Take 2- Chessington!

22 September 2016

Post Pals held its second big trip to Chessington World of Adventures! Over 40 people had an amazing weekend.

Saturday was spent having fun in the theme park and feeding the Sea lions. Poor Kennedy’s Dad ended up with a head covered in fish juice!
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Afterwards we had a very special moment. Earlier this year Faith was taken off life support and given 2-4 hours to live, amazingly she is still here fighting on. Despite turning 15 this week (she had a lovely cake at the meal) she had never been on a theme park ride before. With some careful planning, stopping the ride for a while and help with lifting equipment, we got Faith on the carousel! She was able to go around in her parents arms while the princess carriage gently rocked. A very special moment for us all.
Faith
In the evening we all met for a group meal and some of the kids did lots of dancing with the entertainers.
Sunday started with meeting some animals which all the children loved. Our Pal Malachi is blind (caused by his brain tumour when he was a baby) and has always wanted to feel a bird so he knows what they are like. Post Pals organised for Malachi to meet an owl at our party but he was too unwell to attend. When staff found this out they radioed down to the keeper looking after birds and they brought 2 different size owls up just for Malachi to feel!
 Owl
Later on we met for a pizza lunch and Vikki entertained the children by making balloon models, only she isn’t very good at it! Tegan was good at inventing new species to fit roughly what the balloon model looked like and lots of the young ones had a go at making their own. Mean while Jaymee was being dragged on big rides by the older ones!
Mae
Lots of families stayed until closing time and all went home with a smile on their face!
Here are just some of the pictures
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Ella’s Mum said
“Many smiles happened this weekend, all the little extras made the trip even more special. We definitely will not forget such an amazing weekend and will be forever grateful to everybody involved in making this possible.”
Ella
Lewis said;
“I had so much fun doing everything, finding the treasure, meeting the animals and all you can eat”
Lewis
Kennedys Mum said;
“This weekend we were treated to an amazing break at Chessington World of Adventures. The wonderful charity Post Pals kindly paid for everything! We got to stay in the Azteca hotel, feed sealions, go on rides, meet and greet other animals, eat lots of food and so on. We had so much fun and felt so lucky to be there. It was a very much needed family weekend. We got to meet some other Post Pal families who were all so wonderful. I got emotional watching Kennedy on one of the rides. She was laughing and smiling away just like a normal 3 year old and it made me so happy. It was so great for Teigan and Riley too as they go through and miss out on so much so it was so good to just see them letting their hair down.”

“The memories we’ve been given us will help us through the hard times, Seeing Rachel so happy, smiling meant the world and the next day at hospital she couldn’t stop talking about it”
Rachel

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Ebonie’s Special Princess Message

21 September 2016

Ebonies favourite Princess sent her a special message to make her smile as she has been in hospital a lot recently.

Thank you to Princess Parties UK for the fab video and managing to drop in glittery bath bombs- Ebonie believes all Princesses use sparkly bath bombs!

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Chessington weekend

21 September 2016

After 9 months of fundraising our first Chessington trip finally happened!

45 children travelled from all over the UK and arrived super excited for the big weekend. After checking into the Azteca hotel they found themselves transported into themed rooms, where they found goodies locked in a safe. In order to get the goodies you had to complete puzzles to crack the code that opened the safe. There were more surprises in store when the children found air walkers and goodie bags kindly donated by Merlin. Many of the rooms over looked the zoos animals and everyone said it felt like you were in Africa! How many people can say they have seen giraffes from their bedroom window?

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Everyone gathered together for a group lunch and surprisingly joined by Wimbledon AFC players who came and said hello to the children. They were fantastic, spending lots of time chatting to the children and their families despite the fact they had a match coming up (they won!).

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After lunch it was time to feed the Sea Llions, this was accompanied by a lot of giggles!

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The families spent the rest of the day enjoying all that the theme park had to offer before coming back to the hotel and gathering for the evenings entertainment. 5 beautiful girls wore the special princess dresses they had been sent by Post Pals. Issy and Amy spent a long time playing princesses together! All the children had to sit on the throne.

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On Sunday everyone woke up bright and early and enjoyed a group breakfast with characters before our exclusive animal meet and greet. The superstars got to meet, touch and hold all different kinds of animals. The Macaw’s were really amazing! If you told them a joke they would laugh and if you poked your tongue out at them they would do the same back!

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The rest of Sunday was spent in the park, not just enjoying the many exciting rides but having the chance of getting their faces painted, another group lunch (where a child caught a Pokemon he thought was impossible to catch!) and even more rides! All of the families were given wrist bands which enabled them to jump the queues and walk onto any ride and they certainly put this to good use!

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Our Pal William S is extremely unwell (he was on the heart transplant list for 5 years but has deteriorated too much to remain on it) but it didn’t stop him taking volunteer Jaymee on all the big rides! William’s family, Grace and Sophie all tried to get him to open his eyes on the Kobra but eyes open was a step too far!

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It was an amazing weekend, some children had previously met at the party before and were excited to see each other and others made new friends instantly.

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Guess what Post Pals is doing next weekend? All of this again with another set of superstar families!
We will be sending out thank you notes to those who donated and held fundraisers for us but I want to give a very special shout out to Sarah!! Without her this trip would have remained just a pipe dream. Thank you to Dawn, Steve, Jaymee and Catherine for their hard work. Also a huge thank you to Nikki from Merlin who has put in lot of work (even when she was meant to be off) and has done so much to take the trip to a whole new level of special!

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