I woke up late this morning thinking of Sam. It took me a few moments to remember that today was actually my birthday. I lay in bed for a while thinking about how I felt. It is definitely hard having a birthday without Sam being here with us.. At the same time, I feel like  it’s appropriate for us to celebrate the milestone of turning a year older.  Sam would not have wanted to ruin an opportunity for a party. As I imagined, the day was full of both fun and sad moments. Several times throughout the day I had to go into Sam’s room to look at his pictures and cry.. the rest of the day I spent enjoying myself. I think feeling these contrasts are a good thing..  The more I feel these highs and lows the more I realize I’m having the highs occasionally. .. does that make sense ?
     One of my priorities for the day was to get outside.. because that’s where I feel Sam most strongly. Around 12 Diane, Chai and I piled in the car and drove up Bolton Notch  road to the long trail. We snowshoed in to the west up unto the ridge that’s right across from Robbins mountain. It was a beautiful cold and sunny day.  There was a ton of snow. It was a perfect day for a snowshoe.. The wind had blown the snow into perfect stripes on the western faces of the trees which added a fun extra challenge to following the Long Trail’s white blazes. The climb up to the ridge is pretty steep.. by the time we got up there  we’d burned enough calories to earn our cake. We walked to a nice clearing that I like and decided to turn around. I marked the turn around with my signature naked snow angel.. I try to do this every year on my birthday…it’s a strange tradition. I know.expecially when it’s 5 degrees out and windy.. I got re-dressed faster than I would have believed possible. On way back down I was hit in the eye very hard by a stick… I managed to get a bad scrape and bruise to my right eyelid, just above my eyelashes I was extremely lucky because it could easily have badly hurt my eye… This is one of those good examples of finding good in a bad situation. I’m getting good at that. Check out my eye !:

   We got home around 2:30 After Max and Gabe got home we decided to sing happy birthday and open presents. It was a bittersweet moment .. we lit a candle for Sam and spent a few minutes crying together.and invited him into our celebration.  Once he was with us, we switched gears  and dug into celebrating. Max and Gabe had printed and framed some amazing time lapse photos they’d taken..  In several of them they had drawn Sam in light.. it was so beautiful and sad…  I’ll try to get the originals and post them sometime this week.  Diane got me a great digital camera like Hannah’s … I’ve been wishing for one  to help me with this blog.. . Here is the first shot of my beatiful family from my new camera

    Sam even  gave me a wonderful  present today, too …. In today’s mail were two short  cards of thanks from the woman  who received Sam’s liver and the man who received one of Sam’s kidney’s.. It was such a wonderful connection to have made. The agency is very careful on protecting the identities of donors and recipients.. Now that we know that these two people are willing to communicate, we plan on writing to them . We’ll see where that goes.  I’ll keep everyone posted.
     This evening we had a ‘few’ people over for a potluck.. by the end of the evening I think there were more than 80 folks here. Many of them were Sam’s friends which makes us all very happy. . We really had a good time. I had a few liters of liquid nitrogen left over from last week. We used it for blowing up a garbage can with liquid nitrogen

Add to My Profile |   More Videos
 then we used the rest to make liquid nitrogen chocolate ice cream… from goop to ice cream in about 30 seconds. Yum !

Then we made several hundered SamStones. It was a great evening.
   Here’s me contemplating the candels. Five for my family was definitely easier than the 48 it would really take:

   Well.. It’s getting late.. I’m going to finish up now. Thanks to all the people who phoned, emailed, wrote or visitied. We feel very well loved and cared fore. Sam, I feel you with me so much tonight…I love you my son…

-jc