A wish come true

268 Photos - that's how many photos I took at Bianca's Make-a-Wish. Today (Sunday) was the big day. The wish that she really really wanted was to meet Suzy from Suzy's world and spend some time with her doing baking experiments. All I can say is wow! What a great day!!!

Bianca first watched Suzy's World when she stayed in the hospital and she took an instant liking to Suzy who is such a great presenter and so funny and of course the fact that Suzy's World is all about doing experiments or finding out why things work the way they do. More recently she's been borrowing some of the DVDs from Terence's work and we even have Caitlyn now walking around asking to watch "Su-shoo" - so I guess we do watch it quite a bit. But it's one of those type of shows that you really don't mind watching over and over.

We knew we were going to be picked up, what we didn't know was that it would be a stretch limo and that was so cool. Of course Terence liked pressing all the buttons and Bianca was so fascinated by it all. We were taken on a different route to the city than we would normally take and got to see a different side of the harbour bridge. We had such nice views.

The meeting with Suzy was at the Quadrant Hotel in the city. We met Steve from Make-a-Wish and some of the staff from the hotel and I have to say this is a beautiful hotel. We went all the way to the top (the Penthouse) which was on level 23 if I remember correctly.

And then the big moment arrived and Bianca got to meet Suzy for the very first time. Before the time Bianca drew a picture for Suzy which she then proudly handed over.

And then the fun started - Bianca got to wear a special white scientist coat (after all she was about to do some serious investigation) and at first they experimented making some cupcakes and the first one had all the right ingredients (Suzy had to compensate a little bit because when Suzy said "heaped tablespoon" Bianca made it "HEAPED") and for good measure they added some chocolate chips to the recipe. The second one had no egg and the third had no oil. Bianca wrote some signs so that we would know which was which and then it was time for the test taste. First Bianca felt them all with her fingers and the one with everything felt sort of springy and the others a bit harder. The one with everything tasted really nice and the others much drier, although the one with no oil was probably better than the one with no egg (taste-wise). We finally decided that as long as you add chocolate chips to your cupcakes it doesn't really matter if you leave things out...

Then they made ice-cream. Now I remember when Terence made ice-cream years ago, it took a long time before it was ready to eat and we would mix it all up, put it in the freezer for a while, then take it out, mix it up again, put it back in and so on. Suzy's way is a really simple and quick way to do it - almost instant and you use crushed ice and salt in a plastic bag and then in a separate smaller bag you put your ice-ream mixture (with chocolate chips - Bianca's idea) in and put it on the inside of the bag with crushed ice. And then you shake it up. And voila - ice cream. Bianca loved doing the taste-test.

Then Suzy was busy going through her recipes to see what else would be good to try out and Bianca asked to do chocolate ice cream and so they experimented doing chocolate ice cream and we learned that it is much easier for chocolate powder to mix up when you add it to your milk and heat it slightly in the microwave (so I guess this experiment was also to find out the best way to dissolve chocolate powder with milk). Of course, you can't make ice-cream without adding those chocolate chips...

Bianca was all ready and fired up to move onto making strawberry ice cream, but it was time to start packing up by that time - so I imagine we will be doing this really soon.

Suzy kindly wrote Bianca a note and signed it on special Suzy's World paper and Bianca also received 4 DVDs with some Suzy's World episodes. That is so great and now Bianca will be able to keep these instead of handing them back to the library and I can see many more days of watching Suzy's World. Bianca also received a number of factsheets for us to read and try out at home.

Bianca showed Suzy all her beads and she proudly shared which beads would have been for which procedure or treatment. I have to say we are really proud of our beads and we think this is such a great initiative!

And then it was time to go home and on the way out Bianca received a beautiful fluffy unicorn, a hat and a pen from the hotel.

We would like to say a big big thank you to Make-a-Wish (and in particular Sue and Steve who came through to meet with Bianca to discuss her wish, Steve for all the telephone calls to keep us informed and for everything they organised to make this happen), to Suzy for letting Bianca spend the time with her (and letting us go crazy with the camera), she was so great with Bianca and so down-to-earth and she really made the day extra-special for Bianca, and thank you very much for the DVDs, they are great and Bianca will enjoy them a lot, to the hotel for letting us use their facilities for our experiments it was a beautiful room with a beautiful view and also thank you so much for the beautiful soft toy, hat and pen, to our drivers who collected us and dropped us off again. And thank you to Jody for looking after Caitlyn during this time. I truly hope I didn't forget to include somebody here.

Thank you so very much for this very special day. It was a magical day filled with laughter, giggles, fun, more laughter and a day that we will always remember and that Bianca will talk about for a long time to come. Thank you so much for making this day happen for us! Afterwards I asked Bianca what she thought of today and she said "I loved it".