed St. Jude Day of Play.
We’ll be bringing a bit of cruise culture, fun and games, possibly some dancing, and without a doubt a lot of Thing 1 and Thing 2 zaniness to the brave, beaming kids receiving treatment at St. Jude, and I couldn’t be more excited or feel more honored to be a part of this experience.
Carnival has long been a partner with St. Jude, offering their cruising guests cool and easy ways to be involved in supporting the research hospital through on board activites from the southern Caribbean to Alaska. I’ve done it, donated and can’t wait to do so again on another Carnival ship.
Having reached their previous goal of a 5 million dollar St. Jude donation a couple of years ahead of schedule, Carnival has upped the ante with a new quest to raise an additional 10 million dollars for this bastion of childhood hope and medical innovation by 2020.
This is important money of course because no patient ever receives a bill from St. Jude and the hospital spares no expense in treating and caring for their kids, from to flying in a cook from a small region of a faraway country for a 2 week stint teaching the St. Jude chefs how to make ethnic cuisine for a single child so that he’ll feel more at home to providing homes for families for sometimes years at a time.
On Saturday, once back settled at home, my oldest daughter and I will put rubber on the road as we run a St. Jude 5K to End Childhood Cancer in the Philly Zoo.
If you’d like to help St. Jude get even closer to ending childhood cancer, please consider donating. Thank you!
*OWTK is a St. Jude blog ambassador and Carnival Cruise Line is graciously flying me to Memphis to volunteer with them during this Day Of Play. All opinions expressed above are honest and unbiased, as always. I truly love everything St. Jude does for children.
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