Happy Anniversary!

The past couple of weeks have been pretty good. Mike started a new job a couple of weeks ago at a company called Clickbank.com. He does customer service and he LOVES it. His building is at the entrance to one of the local parks, it's only minutes from campus, and he has a window seat that overlooks the river! There is a total of about 30 people that work there and so they get to know each other really well. At Mike's old job there was about 25-30 people just on one team and there were about 15-20 teams just in the collection department. His new job has been a pretty big but much needed change.
The week after Mike started his new job was the 5K.
Today is our 4 year anniversary :) I find it hard to believe that it's only been four years but I doubled checked and it's true, it's only been four years. I don't mean that in a bad way. In the past four years we've lived in 3 different apartments. I've had 2 different jobs and 3 if you count being a mom. Mike has had 3 jobs and he's been in school for all that time. We went to Europe for our honeymoon the summer following our wedding. Shortly after we got back from Europe I had a miscarriage. A year after that I was pregnant with Ryleigh. When January 2008 came around I had two aneurysms and Ryleigh was born prematurely. Throughout 2008 I was recovering and we had some things to work through with Ryleigh. Lastly, this past April Ryleigh started chemotherapy. It just seems like all of that should take 10 years to go through, but I know that we have been blessed every day of the past 4 years. I am so grateful for Mike and how caring he is with me and Ryleigh. It's been a good four years.

Women's celebration weekend

On September 26th I was in my first 5K! I was in the stroller division pushing Ryleigh. That weekend happened to be Women's conference weekend and Mike's mom and sisters traditionally get together in Salt Lake for the conference. They are all so sweet that they came up here to Boise to be with Ryleigh and me and they even participated in the 5K with us!! (I couldn't leave Ryleigh here for the weekend because Mike had work and school.) The 5K event is an annual event that benefits the hospital where Ryleigh and I stayed when I had my aneurysms and Ryleigh was born. It is also the same hospital where Ryleigh had her brain surgery and where she had her port placement surgery for chemo. For me, the 5K really meant a lot. I wanted to give back. I am so grateful to my mother-in-law, Sue Freeman, and my sisters-in-law, Angie, Shauna, and Melissa for walking the 5K and celebrating women. More than 12,000 women, young girls, and babies participated and there was such an amazing feeling of joy and happiness felt throughout the crowd. As we were nearing the finish line we came to "Tuxedo row"; there were about 15 men dressed up in tuxedo garb clapping, high-fiving, and just offering words of encouragement. We were able to see that the participants at the end of the crowd were all in wheelchairs and they were unable to push themselves so they had volunteers assisting them! I will always remember the feeling of unity as we crossed that finish line.

Yes, she is a little strange but she's our baby!

Ryleigh loves to pretend that just about anything is a phone. She will hold the object up to her ear and walk around saying "Hell-o, hell-o". Here are just a few examples. There's her cup, the remote, sunscreen, an ipod nano, and the one that is too small to see is a magnet!

August so far

This month we went to the annual NICU graduate party and we got to see Dr Synder, (the doctor that resuscitated Ryleigh after the emergency c-section), and we saw Melissa who was one of the nurses that cared for Ryleigh while she was in the NICU. There are usually a couple hundred people that show up and some of the kids where in the NICU over a decade ago!
One of Ryleigh's favorite things to do is hang out on the back of the couch and yell out the window!
She has also been spending time trying to learn how to wink (usually she blinks but once in a while she is able to get just one eye to shut). About 4 or 5 months ago Mike started to help Ryleigh do somersaults on the bed, and lately she has been trying to do them on her own. She's almost there!
Two weeks ago Ryleigh started a 12 week swim program at the YMCA to help her maintain her core strength and stability as she continues with chemo the program is sponsored by the Lance Armstrong cancer foundation .
Mike will be starting back to school next week and I have recently started reading "A tale of two cities". This will be the third or forth time starting that book, I hope to actually finish reading it this time! The language that Charles Dickens uses and the way the he uses it doesn't flow for me and so I've had a difficult time getting into it. This time will be different, I can feel it!

This past month has been pretty busy. Mike's parents and older brother Jason came to visit the second week in June and we went to the old state penitentiary in Boise which is supposed to be haunted! No need for the ghostbusters as far as I could tell. In one of the old buildings they had a museum which contains a bunch of old wagons/stagecoaches. I think I saw one of the first convertibles ever!
About a week later, as Mike was cooking a delicious dinner, I hit my foot on Ryleigh's chair and got a huge blood bubble under my skin. It scared me quite a bit because that is exactly what it looked like when I had my aneurysms but a lot bigger and on my neck. (gross, huh?) It's been two weeks and my foot is still a little tender.
The rest of the month we have been trying to keep up with Ryleigh. She is finally walking full-time. One afternoon she was so tuckered out that she fell asleep holding onto her best friend "Abby". This past Saturday I got some pictures of Ryleigh eating spagetti and making faces :)

Mike's first triathlon!!

Mike was in "the spudman triathlon" this morning, he had to do a 1.5K swim, 40K bike ride, and 10k run. Here are some of the highlights from the race, (you can click on any of the pictures to zoom in and get a better view of Mike). The first picture is before the race and Mike is standing at the exit for the swim. In the next picture the swimmers are all waiting for the race to start and Mike is all the way on the far right side, he's facing this way and has the black wet suit hood on under his orange swim cap. The next picture is the actual start of the race and Mike is the one farthest to the right in the picture. The next picture shows the buoys that were used to map out the course. The kayakers are there to make sure everyone is okay. Mike was so fast on the bike that I wasn't able to get to the transition area soon enough to get a picture of him on his bike. The next picture is Mike coming around the last curve before he got to the straightaway. The last one says it all. He finished in just over 4 hours and 14 minutes!! I am so happy for him :)

Over forth of July weekend we spent time with the Willison side of the family that live in Utah. My (Kristy's) sister Carrie was able to meet Ryleigh for the first time. Ryleigh really enjoyed playing with the cousins and watching the fireworks. The last picture is at a local playground where Ryleigh is holding on for dear life!

Dairy Days!

Here are pictures from the "dairy days" parade in Meridian, Idaho June 19th.

Family time

On June 6th we went to two different outdoor festivals being held by some towns just outside of Boise. The first one we went to was the Renaissance Faire in Meridian, Idaho. It had the typical arts and crafts booths along with booths that had kids practicing calligraphy, making play swords out of "water noodles", and booths that demonstrated weaving and making small metal badges.
There was some Celtic dancing, there were mock sword fights, and Mike did the caber toss. (Which is basically where you try to flip an 85 pound pole end over end.) There were also plenty of "ring toss" type games for the little kids. If was pretty fun.

The second festival was in a small town called Star, Idaho. The festival is called "Mule days" but we got there too late to see the mules. oh, well. Mike and I both got to do the rock climbing wall, which I really liked. It was my first time doing anything like that. Ryleigh got to have her picture taken in a tank. I don't think she knew what to think of it all. The rest of the fair was carnival rides and food and craft vendors.