On 22 July 2017, I learnt that I was going to become a Meemaw (grandmother), and my daughter Jennifer was going to be a Mommy. Our Little Sprout grew daily. On 4 November 2017, we found out she was going to be a girl. We honestly couldn’t wait for her to arrive. The weeks and months seemed to drag by waiting for her to be born. Finally, on 11 March 2018 at 16h02, our beautiful Ivy Yvonne Nicholas weighing 3.7kgs and measuring 50cm was born. To say she stole our hearts is an understatement. Over the months, our CutiePatootie started to form her own little personality. She loved music and doing exercises as long as singing was involved. She started to get the cutest expressions on her face, and loved making noises. The more the better. Her absolute favourite things to do was laughing and smiling.

On 13 July 2018, after a fun filled day of laughing, playing, a photo and video shoot and almost reaching her target of rolling completely over, Ivy gently closed her eyes for the last time and received her Angel Wings. The photo above was the last photo taken of our Beautiful Ivy with her Mommy before she closed her eyes.

We will never truly understand why this happened. She was healthy, full of life and loved by all. Taken too soon.

We decided to do the Feb Fifty challenge as it was so close to Ivy’s 1st  birthday, and this was our way of doing something special in Her memory. She was a gentle soul who was taken far too soon from us. I know she would have wanted us to help others.

Unfortunately, on the 1 Feb, I broke my leg and wasn’t able to complete the challenge alone. My daughter and Husband were ready to take over the challenge, but before we knew it, we had our family and friends back in South Africa also wanting to help. So we changed our challenge. We decided to do 500km and raise £500 for the Feb Fifty challenge instead.

We called our team ‘The IvyLeague’

Team members:

Jennifer Nicholas Dickerson

Nicole Marriott

Tyler Dickerson

Zane Marriott

Janine Bruckmann

Craig Bruckmann

Steven Nicholas

Donwyn Mandelbaum

Dain Heart

Jacqueline Terwin

I am happy to report that we did it. Our total steps for Feb is  1159635 (roughly 927km) and we managed to raise £557.25 in total. This included the FB fundraiser page, the virgin money giving site and gift aid.