September 2010

In September Ryleigh channeled her inner princess!


Mike made an Apple apple pie :)


Ryleigh got a care package from Becky Graham all the way from Rochester, NY!

August 2010 was a busy month!

The first week in August Ryleigh and I went to the annual NICU graduate picnic. Ryleigh got to see Javier, one of her former "neighbors" during her long stay in the NICU. We also got to see Dr. Snyder again. (The doctor that saved her life.)
Afterwards we made our way to the MK Nature center which is right next to the park where the picnic was being held.

Ryleigh really likes eating spaghetti! She tried to dress herself but still needs a little help :) She also likes to take her socks off and wear them like gloves.


At the end of the month Mike participated in the Idaho Bike MS: Road, Sweat & Gears 2010.


The following week Ryleigh was invited to take a tour of the Boise State Bronco Stadium. Mike and I got to tag along! We went up to the press box and watched the team practice for a little while. We got to meet the team and coach Pete. Then we headed out on the field and got to play around for a little while :)


Ryleigh got to sing in her nursery class one last time before we moved to Star, Idaho.

July 2010

The first week in July we went to Fallon, Nevada to spend time with Mike's parents. Ryleigh's cousins Kaylee and Andrea were visiting and we all went to the Carnival that was in town! Ryleigh hit it off with Allie, Grammie and Grandpa's dog. When we went back to Boise Ryleigh participated in Relay for Life. The next day we celebrated Mike's 28th birthday. Later in the month we went back to Fallon, Nevada. This time Mike's older sister Angie and her whole family were there. Mike's sister Melissa was also there. Thanks to Mike's dad we all went to see a baseball game in Reno. It was a good month!

May and June 2010

In May Mike got Guitar Hero for his Playstation 3 and Ryleigh got caught red-handed getting into the guitar. We had some of the neighborhood kids come over to play one night. At the end of May we went to a local indoor playground that is filled with inflatable slides, jump houses, etc. Ryleigh really like to go on the BIG slide but I think the adults had the most fun there :)
In June Ryleigh had her first post-chemo scan. There's a picture of her in the hospital waiting room waiting to go to her scan and practicing jumping. (Up until this past weekend (02/26/11) Ryleigh would only use both feet to jump about 1 out of 100 jumps so that is why she was practicing.) I also included a picture of Ryleigh just after the scan when I was still waiting for her to wake up from the anesthesia-they have to sedate her to get a clear MRI.
The last picture is Ryleigh, as she would say, playing "rock on".

Par-ty! Par-ty! Par-ty!

The week after her last chemo, she got to go a Hollywood themed "prom" for the kids and their families thrown by MSTI (the place where Ryleigh received her chemo). Ryleigh loves to music and she loves to dance. She had a lot of fun in the ballroom. (Sorry the videos are so dark)

I just need to sit down and write!

It's been way too long so I will just do a couple of short entries to get caught up and then I will try to stay up-to-date.
Last year on April 15th Ryleigh completed her chemo treatments with flying colors! Since that time she has had 3 MRI scans, her most recent scan was earlier this month, and they have all come back "unchanged". This means that there is no new growth!! Here are a few pictures of Ryleigh killing time during her last treatment and then later on we went out to celebrate her last treatment with some friends.

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.