The Manchester support group will be meeting on Wednesday 9th January at the Children’s Hospital. We’ll be there from 7pm in the Costa Coffee – then go upstairs to ward 85 and say hello to any families who might be on the ward. We’d love to see you there.
Liverpool Branch Meeting
Our first branch meeting for 2013 will take place this Thursday at 7.30pm in Ronald McDonald House. Look forward to seeing you there.
Panto
On Friday 14th December we went to the Pantomime courtesy of Barclays. It was Cinderella at the Empire theatre. What a fantastic show it was, the families really loved it and the kids thoroughly enjoyed it. The setting was truly magical and we had lots of fun joining in. I was close to tears myself when they brought that beautiful carriage on stage (I want one!).
My nephews Matt and Will were there and they were screaming and shouting and
nearly off their chairs wanting to be heard, the laughter and their faces was a
picture in itself. We had a little girl who kept asking why she couldn’t go on stage, maybe in a few years she will be on stage entertaining us.
Thank you Lee and all at Barclays.
Alder Hey Christmas Party
On Sunday 9th December we had our annual Christmas Party at Alder Hey’s 01 clinic. This year we had a Magician in to entertain the children. Those that
watched him said he was magic, they enjoyed him and even participated in some of the magic. The magician also made balloon shapes for children too. Some of the children played in the soft play area in the clinic.
We had new families come along to join in the fun, some of them joined the Association on the day – so we hope you enjoyed your first Christmas party with us.
After the Magician we had our party food and then we had a visit from Santa. Santa had a busy time and had all the children wanting a present from him, it was just as well he brought a full sack of goodies to make sure each child received a present. We had babies from just a few weeks old to teenagers.
Thank you Dad. You know what you did and you were a big hit! Same again next year????
View Slideshow One, Slideshow Two.
Christmas Bingo
My friend Joanne, who is a big supporter of CHA, asked her work if we could hold a charity prize bingo there. Joanne works for the local council at Stadt Moers and we were able to use their facilities. Joanne advertised this and we got a great response and also the possibility of holding more there in the future.
Thank you to Joanne for organising and Gordon for allowing us to hold a prize bingo a Stadt Moers. We appreciate your continued support.
Christmas Grotto
On Saturday 8th Dec we held our grotto at Stadt Moers for the second year in a row. Gordon and Aaron did a fantastic job of decorating the venue for us. It looked fab.
Santa turned up to visit all the good boys and girls and he even brought them an early Christmas present. We had some non-believers who came but I can assure you they left believing in Father Christmas. We had cake decorating and balloons and tombola which kept us busy for the three hours we were there.
Thank you to Father Christmas for coming along and an extra special thank you to Jo, Gordon & Aaron.
We’re Winners
Our local Asda store at Hunts Cross runs a competition for local charities to be nominated by the public to win a prize. I entered our charity for Oct/Nov comp and I am delighted to tell you we won the 1st prize of £200.
Shoppers were given small green tokens when they spent so much on their shopping and they could then put the tokens into one of three boxes associated with nominated charities.
We are so grateful to the shoppers for choosing to support us.
Halloween Party
Saturday 27th October was our Halloween party at Alder Hey. We had a good turn out and we decorated the clinic before families arrived. We had prepared “Trick or Treat” bags for the children to decorate themselves ready to put all there treats and goodies in.
We’d also got lots of games for the kids to play; we had dress a Witch, these were cardboard and they had a variety of outfits children could colour in and coloured glitter glue to add a sparkle to any witches outfit; we had make a spider using cauliflowers and tangerines plus straws and we had best dressed pumpkinks and best dressed outfits.
Thank you to everyone who made an effort here and came dressed to impress also those who made scary and fun pumpkins.
Another game we’d prepared was “duck apple”. This involved putting apples in bowls of water and the children had to dunk their heads to try to get their apple out. I must say the children were very good at this. The highlight of the event had to be when baby George crawled for the first time to have a go, his mum was so delighted! It just shows the children enjoy the events we do – it must have been good if a 9 month old crawls for the first time just to join in.
See the slideshow.
Patient Assistance
Contains links to information on the different systems within the human body, including the heart. Specifically check out the links to NeoK12: Circulatory System, About Your Heart: Heart Animations And Interactives and Montana State University: How Your Heart Works.
Alton Towers
Friday 20th July is a date we had been looking forward to. I personally had been praying for good weather for weeks now as it is our trip to Alton Towers and we’d been planning it for months. The day arrived and it was lovely and the weekend forecast was great – my praying worked then!
We all made our own way there, ready to meet in the bar of our hotel in the evening. This gave us the chance to meet other families and catch up with those we may not have seen for a while. We all met in the bar and I gave out welcome letters, car stickers, theme park tickets and water park tickets for those who purchased these separately. It was a good night and we all enjoyed chatting to one another which was the aim of the trip. Although we could not all sit together, as our group was large, the children enjoyed playing together and most families sat in groups with others.
One family who stayed commented “having the opportunity to stay over has meant that we have been able to meet other families in a similar situation to ours and has given both us as parents the chance to talk about how we cope but has given our kids the chance to mix with children in the same situation as they are often a bit outcast.”
Saturday was an early start. As we were staying at the hotel we could get in the park early. It was nice to see the families at breakfast and then we split up for the day at the theme park. I left the day visitors tickets at the hotel reception and headed off for the park. I wasn’t looking forward to our first ride “Oblivion” as I’d woken up that morning with a headache and didn’t want it to get worse. However, we all loved the ride and my headache was gone! Well now it was time to hit all the other big rides for the big kids and some of the smaller ones for the little children.
A few of us decided to meet for lunch so we said whoever arrives first should try to get seats for the 14 of us. When we got to the meeting place a few other families wanted to join us so then we moved even more benches together to fit us all in. Talk about taking over the place, you could see people looking. After the lunch and show I asked the characters to come and have pictures taken with our group and they obliged.
The day was one of the few hot days that we were lucky enough to get this summer which meant that there was no need to worry about the children becoming cold after riding the Log Flume and Rapids, which turned out to be a very popular choice. Youngster Grace Cartwright, aged 7, was so excited about her first ever trip to Alton Tower as it was the first time she has ever been tall enough to go on many of the roller coasters – much to her Granddad’s delight who got to ride with her. When asked what kind of day she was having Grace replied “Awesome, can you ask Val if we can come again when I am a bit bigger”.
Now back to the park for round two. While there we bumped into a few of our day visitors and we all had a fabulous day, shame it closed at 6pm. Those that purchased water park tickets said they greatly enjoyed it too, so much to do and so many rides to go on. As the day drew to an end there are always ones who just want one more quick go and for Jason and Michael Casey and Aaron and Thomas Mawdsley–Welsh that ride would be “Sonic” – a roller coaster with a difference as not only do you get the trills of a regular coaster you also get to be spun around at the same time – not for the faint hearted.
