Conference

We have just got back from the CHARGE conference held at the Twinwaters Resort on the Sunshine Coast. The conference was fantastic and I learned so much during the weekend, I got to meet amazing parents of kids with CHARGE, I got to meet fantastic support people and teachers of children with CHARGE, I met Belinda (an adult with CHARGE) and she was so nice, she was also really good with the kids and they all loved her. I met David Brown (Education Specialist with vast experience of children with CHARGE, he works for Deaf Blind Services in San Fransisco), Tim Hartshorne(Proffessor and Director of the School Psychology program at Central Michigan University and father of a CHARGE child) and Rob Last (Teacher of the Deaf, working with CHARGE children for many many years, he also has a strong interest in sensory impairment).
The kids were well looked after by volunteers and whisked off to the zoo on Saturday, where they had a great time... Stephanie and Aiden were lucky enough to be carried around by David...

Sunshine Coast holiday

This was our first resort type holiday with the kids and I must say it is much easier prior to children or post children, but with them was tiring, we didn't manage to have a calm meal without the kids going psycho, so the first night was our buffet meal where you could eat as much as you like of prawns, oysters, and everything your heart could desire, except holding down one wriggling child and sculling an oyster with the other hand kind of ruined the atmosphere, it landed up being rushed and over in a short as possible time. The kids had to share a pull out bed and the nights were long, going to sleep was longer, the little buggers jumped, tickled and laughed until they had no sense of humour, they were forced into sleep with the wrath of God promised apon them if they did not be quiet and go to sleep, even one in our bed and one in the pull out couch didn't work since they were directly opposite eachother it seemed more fun than not. We were all so close together that if anyone farted the rest would wake, so they went to bed at about 9pm every night and woke up at the crack of dawn (6am) when the local bird life started early wake up calls, I could have put them into extinction myself but didn't have the energy to chase them around. At least we had a king size bed, because every morning there were four people in it, two adults squashed up and on the brink of sleep and two stretched out, very comfortable kids.
It may be a long time before we pluck up the courage to do it again, but I hope so because it was fun.