Advent awesomeness!

Check out the advent calendar I made for the children!  I am very pleased with it :) each envelope has a treat, a joke and an activity to do that day, tomorrow's is clear out your bedroom and give toys to the charity shop.  Paul is operating a one in one out policy on anything that crosses the doorstep so we had better be ruthless!

Loving the reflection of our hobbies in the mirror, my basket of mini books and two of Paul's pianos!

Can't wait until the morning to see them open the first one, just hope they are not too disappointed not to have a crap hello kitty calendar with cheap chocolate!!

Randomness!

I love it when I find these random photos on my phone or iPad!  The brilliant thing about digital cameras is that the children can take lots of pictures and I end up with some gems and some strange ones like this: 

Any ideas what it is?!

My month in numbers October

My month in numbers is the brainchild of Julie Kirk from notes on paper and a fun way to record our adventures. 

October was dominated by our visit to Southampton General, 10 days on the children's surgical ward as the next stage on our Hirschsprungs journey with William.  Some of our hospital numbers: 

Slept in beds 9, 3 and 14, moving towards the desk for critical care then back towards the door when we were ready to come home.  Just like the neonatal unit where we moved from room 4 to room 3 then room 1 as he got better.  2 operations, 1 planned with 8 hours in theatre,  3% morphine and the first epidural, whilst it is hard to take William to theatre it was much easier with the team of outstanding doctors we know so well, and they know us so I feel like I am leaving him in very good hands.  We had amazing care and when he was getting more pain instead of recovering he was quickly back into theatre for a second emergency procedure; 4 more hours in theatre, 5 hours in picu, 1 new stoma and 10cm less bowel small and large.  

Some nice bits too!  We met Rhoda again, once of the nurses who looked after William as a baby and it was so nice to see her and for her to see him all grown up!  She taught us so much when he was a baby.  We were visited by Dr Ding Dong, Dr wee wee and Dr bananas who told us lots of jokes "knock knock, who's there? Idunup. Idunup who?"  Honestly it is very funny!  William earned lots of stickers and got a toy from the prize cupboard, we made a pumpkin at the craft session, we made monsters and played the magic hat game a lot!  We watched alot of cbeebies and finding Nemo 5 times in the last 24 hours we were there!  But one of my favourite moments was Gerard being attacked by Darth Vader!  We heard him coming down the corridor and when I pushed Uncle G out to take a picture he ended up like this!

Back at home we started and finished the Sopranos season 6 which was in two parts.  Very good but a strange ending although I quite liked it.

5 nights at Sandy Balls, the balls in question turned out to be geographical feature!  We saw an amazing fire eater, did lots of playing, saw our friends and carved pumpkins.  The sweetest part of Halloween was the children dressing up in their costumes, they wanted to go to the halloween disco but when we got there it was too busy and noisy so they played twister in the dark and then we walked back to our lodge where they took it in turns to knock on the door and say trick or treat to get a sweet! 7.9 miles cycled on our family bike ride including a cake stop and a pub lunch!  And LOADS of ponies and donkeys seen en route :) 

40 Monarchs since William the conqueror, and we know them all thanks to the ruthless rulers song from Horrible Histories, the children can sing along perfectly "William William Henry Stephen Henry Richard John etc.

And now for the communal count : 

I received 20ish pieces of mail this month addressed to me, some junk mail, 4 Christmas mail order catalogues which I am browsing for inspiration for Christmas shopping just not quite yet!  The nicest was 3 parcels with get well presents for William.  A survive in hospital kit for me from my best friend including these fab cosy socks that I wore the day William was in theatre :) 

There was also a lovely guardian angel from William's godmother to watch over us.

A weather related fact!  One night in hospital the wind was really loud and whistled past the windows so much that it was more annoying than the occlusion alarms!  The Children's wards are on the top floor of the hospital and is the first tall building the weather hits coming in from the Solent.  It is always loud but this was something else and the next day we found out a tornado had hit the south coast and had hit us first :)