Up The Farway Tree

April Fun

It's been a busy month :-)   My birthday, mums birthday, Easter, my dads birthday and my transplant anniversary!!

It was my birthday first and I had a lovely day with my friend Lucie and Lauren, and their lovely children.  We went to Calderglen park for the day as I had been desperate to see the meerkats haha.  We pretended it was for the children.....!   We then had lunch and cake at Lauren's, before I headed home and went out for dinner with Andrew, Mum and Dad.  A lovely day all round :-)

Snowy owl cake ;-)

Then it was mums 65th birthday!  As it's not long since her hip surgery I decided to cook dinner instead of us going out, as she could then relax more.  I went all fancy and for the first time cooked duck breast!  It was rather successful if I do say so myself, although very time consuming with all this "rendering the fat" carry on before cooking it.  Will just stick to steak and chips next time ;-)  I did make a cake and a shrink plastic butterfly to decorate it (this is my new favourite craft item!)  We had got her some nice Citrine jewellery to match the Citrine ring dad got her for their 40th wedding anniversary.

The following weekend was Easter and I was so glad to have a Monday holiday.  We had Easter dinner with mum and Uncle Hugh - as dad had flown off to Ireland for a week with his brother, golfing!  Mum cooked a lovely roast lamb dish and a new poached pear with chocolate sauce recipe.  I stayed until the Monday as we were having a 'cousins' get together on the Monday.  Mums cousins son, Ben, was over from Australia visiting so all the first and second cousins gathered on Monday to catch up and say hello.  It was a good turn out and a lovely night.  Nice to have a family who make so much effort to keep up with one another :-)

Last weekend was Dads 70th birthday and my 6th transplant anniversary!   Dad was in Ireland on his actual birthday, although apparently the pub brought out a cake for him haha - this is probably a sign of how much they spent there over the week ;-)   We had a gathering for his friends on the Sunday once he was home.  Myself and Corey (who was up visiting) were in charge of food shopping and cleaning haha - we made a good team although not sure it was quite to mums standards!  Corey got told off for slacking on a number of occasions and I was reprimanded for the way I stuffed a pillow into it's case haphazerdly :P

I think dad really enjoyed the gathering, although we couldn't stay too late as had work the next day.  Mum had made a cake and I was creating with the shrink plastic again, so made a wee golfer dad and a flag with 70 on it.  Was quite pleased with myself ;-)

My transplant anniversary was very quiet to be honest.  My dear friend Anders is in hospital just now, fighting to recover from his transplant.  He got the call on 6th April but has had several complications.  The lungs started to fail last week and he had to be placed on ECMO (machine which takes bloods out and oxygenates it) and has remained in ITU.  He is fighting harder than anyone I have known and is so determined.  They are keeping him on ECMO just now to give the lungs a chance to recover, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.  It has made me realise just how lucky I was to be given that second chance 6 years ago and it puts life in perspective.  It is far too short and we really do just have to make the most of it while we can.

Finally, the yellow duck project I mentioned has now launched and is doing well!  I have left ducks in various places and a few have been reported back to the website as being found.  I still have some to leave but it's an ongoing project so will probably make some more with time - might ask friends and family to start leaving them in different places for me!  I made the mistake of naming them after people I have lost to CF and transplant, so then I didn't want to leave them anywhere!  However I did leave Fran during one of my dog walks on a nice bench near the start of the west highland way.  My friend left Gerard duck on the commonwealth game bench in Glasgow Green, which was so apt given Gerard competed in all the the transplant games.   It's a fun project, so any crafters who could get involved please get in touch.  Check out the website here:  http://thelittleyellowduckproject.org/