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 :)

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!