Pizza Party -- everyone's invited

On August 30 of last year, my good friend Destiny's son Derek had a kidney transplant. Derek was born with a kidney ailment, and his never quite worked right from the very beginning. Last summer, his courageous dad Steve donated one of his own kidneys, and just last week, Derek got a good report at his one-year follow up.

When Derek came home from the hospital last year, he celebrated by eating pizza and drinking chocolate milk -- two things his kidneys couldn't handle before. And thanks to our mutual friend Kate, and this suggestion on her blog, we all celebrated with Destiny, Derek, Steve, and little sister Monet, by eating pizza and drinking chocolate milk in our homes across the country.

As the one-year anniversary of Derek's transplant nears, and in the spirit of Kate's nationwide invitation last year, I'd like to encourage you all to join in this year's pizza party to celebrate Derek's good health. Whatever you were planning to do for dinner on Saturday, change your plans and have pizza -- doesn't matter what kind -- and chocolate milk. It's an easy dinner, and it will honor a very, very special family. I think we might make it an annual tradition in our house.

If you want to read more about Derek's story, click here and here and here and here. And what the hey, here's a little video too.