New blog to share

A friend of Team Shelby turned us on to a new website called 'Betes Babe started by a former work colleague with Type I who started her own business selling diabetes related shirts and jewelry.

Ann Peyrat was diagnosed when she was 16.  But she didn't like the term 'diabetes,' because it sounded so negative.  So she started calling it 'betes because she thought it was cuter and less intimidating considering she was going to have it the rest of her life.

Anyway, just days after our friend Nora for Lompoc mentioned her, Scott ran across a news interview with her >>click for the interview>>.  Realizing that all things happen for a reason, it was time to share her with all of you.

You can find Ann's website at www.betesbabe.com.  We'll add her to our Team links, too.

Fund-raising Update

We're close!  Oh, so close to the magical $5,000 figure! 

According to the latest tally on the official JDRF Walk Central website, Team Shelby has raised $4,899.58 in the 2008 Walk to Cure Diabetes.  That's a mere $100.42 away from reaching the Silver Award level of fundraising!

In a year as financially troubled as this one, that's an amazing job turned in by everyone.  But it also will mean just the second time in team history that we've fallen short of reaching the $5,000 Silver Award level.

This year's walk is still open from a fund-raising perspective into the spring.  So if you know anyone who wants to claim another $100.42 in charitable donations on their taxes, this is a great opportunity!

Seriously, though, thank you to all of you for your hard work!  It was a tremendous walk this year, and we look forward to another great walk in 2009!

Building Team Shelby

It's been six years since we launched Team Shelby.  The support of our friends and family have been fantastic!  The way we've been embraced by friends of our friends and family, including lots of people we've never met, is truly inspiring.

After six years, it's time to make a couple of changes to improve communications among Team Shelby members.  Until now, we've relied on individual e-mails that we're afraid are landing in spam filters.  Honestly, our e-mail list has gotten to the size that we need to develop a more organized e-mail system. We also want to make sure our members have chosen to get e-mails from us, an opt-in relationship that we value greatly at our house.

We've started a Yahoo group exclusively for Team Shelby members.  The purpose of this group is to send regular e-mail updates to keep you in touch with the latest Team Shelby news.  We've posted a convenient subscription link to each site in the Team Shelby family of websites, including the Research Corner, Shelby's Blog and A Dad's Blog.

In the near future, you'll get an e-mailed invitation to join the Team Shelby Yahoo Group called teamshelbytype1.  We hope you consider staying with the Team, and helping us make year seven our best yet!

Farewell St. Supery!

The North Bay Walk to Cure Diabetes is moving!  This was our last walk at St. Supery Vineyards.

We've been at St. Supery for several years and enjoyed each and every walk at this fabulous venue.  We'd never been to St. Supery before the walk moved there.  We were so concerned about going from the East Bay walk to this new place that we went up early to check it out.  We ended up tasting their terrific wine, joining their wine club and wholeheartedly joining this new North Bay walk.

Unfortunately, the majority of the committee that organizes the North Bay walk decided to move the walk to Santa Rosa next year.  We don't think we'll be taking Team Shelby to that walk.  For the majority of our walkers, Santa Rosa is just too remote.

After taking a tour of all the Bay Area walks this year to do the warm-ups, we're leaning toward taking Team Shelby to the San Francisco walk next year.   The Crissy Field location is beautiful, if it is a little cold.  We'll keep you posted as we firm up our plans.

In the meantime, remember all the great times we had at St. Supery!  It was definitely a great time to remember.  All our thanks to St. Supery for being terrific hosts!

Thank You 2008 Team Shelby!

We had a fantastic walk on Saturday! 

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful setting with tremendous team support and enthusiasm.

We had some terrific first-time walkers with Team Shelby, and lots and lots of long-time friends. For those who couldn't be there with us in person, we've got photos of the walk posted up already for everyone to enjoy.

We hope to have our fund-raising totals within a few weeks, and some news about next year's walk soon.  If you still want to make an online donation, please do so using the links on this page.  

We plan for you to hear from us more often during the year, including a new online group to help you stay connected.

Thanks again to everyone from the bottom of our hearts!  None of this would be possible without the love and support you show us each and every day!

Simply Amazing

In the final days before the Walk to Cure Diabetes each year, an incredible sense of gratitude and humility rolls over us here at Team Shelby HQ (which, as I hope all of you know, is most often our computer desk in the laundry room).

The amazing generosity of complete strangers who 'get it' is overwhelming!  You all have some tremendous friends!

We got an envelope in the mail the other day from our good friend and Team Shelby member Mary Reiley.  She and her husband Dan are retired and live in Nevada just the other side of Lake Tahoe; Mary used to work with Scott at the West County Times.  Inside the envelope was a nice note expressing her regrets for not being able to come to the walk this year, and a pile of checks from family friends and more than a couple car club members, judging from the check designs.

Mary had organized them nicely with a roster of names, addresses and amounts with a total at the bottom.  Most of the checks were for $25 from people none of us her at the HQ knows. But the total was several hundred dollars all in support of the mission of the JDRF!

These people are Mary's friends (some of them might be her husband Dan's friends too).  They don't know us.  They don't know Shelby.  But they know Mary and that the work the JDRF is doing is important.  They also know they can afford a $25 gift. When a pile of mostly small donations like that - people just doing their little bit to help - shows up in the mail, it really makes you stop and think.  It's particularly interesting to see the kids' faces now that they are old enough to really understand what several hundred dollars means in terms of what's in their piggy banks!

Mary's is just the latest example.  There are hundreds of these types of stories and incidents we get to see.  It's an outward showing of just how many people are out there supporting this vital cause on behalf of Team Shelby.

There is no way of adequately saying 'Thank You' to all of you. Just know that every time you see the JDRF logo someplace, you are a part of that effort and really making a difference in the lives of real people, like Shelby.

Team Shelby Warm-Up Tour 2008 Hits Silicon Valley

JDRF bigwigs were on hand Sunday when the Team Shelby Warm-Up Tour blew into Sunnyvale's Bayside Park!  They were delighted Liz was on hand to provide the top quality warm-up the Napa walk veterans have come to know & love.

Liz made friends with Sharkie, the San Jose Sharks mascot!

Here are the pictures of the day taken by Alex and Scott.  (Shelby was chief photographer in San Francisco.)

We've even got a short video!

Next stop on the Tour: St. Supery Vineyards, Napa County.

See you there!

Liz Takes SF Walk by Storm!

The San Francisco JDRF Walk will never be the same!  Now that they know what a real warm-up is all about, they'll have no choice but to have Team Shelby's very own queen of Jazzercise Liz back next year!

Aside from being chilly (mid-50s on the water under fog), the SF Walk this morning was great! Liz got the crowd all pumped and ready for their trek around Crissy Field.  The emcee - who apparently tried to do the warm-up himself last year - said this year's warm-up was tons better.

The JDRF likes to incorporate the best from each walk to strengthen the other walks it does in the region.  Liz's warm-up was part of that this year!

Tomorrow, the Silicon Valley walk in Sunnyvale!

Enjoy the pictures!

10 Days & Counting!

The Shingles are just about beaten into submission!

The shirts are ordered!

Walk season is ready to start!

Liz was asked by the Greater Bay Area Chapter of the JDRF to do the warm-ups for nearly every walk the chapter puts on this year!  The first one is Saturday at Crissy Field in San Francisco.  Our very own Queen of Jazzercise spreading the love!

Great time for a last round of requests for your fund-raising.  We know financial times are really tough.  Remember to focus first on education about Type I Diabetes and Shelby, sharing why this is important to you, then offering an opportunity to support the effort.  Seriously, small donations from the heart are tremendously powerful!

See you in Napa on Oct. 25 (or maybe in SF Saturday!)

First the Economy......Now, Shingles!

The economy is in apparent free-fall.  Unless you were wise when buying your house, your mortgage may be in trouble.  The house next door might be vacant and bank-owned.  Hopefully, your job and insurance are secure and your health is intact!

While we here at the Team Shelby HQ are doing fine financially, an unexpected demon has visited us: The Shingles!

For those of you who don't know, the shingles are an adult form of the chicken pox virus that impacts the nervous system.  Aside from some pretty nasty looking sores, the key feature is a potpourri - or buffet, if you like - of every known variety of pain from the dull ache to the shooting & stabbing variety.

The shingles have put Liz nearly totally out of commission for almost two weeks now! She is slowly getting back to her college & Jazzercise schedule (she subbed out all her classes and cancelled juniors at the elementary school!  So you know this is bad, bad stuff!). 

But our Team Shelby organizing schedule was derailed there for a while during the critical month of September.  We are relying on each and every one of you more than ever to do what you can to sign up walkers & raise donations this year!

We love you guys and know you are there pulling for us with your support and prayers.  Use the online tools to reach your friends and family with requests for $20 donations - a little bit from lots of people adds up in a big, big hurry!

Diabetes is a circus

Managing diabetes sure can feel like a 3-ring circus sometimes - the carb tracking, the supplies and equipment, the interactions with a host of interacting adults, the updates on the latest in research and clinical work, and, oh yeah, what's Shelby want to do with her life!  Actually, having only three rings might be a welcome streamline!

But really I'm talking about the theme for this year's walk.  It's going to be a circus theme!

For those of you who know our family fairly well, you know that a circus theme - particularly if there are clowns involved - is a true test of our devotion to the JDRF cause.  You know that Shelby, in particular, is deathly afraid of clowns!  Still we are gamely pressing forward!

To celebrate the circus theme, we are doing RED Team Shelby shirts this year!  In the past, we've done blue, yellow, burgundy, white and, perhaps our all time favorite, the Aloha shirt! This year, its RED.

We're still working on pricing details (usually they are under $20 each), but we need to get your sizes.  So e-mail in your size today (teamshelby@yahoo.com) and how many shirts you'll likely need.  We'll confirm the other details shortly.

Let's Get It Started!

Can you believe that it's mid-September already?! Seems like it was just the start of summer, but school is back in and the Halloween candy is popping up in the stores.

That means that the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes is just more than a month away! Time to get really serious about the fund-raising! As you can see, we have freshened up the website, and stocked it with all the tools you need to get the word out and the donations in.

With the challenges of the economy, it's going to be more important to ever to focus on education and eliciting lots of small donations. We've always found this to be the best strategy, anyway; and we've almost always been blessed with unexpectedly generous donations.

Hook back with us often or use one of the tools to subscribe to the main blog. We'll get the Team Shelby Research Corner up and running again, too. We may even get political (it's presidential election, time after all).

Keeping It Simple

You can really outsmart yourself with computers and all the terrific web-based gadgetry out there!

I know, it happened to me! We created a really cool Team Shelby website two years ago using our Mac, which is fantastic. But we could only get to the website or make changes through our Mac. Well, life isn't always that convenient.

So, we are going to meld a couple of different platforms into a single web experience that we hope will keep you informed, entertained and linked to Team Shelby. We'll be including an easy way for you to subscribe to website updates and fun ways for you to talk back to us.

With that, we're up and running with our updated site here at teamshelby.blogspot.com!

Keep coming back for all the latest on the Oct. 25, 2008 Walk to Cure Diabetes at St. Supery and Peju, Napa Valley.