Living with Cerebral Palsy 🍋🍋

Saturday 5 January 2019

Goodbye 2018

Hi everyone! To start where I left off, we LOVED The Wizard of Oz at Storyhouse, Chester! After the Lanterns at the zoo it really kicked off Christmas in a beautiful way for us- it was just magical to see Elin's reaction to what was happening on stage, she adored it! Her favourite was the Wicked Witch- she laughed and laughed every time she was on which was very cute and very typical of Elin to decide she liked the baddy the best!! She spent a bit of it in her chair and then the rest of it on Daddy's knee. When the characters came running through the audience at one point, the Cowardly Lion stroked her face and her response was amazing, I just wish I'd had my camera out!! She really, really enjoyed herself and even got to meet Toto afterwards! It meant such a lot to me to share this experience with her and it will be one of my fondest memories of this holiday period for sure.
I hope you all had yourselves a merry little Christmas! Ours was lovely, if not a little blighted by illness- not of epic proportion thank god - but enough to keep us indoors repeatedly coughing and sneezing for a few days. Elin, mercifully, was the least affected presumably having already had it a couple of weeks ago, but chose Christmas day to be at her worst poor thing. On the bright side the three hour nap she decided she needed after the exhaustion of opening her presents coincided with Christmas dinner which was fairly handy for us bless her!! Paul pulled it out of the bag for the millionth year on the trot and we had a gorgeous meal with my Mum, Nan and Grandad    (who have made the move into a residential care home this year but were still super keen to spend the day at our cosy little Christmassy cottage as usual)
                                               
(My absolute legend of a Grandad Ted)

So given the illness that was descending on Christmas day I think Christmas Eve was actually the better day for Elin, to be honest it's my favourite day of the holidays anyway!! We went to watch the children's Nativity in our local church, which is a beautiful building and one I only frequent once a year on Christmas Eve (what do you mean christianity is for life, not just for Christmas?!?!)  but regardless of my terrible yuletide hypocrisy it's an absolute must for us as Elin just loves the tree, lights and singing.  There is also something very lovely on a spiritual level about being there somehow- we went so often with our primary school just over the road as kids that it does hold some lovely memories (and some not so lovely memories like when I was cruelly denied the role of 'Mary'- see previous post!) Anyway this year was no exception and Elin had a lovely, lovely time. She basically laughed all the way through!
It was then time to get some new jim-jams on and wait for Santa to arrive :-)
After Christmas Day Elin perked up a little bit and enjoyed spending Boxing Day day with big sister and family. Elin can't get enough of Caitlin so this was like heaven to her! She was one happy girl!
Elin just dressed super-casual for boxing Day. Ha!
What followed was a few days of all of us, but especially Paul, being pretty wiped with the Christmas lurgi that had been doing the rounds. It's a shame I contracted this strain and not the tummy bug that was also spreading like wildfire as I could do with a helping hand fitting back into my jeans, but I guess on the whole I really wouldn't want Elin catching that so thank heaven for small mercies.
Those days passed in a bit of a fug of hot toddies and Netflix so it was very welcome to get out just before the new year for a nice walk by the Llangollen canal. Elin was obviously so pleased to be out she forgot to be dystonic, so all in all it was a massively successful outing!!!
 Elin enjoyed playing with her new toy and watching us take the tree down when we got home.
On new Year's Day we happily  managed to get to Yorkshire to visit Elin's big brother Gareth and his wife Marianne who were also hosting Elin's big sister Beth and her partner Adam, plus two lovely friends, plus four out of six of the grandchildren!! A very happy visit and Elin thrived on the company of the little ones, as she always does! Miraculously, she had still not remembered to be dystonic by this point so the journey there was pretty pleasing too! 
Actual real footage of Elin sitting nicely in the back of a car!
 He ain't heavy.......he's my brother!
Gruff proudly enjoyed showing Elin his Dinosaur jigsaw!
Baby wrestling!
Taid grappling with 3 out of 6 grandchildren (Agnes, Bobbie and Ivy)

As if that wasn't lovely enough, the very next day when safely ensconced back at the cottage we had a wonderful surprise visit from my Uni friends Claire and Michael who were travelling down from Edinburgh to see Claire's Mum in Liverpool. When we had our awesome Edinburgh visit in the Summer, Claire and Michael were on holiday with their boys Caleb and Archie and it was my only regret that we missed them! So it was lovely to see them and introduce their children to Elin- we have seen each other a lot over the years but never managed to get the kids all together, so this was super special and a lovely treasured memory with which to begin 2019.
We will round off the holidays tomorrow by seeing Pauls brother and his wife and also his cousin and family who are visiting from Australia- so more children for Elin to play with! We have obviously also enjoyed the company of my family over Christmas too (I think I see them too often to remember getting photos oops!) and plenty of other special friends who mean a lot to us and to Elin. I hope this lovely family/friends time is a sign that the year will progress as nicely as it has started for team Drake and more importantly for Elin (I'm not sorry to see the back of 2018 and am really looking forward to starting a fresh new year) She has, of course, been spoiled rotten by everyone but not just with presents- with time and lovely thoughts and good wishes too. Friends and family mean the world to us and are what sees us through the hard times (like today, when Elin remembered about her dystonia at the worst possible time but I'm not blogging about it because you know,  POSITIVITY and all that!!) 
So truly, thanks for the love, folks. It's all you need.
Happy New Year. Here's to 2019.
Ruth xx


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