Updates
Our progress towards raising our 1m target
This morning George had football practice. Both he and Alex were more than happy playing in the park in their Leicester City Football Club kits! As you can see from today's photo someone wasn't too keen on getting their body brace back on, even to get to this point was a bit of a negotiation / battle. To be honest we never blame him putting up a fight but deep down inside we all know it has to happen.
It was lovely to see so many of his friends and and it gave us a chance to catch up with their parents. I found myself flip flopping between a whole host of feelings as being so close to his next scan, in everyday moments like these, I can suddenly find myself having unusually morbid thoughts. I know that sounds odd but when you're having such a lovely time the 'what ifs' can all too easily creep in.
...what if his scan next week shows his cancer has returned?! What if this is the calm before the metastatic storm? Today we had another reminder of how vulnerable life can be when dealing with cancer. We met Lisa Wells at last year's JustGiving awards ceremony as we were on stage announcing her as Crowdfunder of the Year and stayed in touch with her ever since. Less than 12 months on, at 5am this morning, she passed away. A battle with Bowel cancer leaving two girls and her husband in her wake 😢
In the next breath I flip back and rationalise that George is still looking so well, that from the get go Lisa knew she was terminal, but that doesn't stop these horrid thoughts popping up out of nowhere and feeling heartbroken for her family. This afternoon's distraction was working our way through our house to gather things up ready for the Oxted Carboot Sale tomorrow. Finally we have the car fixed thanks to Holmesdale Garage in Reigate squeezing us in so we booked ourselves a pitch at this Titsey Rotary Club event.
As much as I packed the boys kept taking things out. I have to admit the hoarder in me is even tempted to put a lot of it back again! But now it's earlier than usual to bed so we can pack the car up tomorrow and try to sell more than we bring home with us!
Between us we've got this.
#thebigpush
#aimhighstaypositive
#giantpledge
Donate or join the Giant Pledge team with your own fundraising event in 2019 at giantpledge.com/team
Buy one of our 'Tackle Childhood Cancer' tees or pick up your superhero cape in honour of the doctors, nurses and super brave cancer kids at giantpledge.com/shop
Sing along & share our charity 'Do a Big Poo' song, youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s or buy it here, giantpledge.com/buy
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/georgeandthegiantpledge
On Twitter: twitter.com/giantpledge
And on Instagram: instagram.com/giantpledge
Or for help with any event you may be thinking of email Lydia.Clark2@rmh.nhs.uk and cc us at GeorgeandtheGiantPledge@gmail.com
Having been back visiting for the last four weeks, today we said goodbye to the lovely Eefje again. You can certainly say we've made the most of her time here, if nothing else she won't need or want to go to the theatre for at least the next year 😂 The boys tried playing Monopoly or UNO with her almost every day so after she'd left they switched in one of Alex's best friends instead.
All in all we kept things low key after a later than usual bedtime for the boys last night. The furthest we went was down the road where George had his first official session at Explore Learning today. After he enjoyed his taster so much we're giving this a go to help him catch up on everything he missed out on during his cancer treatment...after today's session you couldn't wipe a huge smile off of his little face ❤️
With three kids in the house it actually helped balance the dynamics out. Love the boys to pieces but sometimes over the school holidays there are moments we could put them on ebay 😜 Obviously I'm just joking, especially after everything we've been through, but you've got to laugh at the highs and lows of child's play.
One thing today gave us was the chance to start thinking about George's birthday which, believe it or not, is in less than 4 weeks time. After the more than memorable hurricane Irma on his 5th birthday, followed by last years Hot Wheels 6th birthday party we need to get our thinking caps on to treat him and his friends to something special!
Between us we've got this.
#thebigpush
#aimhighstaypositive
#giantpledge
Donate or join the Giant Pledge team with your own fundraising event in 2019 at giantpledge.com/team
Buy one of our 'Tackle Childhood Cancer' tees or pick up your superhero cape in honour of the doctors, nurses and super brave cancer kids at giantpledge.com/shop
Sing along & share our charity 'Do a Big Poo' song, youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s or buy it here, giantpledge.com/buy
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/georgeandthegiantpledge
On Twitter: twitter.com/giantpledge
And on Instagram: instagram.com/giantpledge
Or for help with any event you may be thinking of email Lydia.Clark2@rmh.nhs.uk and cc us at GeorgeandtheGiantPledge@gmail.com
You may have thought that having just got back from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe we'd be all showed out. We certainly had more than our fill, in fact the boys saw more shows in two days than they have in their entire little lives! However, when the 'Kids go free in August' tickets went on sale last month we went nuts as part of our scanxiety distraction plan.
Tonight the boys, Eefje and I headed up to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with Jac Yarrow, Sheridan Smith and Jason Donovan as Pharaoh - tickets we'd bought as part of the kids go free August offer to help us not think about cancer. Alex and George were giddy enough on the way up on the train and positively beamed whilst watching the performance tonight!
Needless to say we had no idea we'd be heading up to the Fringe just the week before we booked this 🤦🏼♀️ ...at this rate the boys will be thinking our life is one big musical and we'll all be singing and dancing from here into next year! Let's just hope next week's scan results also give us a happy ending and George remains forever disease free!
The rest of our day was pretty quiet aside from this morning when we had one of our friends round showing us how to use a design package called Canva (to help us make our Giant Pledge fundraising posters and flyers etc.) Meanwhile the boys were loving playing Hot Wheels with her two boys. I'm not sure if my addled, sleep-deprived brain will remember much but at least the kids had fun in the process 😍
Between us we've got this.
#thebigpush
#aimhighstaypositive
#giantpledge
Donate or join the Giant Pledge team with your own fundraising event in 2019 at giantpledge.com/team
Buy one of our 'Tackle Childhood Cancer' tees or pick up your superhero cape in honour of the doctors, nurses and super brave cancer kids at giantpledge.com/shop
Sing along & share our charity 'Do a Big Poo' song, youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s or buy it here, giantpledge.com/buy
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/georgeandthegiantpledge
On Twitter: twitter.com/giantpledge
And on Instagram: instagram.com/giantpledge
Or for help with any event you may be thinking of email Lydia.Clark2@rmh.nhs.uk and cc us at GeorgeandtheGiantPledge@gmail.com
Today I took George to my best friend's house where the kids played together and we took the chance to catch up. Alex had gone to Thorpe Lakes to go on their inflatable wipe out course for his best friend's 10th birthday party. He loved every minute despite the fact it was chilly and chucking it down today!
Meanwhile George was equally having a fab time running in and out of the rain playing with our friends cats, as well as creating treasure hunts complete with clues and maps. At one point we caught the kids trying to do some sort of parachute game lifting one another up in the middle of a blanket so we did no more than stop what we were doing so we could help them and more importantly make it safe!!! 😆
Meanwhile, rolling back the time, it was on this day two years ago George had his first ever dose of Proton therapy. You can see in the colourful picture bottom left the areas in him they were targeting. The next image is George on a bed with the beam directed up and him, followed by a trip to Target to celebrate him lying poker still with a wall of Hot Wheels cars from him to choose from / get his car fill!
Talking of cars, this week it's been far from ideal for our family car to have a failure with our windscreen wipers 😩 Having spoken to a couple of garages it could well be the motor or fuse that's gone, either way there's no driving it 🤦🏼♀️ Slowly but surely things keep going wrong, we've not bored you with all the details each time but fixing it is becoming way more than it's worth! Time to no longer bury our heads in the sand, start looking at options and finding ourselves a new family car 😳 Cue analysis paralysis kicking in and not having a clue where to begin, if only it was as easy as picking a Hot Wheels car!!!
Between us we've got this.
#thebigpush
#aimhighstaypositive
#giantpledge
Donate or join the Giant Pledge team with your own fundraising event in 2019 at giantpledge.com/team
Buy one of our 'Tackle Childhood Cancer' tees or pick up your superhero cape in honour of the doctors, nurses and super brave cancer kids at giantpledge.com/shop
Sing along & share our charity 'Do a Big Poo' song, youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s or buy it here, giantpledge.com/buy
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/georgeandthegiantpledge
On Twitter: twitter.com/giantpledge
And on Instagram: instagram.com/giantpledge
Or for help with any event you may be thinking of email Lydia.Clark2@rmh.nhs.uk and cc us at GeorgeandtheGiantPledge@gmail.com
We've had such a long but brilliant day taking in more shows and street performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe today. Having secured a super central last minute apartment it didn't take long from waking up to being back in the heart of things. The question was yet again, what should we go and see today?! But we soon filled up our schedule and found ourselves running around with Woody carrying George between performances!
From the cultured to the cool taking in a fantastic child friendly Shakespeare experience, which Woody even had a starring role in, followed by the 360 Allstars show (think break dancing, bmx riding, basketball tricks and beat boxing amongst other things). From there we went to see acrobats and beautiful dancers from the Casus circus that, together with powerful music and dangerous maneuvers, had us all captivated and on the edge of our seats.
By far and away the most obscure show from the last two days was the boys choice, The Dark Room, where the audience is trying to escape having been trapped inside a computer game 😂 High energy, even if at times a little crazy, but a good one to end our festival experience on none the less.
Before we all jumped on the airport bound tram we bizarrely bumped into friends who live seconds from our house back at home shortly after having had a surprise hello with Sam who used to be the music therapist at The Royal Marsden - Sutton!
If you recall it was Sam who made up and sung the do a big poo song on the spot when George was in for his first round of cancer treatment (youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s) He's since been on the BBC and out in New York ...although sadly I don't think the 'Do a Big Poo' song forms any part of his set 😜 Again another small world experience followed by our flight home that ended up being late risking the kids going feral. Now safely tucked up in their own beds after the last two days of chaos and excitement all to make the most of the moment as well as being a brilliant distraction to George's pending 12 weekly cancer scan.
Between us we've got this.
#thebigpush
#aimhighstaypositive
#giantpledge
Donate or join the Giant Pledge team with your own fundraising event in 2019 at giantpledge.com/team
Buy one of our 'Tackle Childhood Cancer' tees or pick up your superhero cape in honour of the doctors, nurses and super brave cancer kids at giantpledge.com/shop
Sing along & share our charity 'Do a Big Poo' song, youtu.be/U3iOmhIIc_s or buy it here, giantpledge.com/buy
Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/georgeandthegiantpledge
On Twitter: twitter.com/giantpledge
And on Instagram: instagram.com/giantpledge
Or for help with any event you may be thinking of email Lydia.Clark2@rmh.nhs.uk and cc us at GeorgeandtheGiantPledge@gmail.com