Sam's Birthday Video

In case some of you missed it, Amelia Graves and Charlotte Tripson put together an amazing little birthday video for Sam.  Thank you so much to everyone who helped make it so special.  It was a fantastic surprise!!  Click here to watch.

Weeknight Dinner: Spanish Spaghetti with Olives

Sam loves this pasta.  I'm always trying new recipes and usually don't like repeating dinners, but I've already made this three times since we've been here.  I pull some sauce out for Jack before I add the olives so his doesn't get too salty.

Sam has his PET scan tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll have results by Friday.  Stay tuned! 

Spanish Spaghetti with Olives

8 oz whole wheat spaghetti
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
8 ounces extra-lean ground beef
1 2/3 cups low-sodium marinara sauce
1/2 cup sliced pimiento-stuffed olives
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 tablespoon capers
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, divided

Cook pasta according to the package directions, leave out the salt and fat, drain.

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion pan and sauté 4 minutes or until tender. Add the garlic and sauté 1 minute.  Stir in the oregano, celery salt, red pepper, black pepper. Crumble beef into pan and cook 5 minutes until beef is browned, stirring to crumble.  Stir in the marinara sauce, olives, sherry, capers, and 3 tablespoons parsley.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes.

Add spaghetti to sauce. Cook 2 minutes until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with remaining 1 tablespoon parsley.

recipe source: Cooking Light, December 2009 (slightly modified)

Happy 30th Birthday Sam!

It was a beautiful day in the city, and we enjoyed every minute.  We had an amazing lunch at a steakhouse on 5th Ave where Jack consumed an alarming amount of filet mignon.  Thank you so much for all of the thoughtful birthday wishes.  This is going to be a great year!

Pizza with the boys

Happy Valentine's Day

Hi from Sam

Hey this is Sam.  Thought I'd give my wife a break from all this bloggin, aka graffiti with punctuation.  Haha, she's not going to like that.  Anyway.  After my forth round of Augmented ICE, 14 collectively, we were able to leave the city for three days.  Kristen's family picked us up on Sunday afternoon and an hour and fifteen minutes later we arrived at a historic farmhouse in the Pennsylvania countryside.  It was nice to get away from the fast paced lifestyle of New York city.  Kristen and I had a roommate for the trip, Baby Jack, which was fun... Jack dreams a lot when he sleeps and makes a ton of noise.  Kristen informed me of this every morning which surprised me because I didn't hear a thing!  I was excited because we were able to drive around town in a brand new GMC Duramax! We drove over to Hamburg, PA to visit Cabela's, which is not the same as a Bass Pro Shop, to do a little shopping.  We also found a Cracker Barrel and had some pancakes and country fried steak (a big change from our current diet).  We had a great time and I loved the change in scenery.  Here are a few pictures my wife took. 

Transplant Update

Sam is home and doing well.  He's extremely tired so it's definitely a couch and movie kind of day.  We had some great visitors come by during his hospital stay.  Thank you Kelly Huss and Cady Walden for brightening up our Friday morning and Rick and Sarah Starr for keeping us company all afternoon.  Sam's transplant doctor stopped by to say hi and let us know they actually have two perfect matches to choose from!  Of course, they won't let us know who they are until they're confident the transplant has been successful, but we do know that both are woman who've been pregnant before and both have agreed to be donors.  Amazing!  He also gave us a new date of February 27 which is fine with us since this means Sam will be able to be with Jack for his 1st birthday on February 25.

   

Good News!!

Sam's doctors were very happy with his scan today!  The cancer is still there, but it's been significantly reduced.  He was admitted this afternoon for just one more round of chemo (hopefully this is the last time I type those words) and they plan to go ahead with an allogeneic stem cell transplant on February 22.  We still haven't found a perfect match, but they feel confident moving forward at this point with a partially matched donor.  This is amazing!  They keep reminding us that transplant will be the real challenge, and that may be true, but for today we are enjoying our news.