Ryan

Christmas

Christmas morning

Ryan and Adman

She lost her first tooth!!

Kyle and I at Light the Night

Ryan at Light the Night

Ryan in her soccer uniform..."Sparklers"

The first day of school!

How weird it is to think a year and a half ago we were saying several daily prayers for Ryan to pull through this. She is doing FANTASTIC, so obviously all the prayers have worked. Other than her appointments once a month down to UCLA, and taking chemo pills daily, she is like any other 5 and 1/2 year old little girl. She was able to start Kindergarten when she was supposed to in the fall. She is doing great! We just received her second report card of the year and she is father ahead then she should be. No signs of any delays (which is a concern and we have her teachers look for that due to the chemotherapy). Her hair has grown in sooooooo cute. Although, unfortunately I think she has her fathers hair. It is curly and course! Thicker than it was before and a little darker, but very cute on her. She has been such a great sport through all this! We put her hair into a pony-tail the other day, she was so excited. She has been wearing cute pig-tails to school, but the pony-tail was a huge deal. There has only been one hospital stay and it was just due a fever and low "counts". We have not even had to take her out of school for low "counts", like we had expected. She did have a dental procedure done on New Years Eve. She had a lot of cavities that needed to be filled (a side effect of the chemo/Leukemia). Her dentist (and I) thought it would be better to have her sedated and just get it all done at one time instead of breaking it into several visits. Everything went great! She recovered well from the anesthesia and it feels great to have that all done and over with.

Over the holidays we had some visitors. Grandma Gabe came for Thanksgiving which we hosted at our house. We had a great time with her Tie-dying shirts and doing lots of fun activities. We sure wish she lived closer! Grandpa came also right before Christmas. We had an awesome visit with him also. Logan had the whole menu planned out within 30 min of him being here. She loves to cook in the kitchen with her Grandpa, all of them do!! He was able to make it down to UCLA with us for one of Ryan's appointments. I like it when he can come because I think it makes him feel more a part of everything going on with her. He likes to ask questions and hear it from the docs as well as us. Overall, it was another great visit with Grandpa!!!!

We just received some great news that Sarah and their family will be moving back to Bakersfield. We are so excited! This will be great to have all of us in one town again! I said to Kyle the other day now all 7 of your siblings will be up in the stands cheering for you at your soccer games, imagine the noise we can all make :)!!

Overall things have been great! Please continue to pray that there are no serious side effects from the medications that Ryan is taking. I hear rumors of a meeting with the doctors after she is all done (August 12th, 2010) where they explain exactly what long term side effects there can be. We will continue to take our chances considering the alternative, I just hope that God continues to guide her through this as unaffected as possible.

I am hoping to turn this into a family blog at some point, just not sure when :P?! We appreciate all the continued support and hope this update finds everyone doing well!

Love to all XOXO!!!