The next few journal entries will be brief as, unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to update much over the past couple of months.

I spent the few days before Christmas making last minute preparations.  We were all on a high as we’d already received the best Christmas present we could ever wish for, that being our beautiful, amazing Olivia.  I couldn’t want or need for anything else.

We all went over to James’ parent’s house for Christmas Eve and spent a lovely quiet Christmas Day at my parent’s.  The girls were very excited to open their presents but unfortunately, we had to wait for James to drive across the other side of town and back so that he could get our video camera which had been left there the night before!  The girls were very patient but their patience had a limit, especially when it came to opening their presents.  James finally returned home.  The girls tore open each of their presents which took quite some time as, yet again, Santa spoiled them rotten.  We will be having a word with Santa next year regarding the number of presents they receive.  I guess he figured that the girls deserved a little spoiling given what we’re going through with Olivia.  The girls were so excited and James and I were just so incredibly grateful to have our Oli with us.  I just can’t imagine ever facing another Christmas without her.  As far as I’m concerned, she’s here to stay and I will do everything in my power to ensure that she does.

We headed over to Mum and Dad’s for more presents and a beautiful Christmas lunch.  We all had a lovely time followed by a little siesta (nap) in the afternoon which could have had something to do with the sparkling wine (yes, I indulged a little this year – we had a lot to celebrate).  I don’t usually drink anymore so it only takes a glass for me to fall off my perch.  The girls had a great day.  We headed home in the evening but it was dark enough for us to check out a few houses decorated with Christmas lights.  We stopped to have a look at a couple of stunning houses.  The work and expense that has gone into these magnificent displays is amazing.  The girls were very impressed.

I am just going to touch on the next couple of weeks.

We headed over to Rosie and Garry’s house for a catch up and for Olivia to draw The Olivia Lambert Appeal raffle that Garry had organised.  Rosie and Garry have been wonderfully supportive friends and have been there for us on so many levels.  Every time we’re in Sydney, they open their home to us and just try to make our lives easier.  Thanks, guys.

Olivia drew out the winning tickets and it just so happened that every prize winner was from Canberra!  Congratulations to those of you who won a prize and thanks to everyone who supported this great cause by buying a ticket.  Also, thanks to those of you who kindly sold tickets for us.  We don’t have the final figures as yet but it’s looking as though the raffle raised almost $15,000 for neuroblastoma research.  We would like to pass on our heartfelt thanks to Garry for a wonderful effort in organising the raffle and to the various businesses who generously donated the prizes.  A fantastic effort!!

After drawing the raffle, we met Fairy Sparkle in a park.  We gave her a little fairy for Christmas to either put in the hospital’s fairy garden or in her own.  She has been so wonderful to Olivia the whole year and has brought her so much happiness.  When we met Fairy, we also had the opportunity to look inside her lovely little fluffy pink (on the inside) mobile home.  Olivia loved it.

We then had to head back to Canberra.  It was good to be home and back with Sarah again.  We really missed her but at the same time, we realise that it’s better for her to stay with Mum and Dad as Sydney is a very stressful experience for us and not the best place for her.  Sarah had a great time staying with Mum and Dad.

 It has been a while since our last update – we just seem to be so incredibly busy.

For those of you who don’t have days to spare to read over 50 pages and about our lives over the past several months, I will give you a brief summary of where we are at the moment. I should also point out that I have attempted to keep the journal up to date in a Word document (we just haven’t uploaded it!). I have also needed a good break from journaling as I sometimes lose motivation to document our lives as living it is usually hard enough.

To summarise:

• Olivia has completed six rounds of chemotherapy and her treatment. She also completed a week of local radiation to the cancer site.
• In August, my routine scan (6 months post-chemo) was clear (much to our relief!!).
• After Olivia’s fifth round of chemotherapy, scans showed that she is in remission again.
• On a recent holiday to the Gold Coast, Olivia spent half the time in hospital. She developed very high temperatures and required emergency surgery to have her portacath removed as she developed a serious infection.
• We have since been enjoying time at home. Olivia has been back at preschool, which she absolutely loves. We have been very busy catching up on the things that need doing at home and taking Olivia to various appointments as we are now trying various alternative medicines and approaches to health.
• Olivia will be having her next round of scans next week. We are naturally very anxious but hopeful that they will be clear and we can continue to enjoy happy times with our gorgeous girl.

 After Olivia relapsed, we sat down and thought about all the things that we wanted to do with her. This included doing lots of fun things, taking her on great holidays, and building her a fairy garden in our backyard. We know how much she loves the fairy garden at Sydney Children’s Hospital and how it gives her a place that she can go to enjoy herself and get away from everything. We had originally thought about turning a small disused section of our yard behind the gazebo into a fairy garden. We considered doing it ourselves, though soon realized that we had neither the time, the expertise, nor the funds to turn this dream into a reality. We desperately wanted to do something for Olivia so we contacted one of our local radio stations. However, we assumed that they were not in a position to help us as we did not hear anything for quite a long time.

Just when we were starting to think that no one was going to be able to help us, we had offers of help on the same day from both Mix106.3 and GHD, a local engineering consultancy. GHD wanted to do it as a team building experience, as part of their GHD in the community program.  Once the two organisations joined forces, the project took off and grew considerably in scope. GHD had allocated a budget and planned to do provide a lot of the labour, including landscape architects, project managers and general helpers. Mix106.3 put a call out on their breakfast radio program for donations of goods and specialist trades to assist with Olivia’s Fairy Garden. We were thrilled to learn that because of the overwhelming response from the Canberra community and their willingness to help us out, GHD were able to transform our entire backyard. We were amazed at what they were proposing to do for us.

Olivia sensed that something was up so we told her that there was going to be a surprise in the backyard – she said “What? A rollercoaster?!” with beaming eyes. She later picked up on our discussions about a fairy garden, as kept asking us about it. Luckily, we bought a few pieces for the fairy garden and placed them in the garden at the side of the house and convinced our girls that that was their new fairy garden.

We returned to Canberra on an early flight. We were disappointed that we didn’t have more time in Melbourne as there was still so much to do but I think when we initially booked the trip, we were becoming sick of the constant travel and wanted to make it a brief getaway.
 
It was relieved to arrive home early as there was still so much to do around the house.

We went into the city in the morning to see the Myer Christmas windows for which we had to queue for quite some time. We then went into the store to have a look around. As it turned out, we ended up buying more than we bargained for. We had to buy new jeans, undies and socks for Sarah as she had a bit of an accident in store. She’s only been toilet trained for about a month and hasn’t had too many accidents but I tell you what, she picks her times. We didn’t have any spare changes of clothes – guess we were becoming too confident.
 
We took a drive out into the middle of nowhere (that’s what it felt like) to a place called Fairy Park (www.fairypark.com). I saw it advertised in the Melways and thought that it sounded like a great place to take the girls. It was situated on a large hillside with gorgeous little animated scenes from various fairy tales on display as you made your way up the hill. There were also mushrooms, fairies, cottages and a castle dispersed around the area. The girls then spent much of our time there playing in ‘Camelot’, which was a fantastic fairytale playground for kids of many ages. A ‘castle’ surrounded the play equipment with many different areas of the castle to hide and play in. The girls didn’t want to leave.