January 2009

The Holiday is over. We enjoyed the resort tremendously and instead of 2 nights we stayed one extra night and celebrated the New Year with a huge buffet and fireworks show at midnight.

5 January Quint went to the nursery for the first time. He was very exited. Quint is crazy about Melissa's pink roller bag and since we did not have anything else he could take this one. When he arrived in school it was bye mama, bye papa en we could go. We stayed in the vicinity of the nursery because you never know how a child would react the first time in school. But he enjoyed his time and at 12:30 we picked him up again and he enjoyed this also.

15 January we organized a party. Oscar and I did not celebrate our birthdays and we are very happy that we are together again in Dubai. This was the reason for the party. We still had the Christmas lights up in the garden and installed a few lanterns. Preparing everything took long, food and snacks. Finally it was a very successful and enjoyable evening.

Now it was time to focus on the donor letter. 28 January it was 1 year ago that we received the phone call that there was a liver available for Quint. For us this was a blessing but at the same time also a sad time because for this someone had to die. Now almost 1 year ago we wanted to thank the donor family for their decision to approve the organ donation after the passing of their loved one. Quint received a part liver from an 18-year-old boy who passed away after a car accident. We wrote the letter in Dutch and with the help of our friends we also translated it into French. Both versions we sent to Magda who will make sure that it will be delivered to the donor family.

We wanted to do something special on the 28th to remember the donor. For this we asked our friends to come with their kids and for every kid we had a white balloon filled with helium and for Quint a blue star balloon. We had the children release the balloons at the same time. It was a beautiful sight how all the white balloons stayed together and the blue balloon took his own path. Everybody stayed and looked until the balloons were not visible anymore. A beautiful sight with a special meaning.

The next day we gave Quint and Melissa another balloon each. A pony balloon for Melissa and a Teletubbie for Quint. Quint immediately wanted to take it outside and release it. But that was not the intent for these balloons. These had to stay inside. Today was exactly 1 year ago that Quint was operated on. One year ago we waited for 9 hours until this was done. A day we still remember as it was yesterday. At the moment it goes very well with Quint and we try to enjoy our time together as much as possible.

Next month he will have his biopsy let hope that that will be all right also.