For the past year, sisters-in-law and Make-A-Wish New Zealand volunteers Rachel and Kim Beck have been waving their wands and working their magic with the wider South Canterbury community to make 6-year-old Emily Cahill’s wish come true.
Emily has hypoplastic right heart syndrome, a heart condition which means the right side of her heart is undeveloped.
She has already had four open-heart surgeries, the first at two days old, and has had to spend about 150 nights in hospital.
As Emily loved fairy tales and to play outside it came as no surprise to her mother Kirsty Wooffindin that her wish was to have a castle playhouse with a slide.
Last month her wish was granted and a bespoke multi-storey castle playground with a slide appeared in her backyard.
The playhouse was built by Dylan and Kate at D.K. Cabins.
"They were given a drawing of what Emily wanted and then they made it up as a kit-set and brought it down.
"They did an amazing job to create it just off a picture."
Rachel and Kim organised paint to be donated by Resene Timaru and the team at Grant Jenkins then donated their time and skills to spray-paint the playhouse.
Emily was very impressed by her new playhouse and said her favourite part of it was how gold it was.
"I like to jump from the stairs, go down the slide and play on the swing.
"In the holidays I set the bottom up as a cafe and the upstairs was for makeup."
Ms Wooffindin said the wish had brought Emily a tremendous amount of joy.
"I haven’t seen her smile so much. When you see what kids like Emily go through, it’s so special to give them the chance to have something to look forward to.
"[I’m] overwhelmed and grateful for all the support from the local community.
"It’s beyond our imaginations — the fact that people donated money, paint, signs and time," Ms Wooffindin said.
