Over £10,000 from our London Marathon runners!!!

I've just checked the Justgiving pages of our London Marathon runners to see how their fundraising finished up. There may well be more to come, but as of today we already have an amazing grand total of £9,321 plus £833 from Gift Aid, so breaking the £10k mark.

Rory and Kerry managed to raise over £7.5k between them including the proceeds from the car-wash and coffee-morning at the church, and a fundraising pub-crawl (as Kerry said, it was her 'yang' to counter the 'ying' of Rory's car-wash, just not sure it was great final preparation a few week's before the marathon...), with the balance being made up by Dave's total, including the money raised at his business network dinner.

So from the efforts of these 3 individuals who have been touched by Ross's story enough to dedicate their own time and energy to raise money to help people with epilepsy, the NSE are £10k better off. I can't thank Rory, Kerry and Dave enough for this, and I think they already know how much it means to me.

If you have been inspired by their efforts, and feel like you might just be interested in giving the London Marathon a go in 2010, please let me know at karl@archiesmountain.com as I'm feeling a bit inspired myself (even more so than I do every year having just watched the marathon...).

To run, or not to run???

The London Marathon 2009

We had a great day in London yesterday cheering on the runners at the London Marathon, especially our 3 heroic runners for the NSE, who each have had their injury problems to content with, but who all finished safely.

It was a beautiful sunny day, ideal for watching, but maybe a little hot for running.

All 3 did really well, with Rory as the surprise front-finisher. With only 1 mile to go, he was striding along as if he was just out for a brief jog...

Dave also did really well and even stopped for a chat.

And it may look like Kerry had decided to get a piggy-back from this old dear...

...but she did actually run the whole way, through considerable pain due to a knee injury.


Ross enjoyed every minute of it!

Easter eggs, house moves and car-washes...

We had a chocolate-filled Easter weekend in Scotland for the Christening of some friends kids. Fin enjoyed his eggs and I enjoyed Ross's... Kirsty and Kenny decided to ask for donations via archiesmountain so more than £500 was added to the total as a result of their generosity - thanks!!!

Been a busy couple of weeks with our trip, hospital appointments and moving house. We had an EEG (scan of Ross's electrical brain activity) last Wednesday. He had lots of these in France but this was the first one in UK. To me the tracings on the screen looked very similar to the ones in France, still pretty chaotic, but the technician doing the scan seemed to think it wasn't as bad as I thought. We'll have to wait for our next paediatric appointment to get find out what it all meant.

We've also moved house so are finally into our own place again. Boxes and stuff everywhere, but it's great to be able to get settled once and for all. We're in Bookham in Surrey, not far from where we were before but we've really noticed the reduced space having been in 5 bedroom houses for the past 2 years - we've restocked the local charity shop and the garage is still pretty full. Bookham is very nice and we're close to the common with lots of woodland paths - no excuse now for not doing some longer runs in the run-up to Mont Blanc.

On Saturday there were 2 separate events to raise money for the NSE, organised by our intrepid NSE marathon runners;
- Rory McMillan, Kerry Crawford, my family and friends and everyone at Ballygrainey Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland held a charity car-wash, coffee morning, and cake and vegetable sale and raised an amazing £2500
- David Gallagher's business network in Bedford raised £1000 at their annual awards dinner on Saturday night
A massive thank-you to Rory/Kerry/David and everyone else involved. The money's all adding up...

A specialist optician came out to see Ross this morning and was very positive about his sight. Ross was following lights and objects much more so than we'd seen him do in the past and we're very encouraged to hear some positive news. I guess we need to work on stimulating him a bit more so he'll be able to sit-up with me and watch the Lions beat the Springboks this summer...

Finally, my brother William and his kite-surfing pal's website is live. They're supporting 4 great charities, one of which is NSE and with over a dozen kite-surfers planning to cross from Northern Ireland to Scotland at the end of the summer I'm sure they'll raise lots of money. Please visit www.kitechallenge.com to see what they're doing and to donate if you wish.

Sunshine and picnics

We've just had a great weekend with Richard and his family staying with us for a few days.

Their twin boys are the same age as Fin, and their older son and daughter kept Fin entertained in the garden for the whole weekend. Ross got lots of attention from Richard's wife and did his usual 'I'll pretend I'm no bother' behaviour when we have people to stay. He was full of smiles and only cried when he got his medecine. He even slept pretty well! I reckon he does it so everyone thinks we're nuts when he say he cries loads or doesn't sleep...

Did a 5 mile run with Rich on Saturday to compare our fitness levels - it's strange how even though we're the same height his legs seem so much longer and therefore faster than mine. We then proceeded to undo any fitness gained by having a very long lunch in the sunshine in the garden all afternoon.

We also collected the keys to our new house at the weekend and went there for a picnic in the garden on Sunday. We're planning on moving during the week after Easter; it'll be good to get into our own place at last.

Ross has had visits from the speech and language therapist and has been seeing other therapists each Wednesday morning. Last week he giggled when presented with a little vibrating toy, and we've noticed he's started moving his head in order to follow lights with his eyes. All little positive signs which mean so much.

We're off to Scotland for Easter in a few days - hope you al have a great Easter break.

I'll leave you with this image taken on the final ridge to the summit of Mont Blanc - we're hoping for weather like that...

Did I mention Ireland won the Grand Slam?

Apart from some smiles once or twice a day, Ross has been a lot more agitated in the past week or so than he has been. Lots of crying, sleeping not so well during the night and not eating as well as he has been. He has had a pretty bad cough which we thought might go into his chest again so we've been keeping a close eye on it, but it doesn't seem to be getting any worse. Hopefully he'll get back to himself in the coming days.

I have been hacking-up bits of lung for the past 5 days so training has been put on hold - even climbing the stairs has been knackering me. Hope I can shake it before this weekend as Rich and his wife and 4 kids are coming to stay this weekend and I'll need all my energy... Also it's only 10 weeks till we head to Mont Blanc so I need to ramp-up my training quite a bit (have I said that before???)

We've exchanged contracts on our new house and hope to move in just after Easter so once we get settled there we'll think about when to start weaning Ross off the steroids as the doctors think he's already been on them too long - can't really face it though given the risk of the seizures returning. We've also got appointments for an EEG, and with some eye and ear specialists in the coming weeks so I'll let you know how they go.

My brother Ian received a cheque for £500 from Donaghadee Young Farmers Club at the weekend, money they had raised at a BBQ last year for the NSE for Ross. I had no idea they were even raising money but it's very touching that people who have never even met Ross are inspired to raise money to help. Thank you very much to everyone who was involved in that.

It's April Fool's Day today, but for some reason I don't feel like partaking like I did in previous years...

Mont Blanc from a distance...

We had a great week away skiing last week in Les Gets in the French Alps. Clair and I only skied half days whilst the other was with Ross, but the snow was great and we ony saw a few clouds all week - perfect conditions.

Fin enjoyed ski school and had no problems getting pulled uphill on the rope or skiing down the slope - it's a good job we were only there for a week or he'd have ended up better (although not faster...) than me. Ross enjoyed the attention and it was great spending a full week with him again, despite the nights on the sofa.

Mont Blanc was ever present on the horizon - it does look big...

We were there with our good friends and their kids. If there was one thing that made the week difficult, it was seeing their kids, who are just weeks older than Ross, toddling around, laughing and throwing food around. How we wish Ross had been able to join in, although that's the situation and we have to live with it, no matter how difficult.

Ross does bring us lots of joy too. Like most blokes, as long as he's had a decent feed and a good sleep, he's content. And he loves his baths, especially with Fin.

Planes, no trains but automobiles.

We reckon we're doing pretty well in keeping things as normal as possible. Last weekend we drove to Scotland and even managed to leave the boys with their Grandma and Grandpa for 2 whole nights while we went our or friends' wedding. And this weekend we're heading off skiing!

Last weekend was great, if tiring, but Fin and Ross seemed to enjoy the additional attention, and they got to meet their newest cousin Thomas.


This Sunday we head to Les Getz for a week's skiing with some friends. I'm not sure how much skiing we'll get done but it will be great to spend a week with family and friends. Taking my hiking boots so may get Ross in the backpack and do some altitude training.

Rich and I have got our flights to Geneva booked for our attempt of Mont Blanc. We'll be there the middle weekend in June and are just hoping for good weather, but at least it's early enough in the summer to allow us to try again later on if we don't make it that weekend. Need to step-up the fitness training though as that will come round very quickly.

Just been watching some of Comic Relief (it's 2.30am and Ross and I have nothing else to do...) and 23 things stood ot for me;
- so far they've raised over £57million, an amazing total which will help countless people at home and abroad
- great to see those pampered celebs getting themselves up Mount Kilimanjaro, although they seemed to have had a rather large support crew. I hope Rich and I can support each other enough on Mont Blanc. At least we won't have to listen to Gary Barlow the whole way up.
- watching any clips with sick kids in them was so much harder this year this before...