I know i’m weeks late, but here goes..

About a week or so before Christmas, a few of us from the large never ending Sharpe family went on a camping trip to Towoon Bay (The Entrance, which is North of Sydney). We had been talking about this with our girls for months as we booked it before we even left on our own trip. Super excited because my niece and the girls cousin Eliana was going, along with my cousins, Aunties, 2nd cousins, our Nan and my beautiful Mum. We’d left St Marys and got to Towoon Bay just after lunch, we still had the caravan attached to the car when Olivia starting screaming/crying. She was running around an ensuite toilet block and tripped. I did my usual ‘are you ok ? You’ll be right’ followed shortly by ‘WHY do you do such silly things’ ?? rant rant rant. It soon became evident however that she wasn’t moving from the ground and once my brother in-law was paying more attention to her than I was, I knew something was up. So my sister Laura and I, took Olivia to Gosford Hospital where we waited all up around 3 hours.

After some pain medication and x-rays we were seen by a couple of specialists who couldn’t see any breaks. Olivia was unable to put any pressure on her foot at all though, so because she’s a child and breaks can show up later (up to a week or more) they had to treat her injury as if it were a break. I tried to talk Olivia around, to see if she could stand on it but she refused. Once she had heard the words ‘crutches and half cast’ she was pretty excited. So, after she was fitted with both cast and crutches and instructions about not getting her leg/foot wet, we set off. She was in pain, I’m not denying that but the Dr’s just needed to sign off on her and move to the next patient. She was of course the ‘star’ of the family back at the caravan park, and was fussed over for the rest of the night. The following day was a hot one, so off to the pool we went.. wasn’t long after this that the excitement wore off for poor little Lulu. Seeing everyone else having fun in the pool left her feeling angry and sad ;-( .. My cousin Brenden and his lovely girlfriend Cassie kept her entertained though, making bracelets and in general just being very kind to her. My sister Belinda also drove up for the day and painted her nails and played ‘slave’ for the day 🙂

Towoon Bay itself was a nice break. My cousin Sam and her husband Chris and the boys Max and Noah came up from Melbourne so was great to spend some time with them too. We had a night of Cosmo’s and laughs with my Aunty Eileen, swims at the beach, feeding the pelicans (of course) and basically just enjoying everyones company. After 4 days on the crutches (we were supposed to go back to the hospital on day 7) Wayne and I made the decision to take the cast off ourselves. There was no swelling, Lulu wasn’t complaining about the pain and basically everyone had seen her at one point or another standing on it when she thought no one was watching her ! Low and behold after about 1 hour she was riding her bike. Enough said !

We also took the opportunity to take the kids to see the Christmas Lights at the Hunter Valley. It was so pretty, so many lights and so many people. The kids loved it, was worth the drive.. It was a nice week and we got to spend some quality time with my family, as usually whenever we are in Sydney it becomes chaotic and there’s never enough time.. Apart from my bike being stolen (from the back of the caravan, cheeky drunks) we had a really nice time. Here are some pictures xo