Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Ella's 4th birthday party #1

If you're a new reader of Ella's Story, you can see previous posts with more background information on her health problems here:

Or for a very long story short, here is a brief description of Ella's main chronic health struggles:
Ella was diagnosed with hemiplegic cerebral palsy in 2008 after suffering a stroke in-utero in 2007. She also suffers from epilepsy, thrombosis, dysphagia, developmental delay, speech processing disorder and Pseudohypoaldosteronism.

October 16th marked Ella's 4th birthday. It was great to see her having lots of fun at her birthday party, after several very rough months where she was frequently in and out of hospital.

I took stacks of photos, so I'll break them up into a few seperate posts. Earlier in the week, my fiance Sally and I bought some presents for Ella; a Lion King DVD and a castle pinata. Before we left, Sally and my mum filled it up with lollies in preparation for the fun later on.





Then decorated the whacking stick.



We made our way over to Hungry Jack's, arriving a few minutes after the Jakas family.




As usual, Ella was excited to see Sally, and almost as excited to see the customised pinata stick, immediately grabbing it as we said hello and walked into Hungry Jack's.





With plenty of family and friends welcoming Ella in the party room, it was time to open some of the presents.






Ella loves DVDs, and she did get a few.



Emily and Scarlett were watching Ella open her presents with a smile.





Emily came over to help her unwrap some more gifts.






One of the presents was some sort of cowgirl hat, and Emily helped her to put it on straight as soon as it was out of the bag.









After opening quite a few presents, we moved outside so the adults (apart from me) could have some food. Or the closest equivalent Hungry Jack's has to actual food anyway. Meanwhile the little people ran around on the playground, with Sally and I keeping an eye out for anyone being a bit too adventurous. Scarlett in particular has a penchant for standing in as many dangerous places as she can find; usually something unsteady with wheels, and/or objects prone to toppling over, like plastic chairs.




I found out it's pretty uncomfortable in there if you're over a metre tall, but I got some good photos, in between stopping Scarlett from falling head over heels down the stairs.




With plenty of chips around, Ella couldn't resist eating a few with grandpa, before commandeering a packet of fries to take onto the playground.






After a few more guests and presents arrived, it was time for the kids to eat.











Clutching one of her DVDs, Ella went outside again to play, getting a whizzy from one of her cousins.





Then she joined some of the other kids on the playground. 




She managed to convince Grandma to come up and jump too, although with the lack of adequate headroom, she had to settle for watching a couple of her grandchildren having fun.





Ella then went to climb up a tunnel to the slippery slide at the top. With the brace on her left leg she struggled a bit, but managed to make it up all on her own, minus a shoe.





The top section is quite high up, but still with a low roof, and my knees and neck didn't appreciate the treatment of moving around in something designed for kids.






After plenty of mucking about on the playground, the kids were brought back into the party room for Ella's birthday cake...photos coming soon in the second post.


Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)