Living with Cerebral Palsy 🍋🍋

Saturday 4 July 2015

Carnival Time

A glorious day today bringing quite a big surprise in that Elin suddenly decided she liked her chair again following a few days of not tolerating it. But ours is not to question why, ours is to just to accept serenely and adjust accordingly (can anyone tell I've been on a SAP course with work this week?) Well she picked a good day for a change of mood since we were taking her to Hope Carnival to meet Elsa and Anna of 'Frozen' fame! I'll let you into a secret, it's not the REAL Elsa (shhhhh!) Elsa is, in fact, Laura and Anna is her real-life sister, Rachel. Laura, in a funny twist of fate was  a past member of staff at Elins school and Elin's first ever support worker when she started there over four years ago. Elin loved her! Chances are if you have a child under the age of about 12 and live in the Wrexham area you have probably already met Laura and Rachel. They are incredibly hard-working and are not only booked out doing children's parties every weekend but have also recently visited 50 primary schools in the area, doing a Frozen sing-a-long in character, completely free of charge to the schools, in order to raise money for Hope House. Pretty amazing- who gives up their time for free these days???? I should point out that their fab Mum (also a past member of staff at Elin's school) regularly joins the 'Frozen' team in a giant 'Olaf' costume - they can even sign using makaton for children with additional needs. What a crazy-talented family! Hope House is a facility I have blogged about before which is local to us and provides support to children like Elin with life-limiting conditions. It's an amazing place and families like ours are incredibly lucky to have it at their disposal, since I know other countries such as the USA don't offer any respite care for parents of disabled children. Although we don't use Hope House for Elin at the moment I know so many people who rely on it's support and we have been able to use the hydro pool facility in the past and get a glimpse of the wonderful staff there. A truly life-changing facility, which is also of course a charity relying on donations.
Anyway disappointingly and frustratingly having missed Elsa and Anna when they visited my school as part of the 'Let It Go' challenge for Hope House  (I was on the SAP course learning how to deal with disappointments and frustrations!!) I was determined I was going to get to the Carnival today to see them, although Elin had been incredibly lucky and seen them at her school already last week (see blog post 'Let It Go') I wasn't disappointed.  They were fab, they had the crowd of children in the palm of their hand and most importantly Elin loved it, smiling at the songs and demonstrating some AMAZING listening. She even saw her buddy Harry from school yay!
What was also nice was the sense of community the carnival fostered. It felt like being part of a long Welsh tradition that goes back hundreds of years and not one I have been part of in Wrexham before. I guess the village carnival is a dying part of our heritage and it's really sad! The parade through the street of various floats/marching bands etc, the carnival queen's and the involvement of the local school children plus the neighbourhoods of three villages coming together made for a really lovely event which, not to overstate anything (moi??) felt like it was getting back to the roots of family values. Living in a village myself it struck me maybe if we had more village carnivals, we would have less village problems?
I'll leave you with some pics of the day (OF COURSE) and hope you're day was just as magical and ..well...happy.
Have a good weekend folks.




Mum get me away from this Dragon!!





If anyone would like to donate to Hope House you can do so via Laura and Rachel's 'Just Giving' page:
https://www.justgiving.com/theletitgochallenge
xxx
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