Family: Grandpa

Grandpa is my dad - also affectionately known as Jurassic Fart. Grandpa played quite a big role in Kayleigh's life. From a young age Grandpa took Kayleigh (and her siblings) out to places like Weston Park, bush walking, Questacon and sometimes even the movies. Kayleigh really loved going out with Grandpa but she did get a little sick of going on bush walks. One time Grandpa took Kayleigh, Natassja and Terry to Sydney to the Zoo - and Kayleigh was really impressed by the elephants. On another occasion he took Kayleigh and Natassja down to Cooma for an astronomical thing -  where Kayleigh said the best thing was going to the chinese restaurant, but she didn't like the fact Grandpa made her use chopsticks!!

At Corin dam  



Sydney



Piccadilly Circus in the Brindabella's - the sign burnt down in 2003

Wanting to push Natassja in.

At the 'Canberra show' patting (as she said ) - Mummy!!!!

The Fountain of Lemonade

Kayleigh was breast feed until she was about 6 months old and then we started her on bottles - until she started gnawing at the teats and making huge teeth holes in them. One day we were having lunch at a small eatery at Tuggeranong called the Grapevine (where the $5 bookshop is now near Woolworths). Kayleigh had been whinging for a drink and we didn't want to pay the exhorbinant prices at the eatery so Terence went and got a small bottle of lemonade from Woolworths to put in her bottle. We forgot to check if the teat had holes in it and we also forgot to shake the lemonade after we had put it in the bottle to take most of the fizz out of it. Kayleigh grabbed her bottle and started drinking while we got back to our lunch. The next thing we knew, Kayleigh started shaking her bottle and a huge fountain of lemonade started erupting out of the 4 holes that was in the teat. Kayleigh was laughing as she thought it was extremely amusing, but the old ladies on the table next to us were not amused as the got drenched by the lemonade. I'm sure they though we were the worst people in the world, they didn't even wait for us to apologise, they just stood up and stomped out of there. Terence grabbed the bottle and covered all the holes and waited until it stopped fizzing much to Kayleigh's annoyance - she was having a great time.

In the kitchen

Kayleigh didn't really get into cooking but she sure liked to 'help' cook. Whenever I would bake a cake, she was there helping break the eggs or measure out the milk and stir the batter - but it was in her plan so she could lick the bowl. When I started making lemon cheesecakes, Kayleigh was there helping so she could run of with the not quite empty sweetened condensed milk can. Kayleigh did attempt to make a cheesecake herself once but she just didn't have the patience to mix the Philadelphia cheese until it was nice and smooth, so she ended up with a nice tasting cheesecake, but with lumps of philly cheese in it.

When it came to the actual cooking, Kayleigh was happy to stir something every now and again, but she hated standing at the stove for long periods, so she would either delegate the job to her sister, or walk off. One time I asked her to cook the sausages on the BBQ but since there was a program on TV she really wanted to watch she did a very quick job and the sausages were still raw when she brought them in. I was not impressed.

Kayleigh did like to help with the pork roast as I have mentioned before, but her love of cooking went as far as licking the bowl, 'taste-testing' the food as it cooked and eating the results. She could never have cooked a whole meal by herself because she was too interested in doing other things.

Glass half full, or half empty

Was Kayleigh an optimist or a pessimist? I think anyone who knew her would have known that she was definitely an optimist. Kayleigh always tried to stay happy and think about the positive things and attempt to make sure that negative things did not get her down.

Sometimes when things went wrong, Kayleigh would be there saying 'it's OK, you can try again/ it doesn't matter etc' and try to make me laugh. When I made redundant  in 2007, I was also an optimist and her dad was the pessimist - and Kayleigh told him not to worry because mum would find a new job soon and everything would be OK (I was only out of work for 7 weeks). When I was cranky and frustrated at the kids , Kayleigh would tell me to go in another room, sit down and have a cup of tea. She would tell the other kids to settle down because mum was getting cross and then she would bring me a tea and tell me the although the kids were being ratty they still loved me and it could be worse - they could have broken the TV (or something equally stupid) and bring a smile to my face. She always found the silver lining in those clouds.

It's not to say that Kayleigh sometimes didn't get down and pessimistic about some aspects, but overall she was an optimist - a sunny little girl that brought positive thinking to alot of people.

Things she wanted to do

I think all people have a list of things they want to do in their lives, and Kayleigh was no different. I have been thinking about want she wanted and what she is missing out on - I have tried to compile a list of what I remember her talking about - some of her friends might be able to add to it.

There were the normal things that teenagers want - like get a job and drive a car. And then there was Kayleigh's list.

Things on Kayleigh's list:
-Go running with her dad at night
- Climb Mt Tennent with her dad
- Do weights with her dad and lift the bar with 10kgs on both sides
- Ride her bike down to Tuggeranong (with mum or Dad or Natassja or a friend)
- Take Kiara to school for her first day of Kindy and teach her to read
- Beat Natassja on Wii Fit skateboarding
- Travel to England and see her family that live there
- Go to New Zealand
- Buy a car and a house down the coast (don't we all!)

Hiding the evidence

As I have written about before, Kayleigh liked to sneak chocolate when ever there was some available but sometimes she snuck other food, when there was no chocolate available. She always tried hard to 'hide the evidence' that she had taken something and eaten it, but she wasn't very successful.

Sometimes when I had bought cake mix that came with icing, when I went to make the cake, the icing package was gone, and I went looking and found the left over icing that Kayleigh had made up in a bowl and eaten in her room. Then there was the can of sweetened condensed milk that she tried to eat, couldn't finish because it is too sickly, tried to get Natassja to finish and ended up with me finding them out and both of them feeling rather off for the rest of the day.

Kayleigh also liked to eat frozen peas - she would get a cup of them in summer and sit outside and eat them. And then there was the cans of spaghetti. Kayleigh was already called spaghetti girl at school because she liked to take cans of spaghetti to school and eat them, but she also liked to eat them at home - which wasn't a problem if she asked - but the number of times I walked in the door and Kayleigh quickly shoved something in a cupboard and tried to look innocent - every time there would be an open spaghetti tin with a fork in it. Sometimes she would manage to hide it but then forget about it only to have me or her dad find it later that day and she got in trouble - not for eating it, but for wasting it.

Nothing seems to go missing int he cupboard anymore and I don't find little surprises when I open the cupboard doors, but this just makes me miss Kayleigh more. Although it really annoyed me that she did it, I wish that she was still here to eat things she shouldn't.

The Beastie Bus

When Kayleigh was in year 5 or 6, I 'inherited' my Dad's Toyota Tarago - it was an '85 model, beige in colour with over 260,000kms in the clock and still on it's first engine. I learnt to drive in that car. The kids all thought it was fantastic!!!!!!!!! Kayleigh especiallyy thought it was pretty cool sitting in the back. The kids all names it 'THE BEASTIE BUS' cause it was a beast and little beastie (the kids) sat in it.

It was the car we went storm chasing in it. One time when we were looking for storms, a kangaroo jumped out and we hit it. Kayleigh was really upset and she insisted that we make sure the kangaroo was suffering. The kangaroo didn't even dent the car but it did not make it out of the encounter alive.

One time we were sitting at the lights and a Nissan GTR pulled next to us. It was a nice looking car and the kids driving it couldn't have been more than 22 years old. Kayleigh thought it was a nice car. Terence - playing silly buggers - revved the engine and took off from the lights pretending to drag the GTR (we had no hope) but the kid saw it as an amusement and 'dragged' us up the highway letting us get in front every now and again. Kayleigh was laughing so hard she was crying- - it was too funny to see a clapped out old tarago trying to take on a new Nissan GTR.

The Beastie Bus had worn out suspension, meaning that every bump on the road was amplified in the back seat. There is a bump in the road coming up Tharwa drive from lanyon over the hill to Theodore. Kayleigh loved going up that hill because the back of the Beastie Bus would bounce up and down going over that bump - it was AWESOME!

One day we went to Woden and the Beastie Bus got stolen. Kayleigh had a panic attack over it. She went all white and shaking and she couldn't think straight. We manage to calm her down. The Beastie Bus was found a week later in Chifley - it had gone a whole 4 kms since it was taken, but they had broken the steering wheel cover and damaged the starting mechanism. We sold it soon after that - but Kayleigh was always reminisce about the Beastie Bus and how much fun it was to go places as a family.

It's black and it's white, it's wrong and it's right....

No, I am not referring to the Katy Perry song, but when I hear thse lines I do think of Kayleigh because she did think in very Black and White ways.

In Kindergarten Kayleigh fell out with a couple of girls for her insistence on not 'breaking the rules' in regards of going out of bounds. The girls wanted to play under a tree that would have been no futher than a couple of metres outside what Kayleigh had been told was the 'out of bounds' line. The girls really wanted to play under the tree as it was hot, but Kayleigh refused point blank to go past the line. In her mind it was 'wrong' and she didn't want to do the wrong thing. There was no way she was going to go outside the line, no matter how much she wanted to play with her friends.

The same went when a boy kept hitting her in year 1, for no real reason. We told Kayleigh to just punch him back so he would stop (I know, we are such bad parents!) but Kayleigh refused point blank to hit this kid back becuase the terachers had told them it was wrong. She would rather get hit by this kid then defend herself becuase she was told it was not the right thing to do and she would get into trouble. There was no grey in her world - it was either right, or wrong.

She did settle slightly with some shades of 'grey' as she got older, but she was always very insistant on doing the right thing. If it came to putting her principles on the line, she always chose what she believed was the right thing to do. She couldn't be influenced by others to do what she believed was the wrong thing. She wanted to avoid problems and the issues that came with crossing the line, so she rarely every went over it. I know she tried hard to please others by doing the 'right' things, but she never felt good by doing what she pereceived to be the wrong thing, so she never pushed it.

Reading

Kayleigh didn't enjoy reading that much, which made me a little sad because I love reading. I think the main reason that she didn't really get into reading that much was the struggles she had with learning to read. Kayleigh only managed to get to level 4 reading at the end of Kindergarten and went from level 6 to 10 in the last 2 weeks of year 1. I don't know why she struggled so much but it really put a dent in her love for reading. When she got to year 3 and 4 I encouraged her to read, and do the right things at home, by buying her a Rainbow Magic book each week. Within a couple of months, Natassja and Kayleigh had a good collection of Rainbow Magic books to read. Kayleigh liked the Rainbow Magic books - her favourite one was the 'Flute fairy' but I really don't know how many to read from cover to cover. Natassja devoured the books, but I think Kayleigh only picked up the ones she wanted to read and read the front chapter and then the last chapter and maybe one of the middle one, just to get an idea of the book.

At one stage we had most of the Harry Potter books for the girls, but neither of them were that interested in them and I don't think Kayleigh ever picked one up and tried to read it. I know she attempted to start on
The Lord of the Rings' but even I know the first couple of chapters in that book is heavy going and she soon lost interest.

At the end of year seven, Kayleigh brought home one of the Twilight series - New Moon (I think). She was trying to read it in her English class, and she told me she wanted to see what all the fuss was about and she again found it hard to get into the book - She told me it would be easier to wait to see the movie. I told her that books always have more in them than movies and to try and persevere with the book. I don't know how much she got through but she still had it when she passed away and I got Natassja to secretly give it back to the library at school - it would have been 8 months overdue.

A letter to Kayleigh

Dear Kayleigh,

It's been over a year since I last talked to you and last gave you a hug and so much has happened. Every day I think about you and what you might be doing and what you might think about. i found out last week that I'm going to have a little brother or sister for you, and although the news is happy I was sad because I know that you will have a sibling that will never know you, only hear about you and see you in movies we have taken. I know you would have been so happy because you ask me for another sister less than a week before you left. You were so excited and were talking about names and gender and what you thought was a good name. I would like to tell you that if we do have a little sister for you that the name we chose was the one you liked - Kymberly.

Every time I watch a movie I wonder if you would have liked it. Kiara's favourite movie Tangled - I know you would have loved. Some of the other movies we have watched which are not childrens movies I wonder what you would have thought. I know you used to sneak out and watch movies from the dining room where your dad couldn't see you. I knew you were there but didn't rat you out and I know there were some movies that you probably shouldn't have seen. I saw 'The Warrior's Way' the other day - a bit of a japanese mix with western movie - a little odd - and the first thing I thought of was whether you would have thought the same thing. Your Dad enjoyed it.

Every time I see an ambulance I get angry. I know it is not their fault that you are not here - but they took so long in getting to our house. I know they tried their hardest to get you back and at the hospital that night a saw several of them in tears. I just feel so much pain at the sight of an ambulance. I also feel a sense of loss every time I go past the hospital. I can see the window of the room you were in in the ICU wing. I always glance at it even though I don't want to, and remember you there and remember waiting for you to wake up and give me a smile and me to say ' Kayleigh, geez you gave us a fright!' but it never happened, I never got to speak with you again. Every day I struggle not to blame myself for what happened, for not knowing that you were in trouble, that you needed help, not calling an ambulance sooner. You were always so strong, maybe you felt OK, I don't know. I heard you arguing with Natassja and your voice was strong and you sounded so pissed off with her. I assumed that you were OK. I regret making that assumption every day because I thought you sounded normal. 10 minutes later you were gone.

I also wanted to tell you how proud I was of you. Through all the crap you went through and struggles that you had, you were always cheerful and happy. You always wanted to do your best, even if you didn't understand it. You always tried your hardest and you were always kind and considerate to every one around you. You forgave so many people for doing the wrong thing to you proving that you were the better person. You had a big heart and I could have seen you in a great job one day doing what you loved, surrounded by good friends and a nice guy. You would have made a great mum - better then me - because you were so tolerant with younger kids and especially Lucas and Kiara. They miss you so much.

I am missing you everyday, Love always Mum xxxooo