Busy times ahead

Firstly, thank you Sabihah Mohamed and Brian & Marg for sponsoring me for Funrazor. Not long now! Bianca is so excited that she will help shave my hair and she keeps counting the days!

Earlier in the week, I had a pretty bad cold, but that has almost cleared now. It is so not fun feeling all miserable and trying to sleep when you feel like you are going to cough out your lungs and you are trying to breath but your nose is blocked. At the moment Bianca is feeling really good and happy and we are back to her coping well with her full school day. Thank goodness steroids are only 5 days a month!

I cannot believe we have reached December already - wow! Time just went by so incredibly quickly.

We have a busy time ahead of us as school starts winding down.

This coming Sunday we have the Child Cancer Foundation Christmas party and that is going to be really exciting and so cool to meet some of the other families. Because we only go in once a month now we haven't really met a lot of the other families, and I have to say that I do miss that part of Wellington quite a bit. Catching up with people who are going through what you are going through.

The weekend of the 12th - 14th of December Terence will be in Wellington for work.

Then on the 17th Jody will be leaving us and going back home to Canada. We will really miss her and after 7 months here, it does feel like she's become one of the family. And I suspect there will be many days after that that Caitlyn will come down the stairs asking "Do-do?" or when she wakes up from her nap shouts "DOOO-DOOOO!!!"

School breaks on the 19th for the December holidays and starts again around the 4th of February 2009 (It feels so weird writing 2009 and then Bianca will be in Year 1 and no more a New Entrant). Sometimes I still can't believe how lucky we are that Bianca is able to go to school, when earlier this year the Christchurch doctor wasn't sure if going to school already would be a good idea. I'm so pleased it's worked out this well and Bianca really loves going to school. It is so exciting that my little girl is able to read as well as she is, can count all the way to 100 and has learned so many things. Just today she was telling me all about stick insects and how some people love eating them (yuk!!!) and how they have to use camouflage. She also explained how they manage to hold onto trees and things like that. Despite my total dislike of all creepy crawlies and things born naturally with 6 feet or more - I think Bianca has found this term's theme (bugs and mini-beasts) really interesting.

And then we will celebrate Christmas on the 20th and 21st of December. We'll do our own presents on the 20th. And of course my mom was kind enough to send a parcel to us recently and a very good friend, Riki also sent some stuff - so the kids will have lots of fun. And then of course when they wake up on the 21st they would have realised that Father Christmas came in the night (the absolute highlight of Bianca's Christmas). This year she actually wrote him a list of what she wants and today we went to our shopping mall where they have a mail box for Father Chrismas and she posted her letter. She was so excited and I think she can't wait for it to become Christmas. We are still trying to work out the best time to put up our Christmas tree because Caitlyn wouldn't really understand the whole concept of "you don't touch the tree and you don't play with the decorations" and so on.

So this way we can celebrate Christmas before Monday the 22nd which will be our theatre day and we'll have to be at the hospital pretty early for Bianca's usual blood test, doctor's check-up, IVIG, Vincristine, theatre for chemo into her spine (through lumbar puncture) and then the dreaded steroids for 5 days. So even if this particular week turns out a grumpy week, at least Bianca will have enjoyed Christmas before the steroid side-effects hit us.

And now I need to stop rambling and go off to bed and try and get an early night tonight.