Odds and Ends

As you can tell, I am not a very diligent blogger. This post will cover the first couple of months this year to help me get caught up and to fill you in on what's been happening in our household!
Back in January I put together two "rag quilts" for the first time. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the first one, but they both turned out pretty nice. Once I got the hang of it they were pretty easy and fast to complete. In the picture, I flipped one corner to show that the underside was all one pattern. After this picture was taken a friend of mine clipped all of the edges and washed it to give it a frayed look and then we gave them to some kids at our church.
At the end of January we got to take Ryleigh to her first Steelheads (local ice hockey team) game compliments of the American cancer society. The majority of the section we were sitting in had kids that were cancer survivors or kids that were going through treatment. Ryleigh had so much fun shaking the noise makers that were provided and dancing to the loud music. It was a great game and the Steelheads won!
Around this time we also tried to transition Ryleigh to a big bed. After a week or two of a lot of restless nights we decided with the stress that chemo was putting on her body, she wasn't ready for that change. (Now that she is done with chemo she has made the transition with no problems!)
For my birthday, and part of my Valentine's gift, we went to a beautiful cabin right next to the Tamarack Ski resort. It was a wonderful cabin with two huge bedrooms, a living room, a full kitchen, and it had a hot tub outside. Our friends Jared and LeeAnn had one room and we had the other. Ryleigh slept on a makeshift bed on the floor and one night she fell asleep while looking at her "Clifford" book :) On Saturday we drove about 30 minutes to go to the snow carnival in McCall. One of my favorite sculptures was the bathroom. I have no idea who those kids in the picture are but they weren't the only ones pretending to use the facilities that day!
In March, Ryleigh and I (Kristy) went down to Utah to visit the Willison side of the family. We stayed with Mark and Nancy and Ryleigh got to play with Nancy Donna and Reed. We went to the playground at the school down the street one day and Ryleigh really enjoyed playing dress-up with Nancy Donna's clothes.

I think we may have a potential Olympic speed skater on our hands!

This is Ryleigh's daily ritual. She loves to run around the table. She pushes her chair, she still pushes her little play station that was in a previous video, and sometimes she just runs around by herself doing laps. She is in her own world when she's running around like this!

It's been a while!

It's been a long time since the last post so I decided that I just have to sit down and do this. Back in October Ryleigh had a friend over to play. Ryleigh has really developed a love for cheese! One day we got a chunk of cheese out to eat with crackers and when we weren't looking Ryleigh shoved the whole thing in her mouth. Later that month we went to a Halloween party put on by the American Cancer Society. Ryleigh found a little girl there that was dressed as Elmo. Sometimes Ryleigh likes to climb into the toy chest with her toys to play. In December Mike and I got to dress up and go to a fancy party his company threw. Recently Ryleigh finger painted "thank you" notes for the people at the YMCA that gave her physical therapy/swimming lessons and she was so tired by lunch time that she just leaned back and fell asleep. Yesterday was Ryleigh's birthday so I decided to do cupcakes this year. Last year I didn't let the cake cool completely and when I went to frost it, it was a mess. This year was a BIG improvement :)