Being Thankful

I've always loved Thanksgiving,. The food, the partying, the shopping and most of all spending time with my family. What is there not to like about this holiday. Since my Mom died it has been a little rough since Thanksgiving was always "Her" holiday and of course it is rough to go visit your Mom at the cemetery on Thanksgiving instead of watching her cook in the kitchen and basically running the show on that day. Anyway, we had a great day celebrating Thanksgiving with our family. The next day Ron and I actually took some "couple time" and went out wine tasting on the North Fork of Long Island. It was a nice relaxing day. The weekend was filled with more fun as we visited some SMA family homes here in the NY Area with Santa aka my dear cousin Doug and my Elf cousins.

Unfortunately all of this fun and happiness was halted by the untimely and sudden death of our dear family friend, Ashley Frangella. Ashley and her family are all very special people in our lives. I have known her parents since the day I was born and had watched her grow up into a special, beautiful young woman who unfortunately had to live with severe allergies. Ashley is forever an angel at 20 years old. Please help her family raise awareness of Severe Food Allergies by visiting http://www.foodallergy.org/ and spreading the word to raise awareness.

Also, our dear friend Lauren from Team Run 4 Owen is running a race in Dylan's honor on December 19th in Central Park. Here is the link to her fundraising page. http://www.firstgiving.com/teamrun4owen1 Donations go to the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. For those of you who don't know, The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation was founded by Bill and Victoria Strong shortly after their sweet daughter, Gwendolyn was diagnosed with SMA Type 1. I was lucky to meet Bill, Victoria, & Gwendolyn at the FSMA Conference earlier this year in California. We are so proud and honored that Lauren is running for Dylan and donating the money to the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. Thanks Lauren for running SMA right out of town!

Dylan will be playing in his first wheelchair basketball tournament this Saturday. We are so thrilled and excited about this, especially my Dad who used to coach CYO basketball when I was a kid. When I told Dylan he would be playing wheelchair basketball this year he said to me...Mama I thought this day would never happen. I can't believe I am going to be playing basketball on a real basketball team at my school. We are very proud of all he accomplishes every single day but this one is definitely over the top for us. Team Dylan and his number 1 cheerleader, Heather will be out in full force on Saturday at the Henry Viscardi School. Look out Lebron, stand back Kobe, take a seat Shaq...here comes Dylan.

Praying for all the SMA kids out there to stay healthy for the holiday season.