The Fantasticks

When the call came from the president of the Provo High Drama Club, I was speechless. Did I really hear it right? Steven Pelham invited our family to come to the Monday night performance of The Fantasticks. They dedicated tonight's performance to Talitha and pledged the entire receipts from the sold-out performance to her recovery fund.

This kind of kindness humbles me to the core. Steven explained that all the cast members/production crew/drama students decided weeks ago that they wanted to do this service to help and then he expressed his heartfelt well wishes to our whole family along with everyone's hope for Tali's complete recovery......

Do you see why I was speechless?

The performance tonight was impeccable. Well directed, well acted, well produced...and well supported. (Thank you to all who came tonight to both enjoy the performance and to donate funds to help Tali. Many of you were turned away due to the sell out. For those that didn't get to see the show, I hope you heard that they will be doing a special encore performance tomorrow (Tuesday) night. Well worth your time; you won't be disappointed.)

To all the cast and crew, I thank you for sharing your wonderful talents and for opening your hearts so wide to make a difference in such a personal way. Thank you to Bob Bauer, the director--a friend to our family and mentor to our oldest daughter, Elisa.

And thank you again Steven for that phone call. Please let everyone involved know how much this has meant to us.

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Speaking of Fantastic: Talitha is home tonight! (for a few short hours)

The fifth day of stem-cell harvest was more than enough to get us to 100% complete. Thank you to the doctors and nurses for their tireless work night and day and throughout the weekend to not give up.

(Erin, the technician that ran the stem-cell collection machine for the past five days has been doing this for the past 13 years. She said it's never taken this long to complete the harvest for someone so young in all her years running that machine. We just think that Talitha understands the importance of stem cells and didn't want to give them up without a fight. :-)

A rough five days but she made it through thanks to so many prayers and people pulling for her.

Thank you to everyone and thanks to the Lord.