I can’t even tell you how lovely it was to spend a night away with Oll in York this weekend – just the two of us. It’s something we never did before and we joked that maybe we don’t wait until I’m on deaths door to do it again! That trips like that should be a part of living – not dying. Enjoy each other – after all there’s a reason we’ve been together for 14 years, married for 8 with two kids. We must quite like each other?! 

We had a couple of lovely things planned like a guided food tour around the city and Yorks chocolate experience. And left the rest of the time free for meandering around the streets and just doing whatever we fancied. We did that really annoying thing where you go away without kids and just talk about them the whole time. 

• ‘Oh they’d love it here wouldn’t they’
• ‘We will have to bring them here’
• ‘Oh they’d love that, let’s buy it for them’ 

But it was also lovely to spend time together that wasn’t entirely focused on the kids like the rest of life seems to be. To prioritise our relationship and the foundations we’ve built this family on. Marriage is hard work and we’ve definitely put the work in over the years to make sure we’ve stood the test of time. But we probably haven’t done much of the whole celebrating each other and enjoying each other – not enough anyway. Not as much as we would like to moving forward if we are blessed with that time now. I’m not saying there’s always the time or money to just bog off to York every weekend, let’s be honest! But we could definitely do better at prioritising this area of our lives. Appreciating each other as separate entities to just mummy and daddy.  

We found ourselves laughing alot, truly enjoying each other’s company and remembering why we’re doing this together! (Once we had figured out what the HELL to do on our own without our babies, that is). Nev third wheeled a bit – not going to lie 🙄 but we managed to push him to the back of our minds for enough time to have the most gorgeous little trip. We even resisted the urge to just stay and vegetate in the hotel room for naps and room service once our heads hit the massive comfy bed and we realised we were actually alone without any bickering, tiny dictators 😂. We ushered ourselves out to some lovely restaurants, bars, shops and experiences and made one heck of a memory (hopefully one that’s not erased next week please when I wake up from surgery). That would be annoying. Does FIFI do refunds if so? I’ll have to check the policy. I’ll add it to the to do list. 

During a good 3am wide awake steroid insomnia fun time – I also booked us some Christmas memories to be made this year. In amongst the fact that I truly do believe I’m going to live through this and have many more christmases with my family, it dawned on me that nothing is guaranteed. It never was before, but certainly isn’t now! I sometimes feel like I’m living very dangerously being so positive about all of this. Because what if the worst does happen and prognosis after surgery is awful? It’s important to allow myself these feelings, acknowledge them but then move on to feeling my authentic self. Which is just positive, trusting and at peace with this journey I’m on. I shouldn’t be scared of that feeling. I’m trusting in this process – just with an extra bit of caution tape around it is how I would explain it ⚠️. So instead of spending steroid insomnia fun time on Scrabble Go on this occasion, I lay in my fancy bed at the Malmaison in York and thought – let’s create some Christmas memories. Let’s manifest a gorgeous Christmas and make this happen! I can make the most of the fact that I have no restrictions on booking time off work this year. I’ll be back to looking after those Christmas mums and babies next year and cramming in my own family time around that. But this year I won’t, and that can be a blessing here. I can also combine this with the unbelievable generosity you’ve all shown via the go fund me page. Obviously this money isn’t for blowing on extravagant things, it will help us financially when my sick pay drops down and help me if any new or private treatment becomes available – that’s what it’s there for. BUT, so many of you want us to enjoy it too – to make those memories. So I bit the bullet and withdrew some. It was honestly terrifying. Having a go fund me page for yourself is a wild experience on its own. One I never thought I would have. I’m usually the donator. The onlooker. The ‘oh my god, imagine that at such a young age with such a young family’. Well turns out this time it’s me and there’s not much I can do about it. Life is funny like that. I feel like I’m trying to justify what I’ve spent the money on to you here – I will probably feel like I have to do that forever just so you know 😂 (I even found Oll hiding at the back of the Co-op the other day because he was buying a drink and someone who had donated was in there. He was scared he’d think he was wasting the funded money on a drink bless him) I promise we’re spending it wisely and that Oll uses his own money for his co op trips- it’s just such an natural thing to be given so much money that we don’t really know how to handle it. Anyway, to cut to the chase I got those big girl knickers on and did a bit of a splurge. I booked Disney on Ice in December for all four of us and even booked us a christmas night away which falls a few days before Xmas at Alton Towers. The full blown Xmas package with a fancy pirate room for the babies, pantomime experience, grotto, entry to the park, entry to the water park, Xmas meal, Xmas crazy golf – basically just kids entertainment up to your eye balls and covered in tinsel! And it felt great. We did it a few years ago and loved it but haven’t managed to fit it around work commitments and finances since then. So this felt special. And again, not possible without your generous donations and fundraisers, so we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for that. Because of you, we have some brilliant Xmas memories to look forward to now that will ensure we create memories despite how many christmases these babies have left with their mummy! 

To finish up tonight’s addition to the blog, I continue on this journey of a real deep self discovery. I still can’t fully explain what I’m experiencing – but it is a path of such a deep rooted purpose for life. An ignition for change and finding my inner self. A real awakening of the body and soul and something I haven’t been able to shake since women’s circle almost a week ago! That night SHOOK me so much. I feel like it’s an avenue I’m being drawn down so deeply to explore, down this road I never expected to be on. Yet i somehow feel ‘lucky’ to be on this path. Is that the right word – maybe not. But I certainly feel blessed to be on this path now – so maybe it is! The unluckiest, lucky thing ever?! Maybe I’m not very articulate after all 😂. I have made plans to draw in on this over this next chapter of my life and explore all if its branches. Embrace this awakening and use it to help me through this. We could look at how unlucky statistically I am to be diagnosed with this at 30. Probably quite damn unlucky I’m guessing. But why would we do that when we could look at this from another angle. The angle of – how fulfilling could this be to my life, having walked this path so young? Doing this at 30 means I can take the wisdom I learn along this journey into my later life. I feel the simplicity is key here – a healthy person wishes for a million things, but an ill person wishes for one. And that is so powerful. I was handed my biggest fear in life just over a month ago – just so that I could see what I could do with it. And I’m determined to make that great! 

Anyway enough about me – normal life with the babies resumes now that we’re home from York! And we’re ready to spend the last few days before surgery surrounded by family and friends where we feel the best ❤️. Willow swallowed her tooth whilst we were away so that’s the big news around here at the minute anyway – not me! She’s desperately waiting for it to come out in her poo and finding the whole thing hilarious (whilst secretly being very concerned that no tooth under the pillow will mean no money under the pillow). Let’s see what that tooth fairy decides shall we! 🧚 

Lots of love from Jen and Nev 🧠👁️⚡️

https://gofund.me/1d2da3d9