Saturday, April 21, 2007

Come on and party!

Having rushed to get better in time for her birthday party, Hannah just made it! She went to school for the morning on the Friday, just to make sure that everyone knew that her party was still on!

It was fun to have all her friends from school to the party, which we held at Thornhill Centre, and Hannah's pneumonia certainly didn't prevent her from lots of bouncing on the bouncy castle!

The party was a real team-effort - Mummy sorted out the food...

Daddy did the games...

Grumpy blew the bubbles...

And Thomas led the conga!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Happy 1st Birthday, Bethan

After an exciting holiday away with the Hurley's, Bethan celebrated her 1st birthday today. She couldn't wait to blow out the candle on her cake!

For Hannah and Thomas, the party was a great chance to stuff faces...

...and to play out in the garden!

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Minimonia

Since Hannah still wasn't feeling too well - and seemed to be getting worse - we took her to the local doctor on the Thursday of our holiday. He, more or less, took one look at Hannah, and sent us straight to Truro Hospital! He thought that it might be appendicitis (we've been there before!), and suggested we hurry.

We arrived at Truro Hospital, and the doctors started to give Hannah a check-over. They took an x-ray, and confirmed that Hannah had pneumonia in her left lung. We felt very guilty that we'd been dragging Hannah around all those gardens while she was coming down with pneumonia - sorry Hannah!

The doctors admitted Hannah into hospital, and then put a drip in her arm, an oxygen mask around her face, and put monitor tabs all over her chest. They took her into the high-dependency unit for the first night, just in case, and Daddy slept next to her on a camp bed.

For Hannah, Mummy and Daddy, the holiday was over. Thankfully, Thomas was still able to enjoy himself and explore Cornwall with Nanny and Grumpy, Uncle Mike, Auntie Jan, James and Bethan. They all looked after him very well, and he was a very good boy for them. Meanwhile, Mummy and Daddy were spending the remaining days in the hospital, and then taking it in turns each night to sleep on the camp bed next to Hannah.

Thankfully, Hannah began to make a very quick recovery - the antibiotics kicked in, but she really didn't like having them dripped into her arm. She was still in a lot of pain when she coughed, and she was hating being in hospital. The worst thing was lack of sleep - she really, really needed a good night's sleep, but hospitals are such noisy places that she wasn't resting very well at all.

The Saturday of the end of our holiday came, and we were hoping that Hannah would be able to be transferred to UWH Cardiff, so that we could all go home. That wasn't to be, though - she was still making a 'grunting' noise when she breathed (especially when doctors came to see her and made her nervous), so they couldn't let her do the journey back to Cardiff. So, Thomas went home in Uncle Mike's minibus, while Mummy and Daddy stayed in parent accommodation at the hospital. Not much fun...

The following day, it was touch and go whether Hannah would be transferred - she was still 'grunting' on the first visit from the doctor, so they gave her an asthma pump to see if that would help control it. The second visit came, and the 'grunting' had stopped - we could go! Yippee! It was a nightmare journey on the way home, and Hannah didn't enjoy it at all, but we arrived at the hospital in Cardiff in time for her next dose of antibiotics, and settled Hannah into her new bed!

The worst thing was that the Cardiff hospital didn't have camping beds for parents - all that we had was a reclining chair next to the bed. Luckily, the hospital was quiet on the Sunday night, so they felt sorry for Ruth and let her sleep in the patient bed next to Hannah! Daddy wasn't so lucky on the Monday night (as the ward had filled up by then), so a good night's sleep wasn't to be found for him!

Thankfully, Hannah was able to be moved onto oral antibiotics, which meant that she was released from hospital on the Tuesday - hooray!!! She was very glad to be home, and was running around the garden not long after she got back!

She's well on her way to making a full recovery, and to see her running around now (in May) you wouldn't have thought that there had ever been anything wrong with her. We do owe her another holiday, though - as she really didn't enjoy much of that one!

So, a sad end to a happy holiday, but it was still a good time away! You can see the rest of our photos from the holiday in our online photo album.

P.S. If you're wondering why this blog post is called minimonia, that's what Hannah has taken to calling her illness - very apt!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

In the beginning...

Another day, another garden - this time it was a trip to the Eden Project.

Hannah wanted to stay at home on the Tuesday of our holiday, as she still wasn't feeling well, so we all missed a trip to Lands End and Penzance in Uncle Mike's bus. On the Wednesday we decided that we'd still go on our planned visit to the Eden Project, even though Hannah was still poorly. And, we're glad we did, as it certainly lived up to the hype.

Once again, poor old Hannah spent most of the time in Thomas' pushchair, fast asleep - so she missed the banana trees, and the pineapples, and the waterfall, and the... I guess we'll have to visit again one day so she can see what she missed!

Monday, April 09, 2007

English country garden

We headed off to Trevarno Estate today, which has a huge, gorgeous garden to explore, with the coolest adventure playground ever! We'd definitely recommend a visit if you're ever in that area.

In fact, we nearly left Grumpy there, because he didn't seem to want to leave the toy museum!

Unfortunately, poor old Hannah wasn't feeling very well, so she spent most of the time asleep in Thomas' pushchair. We thought that she'd probably eaten too many Easter eggs the day before - if only we knew...

Sunday, April 08, 2007

On the beach

The late afternoon of Easter Sunday we spent on the beach.

For an early April day, the weather was fantastic, and it was even warm enough to go piddling paddling in the sea!

In we go...

And out we go again, very quickly!

The sea was very chilly, so we found a little 'lagoon' to splash around in, instead. Much warmer!

As we were going to St. Ives...

...we didn't meet any bigamists(!), but we did have a very eventful holiday!

The trip was Grumpy's retirement present to us - he paid for Nanny, Grumpy, Uncle Mike, Auntie Jan, James, Bethan and the four of us to rent a cottage for a week near St. Ives. The cottage that we booked was gorgeous - and huge! We were all set up for a great week of fun - especially with a great park just down the road!

On Easter Sunday we had an Easter-egg hunt in the garden, with the children running around looking for different coloured Easter-eggs. They enjoyed the search so much, that instead of immediately eating the eggs (as I would have done!) they decided to hide the eggs that they found and start looking again!

I'll give the rest of the story in other posts.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Happy 5th Birthday, Hannah!

Hannah has spent the last 365 days looking forward to today, when she finally reached her 5th birthday!

After opening a stack of presents and cards (thanks everyone!), we headed off to Techniquest in Cardiff Bay to practice some of the experiments that Hannah enjoys so much on 'Nina and the Neurons'

Sadly, neither Nina nor her Neurons were around, but we all had loads of fun trying out all the different gizmos and gadgets.

Afterwards, we headed off to Grandma & Grandad's house for a family party. It was very good of Grandma to offer to host the party, as we're all off to St. Ives tomorrow on holiday!

The party was great, the food delicious, and Hannah really enjoyed herself. It's fun being five!