Well what a crazy few weeks we have had, from unbelievable fundraising achievements to finally receiving some good news about our house adaptations! As I have previously mentioned, with everything going on at the moment we had decided to put our fundraising on hold as it was both difficult to arrange and complete challenges and we had to also consider that peoples finances may have been affected from being furloughed or struggling for work and may not at this time feel like they could donate. However, I could not have been more wrong and in just over 4 weeks we have gone from £600 to just under £10,000 taking us from 5% of our target to a whopping 63%! I think I am still in shock to be honest and I am so thankful to all each and every person who has donated!
I would also like to say a huge thank you to Wayne and Jen of Inspire Sports Coaching who over the past two weeks have undertook two amazing challenges to help us raise money! Firstly, Wayne cycled a staggering 286 miles (the equivalent of London to Paris) in a week, and then Jenny, his wife completed the three peaks by climbing the stairs over 1400 times and completing this in only 5 days! They have both helped us to raise so much money and we are eternally grateful for their support! You can follow them and see their video updates as they competed challenges here: https://www.facebook.com/InspireScoach/
This week also saw the first Walk or Wheel raffle take place! We had originally planned a bake sale but unfortunately this fell through, and so we decided that we would put a raffle together, with only one week to plan it! Yet again we were overwhelmed with support from individuals and local businesses donating wonderful prizes! Jo was amazing and managed to make up some wonderful prizes and hampers and we ended up with over 50 raffle prizes! The whole raffle was done virtually with pictures of the tickets being sent over email and messenger and it all culminated with a live Facebook draw on Sunday with me and Charlie! It was lovely if not a little chaotic and nerve wrecking but Charlie grew massively in confidence over the 30 minutes and I think we may have a little presenter on our hands! (Sorry for the poor quality image, it’s a screen grab from the live video!)
Next up my brother is completing 100 kilometres of running through the month of June, that equates to a 10k every 3 days! This would be a challenge at any time, but with this glorious weather looking like it is sticking around for a bit it is surely going to prove to be a real feat! We will be following his progress on our social media pages so make sure you are following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
Jo and I are also currently planning our own challenge which will be a 38 mile walk in one day. This is a throwback to when we completed this approximately 7 years ago to raise money for the NICU unit at St Mary’s to help make improvements to the snowdrop suite. We chose 38 miles as this represented a day for every day Harry lived (I will write a blog about when we did this!) We will be completing this as soon as it is safe for grandparents to watch the children for us! The below picture was us on a brief lunch break about half way through!
And finally, after almost 3 years of waiting we have finally been approved to move forward with our house adaptations! This will make such a difference to our lives and again increase the amount of independence Charlie has! He will be having a lift put in from the front room up to his bedroom, a wet room built and also some flat entrances into the house.
So all in all a pretty fantastic couple of weeks! So this weekend is time to sit back, relax, take stock of everything and enjoy this marvellous weather with a BBQ and beer, it is my Birthday weekend after all! Stay safe and well everyone. Dan xx
