We will also have swag bags for the first 20 who bring or mention our flyer. Those swag bags will include pink socks from Hanes, double packs of SPF 20 Softlips, pink ribbon Sharpie markers, Save the Ta-Tas stickers and more! A special thank-you to those businesses for their generous donations.

I hope to see our fellow DFW wakers, crew members, and our friends and family there to support us. If you have not made a donation and have been meaning to, here is my personal Breast Cancer 3-Day donation page. I am a little over half way to my goal and still need some help. Thank you so much!

Would you believe that I sent out over 50 snail mail letters to friends and family last year asking for a donation to meet the $2200 fundraising goal that is required to participate in the event? Even more surprising to me is that fact that less than 5% of those people made a donation. I personally love walking to my mailbox and receiving a personal note or card from a friend, but it clearly was not an effective form of raising money for my charity.

The most surprising thing I started to notice when I created my charity blog, Our3Day.com is that perfect strangers found us on the Internet and cared about our journey. Friends who follow my personal blog here also made significant contributions of money and support when I posted about our progress. I received countless messages, comments and e-mails of support. My jaw dropped every time I opened my inbox and learned that one of these strangers made a donation. All I had to do was write a post and ask. We raised over $6000, a great percentage of that coming from blogging friends and Internet strangers. Even this year in hard economic times, several people who know me only on the Internet made a second donation to the cause after supporting me last year. Those people are my heroes!

This year I held a fundraiser at On The Border sponsored by IZEA, which also generated a great number of online donations and was promoted through a group on Facebook and on Twitter with the hashtag #icause. I asked users to “retweet” my messages asking for donations, and they were happy to oblige. This earned me additional donations and supporters that were not previously in my network.

The North Texas chapter of Race for the Cure also created a Facebook widget this year that encourages and reminds your friends to donate toward your goal. Via Facebook, I met a local woman who is currently going through treatment for breast cancer. She attended my event and asked her friends and family to join my Race for the Cure team. She is such an incredible and brave woman, and I truly believe we are going to be lifelong friends. It amazes me that social media is able to bring people together in such an important and life changing way.

Having experienced such an outpouring of love and support via social media outlets, I would have to say that the good far outweighs any “evil” that one could find online.

This post is my entry into the Mashable.com Stories for Good Contest. You can contribute to their fund by donating on the widget below.

As a side note, I am still able to collect funds for my 2009 North Texas Race for the Cure through June 30. I would appreciate any additional support from old and new online friends!

This year we parked in the EDS parking garage.

Port-o-Potty Heaven (or Hell).

Race Day Schedule.

Elisabeth’s Garden.

Super Dave!

Debby, walking in Celebration of Cathy.

Me and Tom Thumb.

Cathy walks in memory and in celebration of others.

The Chick-Fil-A cows moooove to the starting line.

Starting line!

Cathy’s David and Mandi’s David hold up their sign.

Cheerleaders on the race path.

Other walkers.

Mandi and her David.

Team shot.

Survivor’s Celebration.

Cathy singing during the Survivor’s Celebration.

The Three David’s toast after the walk!

Chug!

After the race using my XShot!

Nastia Liukin was the honorary race chair.

The tulip Cathy’s friends got for her.

David and I during the walk.

Me, Cathy, and Debby.

Mandi and her David.

Cathy with her tulip.

Cathy during one of the survivor programs.

Thanks to Mandi for posting and sharing her pictures. She had some great ones and I borrowed a few extras for this post. If you are my friend on Facebook, there are a lot more photos posted in a photo album on my page too. Thank you also to all of my friends and supporters who made donations to my walk and attended my On The Border fundraiser. I appreciate all of the sweet messages and words of encouragement too! Nikki had to miss the race again this year due to taking her kids to spend the summer with their dad, but we had discussed participating in the Dallas Race for the Cure later in the year, and we plan to return to the 3-Day next year. We will keep walking and fundraising until there is a cure. ♥

Today was my first day of volunteer work with the North Texas chapter of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. They are gearing up for the race which will be June 6 in Plano at EDS Headquarters. If you follow me, you probably already know that since Dave and I are both participating again this year!

I have a whole new appreciation for all of the behind the scenes work that has to take place in order to get this event off the ground. Last year I was preparing for the Breast Cancer 3-Day, and signed up for the 5K as a training walk. My parents walked with me. I registered earlier on and received a packet in the mail that included my t-shirt and race bib. I had to drop by the Campus at Legacy (where I spent today) to pick theirs up since they registered after the packet mailing deadline.

Let me just say that it never crossed my mind that someone (actually lots of someones) would have to spend a week or more folding the shirts that had to be stuffed into an envelope. Now I do! I spent the afternoon carrying heavy boxes of shirts out of a storeroom and folding them one after one after one. I estimate I probably did at least 600 of those suckers this afternoon. That didn’t even make a dent in the THOUSANDS that are still left to do.

Luckily I have time on my hands, and will be volunteering every day for the rest of the month too. It is an incredible organization, and I am lucky to be involved. I will let you know when we complete the shirts and move on to a new task!