Life is wonderful 12-14-07
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your support of our book and our blog! A week has passed since our busy book signings, and Ana and I continue to revel in the joy of being knee deep in book matters. We are so grateful for kind words, enthusiastic reviews, and many more emails than what we can respond to about our book activities. We appreciate people who are keeping their eyes and ears open for special opportunities for this story. Ana and I volunteered for CTDN this week, which was wonderful. We have also been busy with Heroes of Hope, Rose Parade preparations, doctor’s visits, planning a political fundraiser for Larry Byrnes, baby showers… Life goes on. Just in this week, our friends have graduated, had babies, and experienced other life changes. How grateful we have the energy to be part of the activity around us.
The greatest event this week was going to the track with Ana and our dear friend Lara (double lung transplant 1.5 years ago). We practiced 100m sprints! What a celebration to see Ana run! And to see Lara beat both of us (despite having her muscles give way on her 2nd sprint- we had to all laugh at how our minds and lungs are sometimes stronger than our muscles!). Well, we are already practicing for 4 x 100m women’s relay run at the 2008 Transplant Games in Pittsburg on July 11-18, 2008! Needless to say, we were all extremely sore and I could hardly get up and down from a chair for a few days. I sure have some muscle-building to do!
It is countdown time for the holidays, which just adds to our busy-ness. I put the germ free fake Christmas tree up and covered it with ornaments we’ve collected from our travels. I went to a fabulous concert featuring Ed Kinney, and attended my first holiday party with my pipers, and baked 4 dozen cookies for that. Tomorrow we attend 2 more holiday parties. My parents visited briefly and we had a meal together, and took a family portrait together. How wonderful to still be a family of 5 (plus Andrew!), which would never have been the case without her 2nd lung transplant. We have so much to celebrate- my parents’ 40th, our book, Ana’s transplant, Andrew’s and my upcoming 10 year anniversary, and so much more. I can’t believe I’m growing old with Andrew.
Our book has almost sold out the first print run and another run is planned! This is so exciting for us! Thank you for all your support and love.
I wish you all some calmness and relaxation at least a few minutes a day. I need to heed this advice. So now, I stop, take a deep slow breath, exhale, and say ahhhhhhh.
Stay warm and feel our love for you as you read this.
Best wishes, Isa