Father's day

Father's day has come again, this years has turned out better than last years, which is good for Terence.

Father's day was one of those days that Kayleigh tried to make special for her dad. Every year she would get excited and make father's day cards in advance and try and get the other kids to sign them. One year, she got Terence a box of Lindt chocolate balls (which were his favourite at the time) and attempted to do the right thing by making daddy a cup of coffee in bed with a plate of lindt balls. In her attempt to be wonderful she had un-wrapped the lindt balls before presenting them. I don't think Terence could have managed to eat 10 lindt balls with his coffee that morning . . . .  .

In year 7, fathers day occurred when Kayleigh had metal work at school and being her, she made him a Father's Day card using metal. She spent a couple of days cutting it is size and trimming the corners and then bending it. They didn't have an engraver at school she could use so she brought it home and scratched 'Daddy' on the front and the wrote her message on a post-it note and stuck it inside. Terence keeps his card in his shed to look at when he feels like it. Kayleigh's card will never break down or tear - it will last forever.

Grandpa and the birthday present hunt

When Kayleigh was 12, Grandpa decided that she was old enough to do a little extra to get her birthday present, and so he devised a birthday present hunt using cryptic clues that led Kayleigh from our house all around Theodore. Grandpa set the clues up and placed them all in their places before coming to our house and giving Kayleigh her present - which only consisted of an envelope with the first clue. The clues had her running all over the place, from the little park near our house, down to the school, the oval , the park past the oval and other places until leading them back to our house. Grandpa had given me the keys to the car and had me hide the present under her pillow ready for her to find. Kayleigh thought that this was completely AWESOME and begged and begged Grandpa to do it again for her next birthday. Grandpa liked making her 'work' for her present and they had a lot of fun trying to figure out each clue and running to find the next one. Kayleigh really really really really enjoyed this method of getting presents as she has so much fun doing it - it was almost better than the present itself. (By the way the present she got that year was a butterfly pendant for her necklace that she wore to her year 6 graduation - I have have been wearing it for the last 6 months)

The Coroners Inquest

I got the phone call today. The Coroner has finished his investigation into Kayleigh's death and we will finally have the death certificate next week. He said the hold up was getting the information out of the ambulance service - he only got it this week, after requesting it this time last year. According the ambulance records the Calwell Ambulance was not available as it was already at the hospital dropping off another patient. The closest one to us was at Kambah and it came as quickly as it could. It begs the question - is there only one ambulance at Calwell????? and if so, why????

The official cause of Kayleigh's death, as to be shown her the death certificate is Global Ischemia (Brain damage caused by lack of blood supply) caused by prolonged cardiac arrest - by our measure by the time the ambulance got here Kayleigh had been not breathing for almost 30 minutes. She never had a chance. The report also outlined that she had the early signs of pneumonia in both lungs and signs of asthma consistent with bronchial-asthmatics. The cause for her heart stopping is unknown and will never be known. The heart itself was fine, but any electrical problems cannot be determined after death.

So where does that leave us - with more questions that do not have an answer and it makes me sad and angry. WE will never know what really caused her death and we will never know if the outcome would have been different if the ambulance was only 3 minutes away. We may have got Kayleigh back but she have been a 'vegetable', or she may have been OK. We will never know.

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.