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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was mid morning on a Saturday when members of the Association meet in a field in the middle of the Cheshire countryside. All around the noise of excited children could be heard from the for large slides that stood in the foreground, beyond lay more structures that the shrikes of children could be heard coming from. As some parents stood watching as their children slid down the bumpy and reverse slides, some also stood there a little upset that an upper age limit of 15 and in some cases 30 had been put on some of the attractions giving many a parent a reality check that yes in fact they were getting old!.
After almost two hours of throwing themselves down slides, across moving beams and being bounces down a rather large mechanical slide, it was time for lunch where we compared notes on what we had done and what could possibly lie ahead of us in the woods.. As we followed the trail through the woods and along the steam we had to negotiate a number of obstacles that we came across at one point, some of the smaller children worried when we came to a cannon that even the biggest of them could climb through.. As we moved around the trail the obstacles got bigger and harder to get past but the children pushed on in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Crocodile who is said to lurk around these parts, then in a clearing in a patch of woodland inside a small metal hut we came across the croc, who was not to please to see us and spat water out at you if you got to close.
Once we had our glimpse of the crocodile and survived, it was back to the cars after another successful outing.
Regional workshop event invitation from the NHS… “Over the last few months an expert Advisory Group of clinicians, commissioners and patient representatives have developed ideas to bring improvements to the service. The Advisory Group have developed a proposed network model of delivering specialist ACHD care and draft national designation standards. We would now like to hear what you think of the proposed standards and model of care.”. Workshops are being held in Bristol, Manchester, York and London.
Our eStore is back, bigger and better than ever. See www.heartchild.info/shop.
A big thank you to Swizzels Matlow for donating loads of mini tubes of Love Hearts for us to give away at open days and events.
Val Frew, chair of the Alder Hey branch is currently on a 3 month secondment from work. During this time she is directing all her effort and energy to supporting the CHA. Read what she’s been up to in her first 7 weeks on her blog at heartchild.info/web/category/vals-blog.