Rylee's Preschool Open House 2011

Rylee completed her first year of preschool! At the end of the year, they celebrated with an open house for all of the families. It was a pajama party for all of the kids.

This is her and one of her teachers, Miss Jenny.

And her teacher, Miss April

And also Miss Dawn.

Her teachers were great and Rylee had a great experience. I was so pleased with all that she learned and the fun projects and activities they got to do. We are just pleased as punch to see Rylee doing these really normal things. We're grateful, really.

She went with such a fun group. 5 little girls from our neighborhood all carpooled and went to school together. (Rylee, Annie, Ella, Candice and Kylie). This is Candice, Rylee and Ella posing in their jammies.

They served Ice Cream Sundae's, which Jace and Jaden thouroughly enjoyed as well. It's so fun for the siblings to come along and be part of the preschooler's little world for a bit.

They showed a darling slide show of the year's activities at the end. It was so fun to get a glimpse at Rylee at school- I'm so glad they did this. It's fun to see your child in their own zone, without you. Great perspective! I got a little teary-eyed through it. Just feels good to have her at this point. When she started in the fall, she was still in treatment and I wondered if I was pushing things to have her go to preschool. Within the first few weeks, her teacher called me and said I better come pick her up. She was not feeling well and had went over to the bean bag and curled up in a little ball and fell asleep. She was out when I got there. I went and got her and cried as I carried her out to the car. Normal just felt so out of reach-it seemed like it was too much, too soon. You just ache for them to feel like all the other healthy, thriving children who are enjoying the preschool activities.

But...I just decided to take it a day at a time, knowing that she might miss a lot or I may very well have to go pick her up early every day. And guess what? It only happend that one time and otherwise, she did thrive. It was a wonderful experience for her. She learned to write her name. She had fun with her friends. She went on a field trip to a farm. What more could I ask for?

She has worked really hard this year. In addition to treatment and preschool, she did speech therapy 4 days a week. She was burned out by the end of the school year, so we're having a break for the summer, but she has come so far. And we are so proud of her and so glad that we got to go to her preschool open house. We're 7 months post treatment and things are looking really good! She just has to get monthly blood work to make sure nothing suspicious in creeping back in, but so far, so good. We have arrived....back to "normal".