I Have New Eyes!

I have to take a few minutes here to record a momentous thing that has happened! I CAN SEE!!!

So first a little history...
I got my first pair of glasses right before I started third grade. We had just moved into our new house on Mequon Ave and I had to start at a new elementary school. It was a GREAT time to get glasses and a bad perm which really started me out on the right foot as a "cool kid". (insert laughter) After the hair settled down and I just had the glasses, at least I managed to make a couple of friends. The glasses phase continued until sixth grade when I convinced my parents I was ready for contacts. I have been wearing contacts for the past 22 years.

My eyes went from bad to worse as time went on. I hadn't really had any complaints with contacts until about two years ago. It seemed like we just couldn't get my prescription spot on. I went to a three different eye doctors over the course of two years and nothing helped. It seemed like I had finally found a contact and prescription that was good enough and had been wearing it for about the past year, and then Acuvue stopped making that lens in my prescription! (Apparently the level of badness that my eyes were wasn't that common and it wasn't selling well enough to keep making. Sigh.) So then I was back to the drawing board. Over this last Summer I had decided that enough was enough, and I decided to go to Idaho Falls (about a half hour away) and get screened for LASIK. There is a place there that a lot of people I know had gone to and said it was great. So I set up the free consultation and took my kids with me one day in the Summer and had my free appointment. They only spent about 30 minutes checking my eyes. At the end, the nurse said, "I am going to have to talk to the doctor about this and see what he thinks." Okay, I thought, is that good or bad? Well she called me about an hour later and broke the news: "The doctor says you aren't a candidate for LASIK."

WHAT THE HECK?! So you're telling me that because my eyes are SOOO bad, I'm the one who ISN'T a candidate?! That doesn't seem fair. So I was pretty depressed about that for a couple months. I decided to go to a new eye doctor because he had just moved into our neighborhood. I talked to him about the rejection I got from the Idaho Falls Eye Center. He recommended that I got to Utah and check out a place called Hoopes Vision. I had also heard about this place from the PTO president at school so it was on my mind. I decided it was worth a shot! I called them right before we left for Wisconsin and scheduled a consultation for October 19th. The worst part was that I had to wear my glasses the entire week before my appointment. I was having flashbacks to grade school!

Finally, the day arrived. My appointment was on Friday the 19th at 1:30pm, so Josh and I dropped the kids off at school and headed down to Utah. The plan was to have Josh's sister pick up the kids after school and take them to her house, where Josh's mom would then pick them up after work and take them to her house to spend the night. We were planning on coming back by Saturday afternoon.

We got to Utah for my appointment at 1:30 and checked in. Over the next four hours I think they checked every possible aspect of my eyes. Cornea thickness, vision, tear production, and so on. I'm not saying this was a bad thing. I was really happy that they were doing a very thorough investigation. It really made me wonder how much they possibly even checked in the Idaho Falls place in that 30 minutes before they rejected me! At about 4:45, the doctor who had been evaluating me said he needed to go check with Dr. Hoopes (the main boss man!) about my eyes. "Here comes the rejection..." I thought. But guess what! He came back and said, "We can do it!" And I said, "LASIK??" thinking he was confused about what they could do. There are other surgeries like PRK and ICL that I thought maybe would be options. But he said they could do LASIK! I was overjoyed. I went to talk with the person who did the scheduling and saw that they had an appointment on the following Monday at 12:40. I said, "I'll see you Monday."

Then there was the small matter of our children to attend to. Josh and I stayed Friday night at Chris and Holly's house as planned, but then on Saturday at about noon Josh drove back up to Idaho. I got picked up by Kamrie and taken back to her and Stacey's house. We spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday shopping and having a fun girls weekend. Then it was Monday.... and I got a little nervous. What if something went wrong? What if I ended up BLIND?! I am sure everyone has these thoughts when they are about to have their eyeballs fried with a laser. But that morning I saw a double rainbow which I took as a sign of good luck.

So Josh met me and Stacey at the Hoopes Vision place at 12:30 and in I went. Stacey went back to work. Josh had dropped the kids off at school Monday morning at 8 and then headed right now to Utah to meet us. (It was a lot of driving for Josh this weekend.) He got there right in time!

We went in and got all set for the surgery. We paid the nice $4900 charge (thank you HSA card), then headed in to the prep room to have my eyes checked one last time. Then they gave me a little surgery type hair net hat to put on and little booties to wear over my shoes. Then they gave me a Valium. I had never had Valium. I decided I really liked it though and was instantly more calm. haha I even was a little wobbly as they escorted me into the laser room. Not like, unable to walk, but just a little tipsy. They had me lay down where the first laser was. This first laser is the one that made the corneal "flap." It only took about 10 minutes to prepare my eyes with numbing drops and then create that flap. I have little bit of bruising on my whites of my eyes right now from that part because they had to put this suction cup thing around my eyes and it made my vision go dark (that's normal) but they had a hard time centering it just right.

After that laser was done, I actually stood up and walked a few steps over to the next laser. This was the one that actually fried my eyeballs. The doctor's main job was to manually lift that flap up and open my eye so that he could aim the laser at it! The actual lasering part took only 15 seconds! 15 seconds to fix 22 years worth of deteriorating vision. That's pretty amazing. After it was done, he put my flap back down and then rinsed out my eyes. Then I basically stood up and walked out! I was able to see pretty clearly right away! Everything just looked a little hazy and my eyes felt dry. That's the number one thing that happens post LASIK is that you have dry eyes because the cornea is losing it's nerve endings for a few weeks and those help produce natural tears.

After a few minutes they checked my eyes again and I passed the test! I could see pretty well! Then they sent me on my way with some sunglasses and some eye drops and a free tote bag. (Most expensive tote bag I've ever gotten. lol) I joked "This is a $5,000 tote bag" to Josh and then doctor laughed and said, "Oh yes, it's all about the tote bag. The vision was just the bonus."

Then we drove and got me some food from Zupa's and then went back to Chris and Holly's. I took a long nap (as I was instructed to do) and when I woke up we just hung out at home with Chris and Holly and their adorable twin boys who are now 8 months old. They also have this massage chair that I spent a while in that evening. It was like being at a health spa.

The next morning we had to go back at 8:30am for my post-op check up. They said everything looked great and I was ready to head home! So we drove back to Idaho and got home about 1:30pm. My eyes felt pretty dry on days 1 and 2 but today is Thursday and it's been a lot better. I am still supposed to use eye drops for a while though. So that is my amazing LASIK story! I feel like going back to the Idaho falls guys and yelling at them for telling me my eyes couldn't be cured. You stink Idaho Eye center!

I am so excited to not have to worry about contacts or glasses anymore! Every night at bedtime I feel so weird just going to sleep with my vision intact and nothing to take out contacts! It's going to be so nice especially when we travel not to have to worry about contacts or glasses! Here are a couple pictures of my eye journey:

These actually aren't even my glasses. I was trying on my friend, Lauren's, glasses.

The sign of good luck the morning of my surgery.

These are the awesome eye shields they gave my to wear while I sleep for the first week so I don't rub my eyes in my sleep or something.

Freaky bruising on my eye balls. It doesn't really hurt though.

Football Ends for Caleb

I have to quick post this picture of Caleb at his last game! It was a fun season and I think Caleb grew a lot this year in his abilities. He played center on offense and then he also played on defense most the time too. So he spent a lot of time on the field. Josh helped coach the defense as well. Here are a few pictures!

Wisconsin Trip

Suddenly, it seems like Fall is upon us. We left Idaho on Thursday morning, September 27th to start our drive to Wisconsin and the boys had still been wearing shorts and T shirts to school up until then. But then we got to Wisconsin and it was mostly cold and rainy while we were there. We did have a couple days of sun, but most of the time it was definitely sweatshirt (and maybe even winter coat!) weather. Then we returned to Idaho to find that Fall had also arrived there. The boys and I actually had a stand-off on Monday when they had to go back to school because they both insisted that they should wear shorts! (The temperature outside was 29 degrees when I looked at my phone.) I argued, "It is NOT summer anymore! You need to wear pants!" When they continued to protest, I went a little mom crazy and told them, "I am taking all of your shorts! They are mine now!!!" and then took every pair of shorts out of their dresser drawers and hid them in my closet. I told them they can "check out" basketball shorts to wear to bed if they need them. Crazy? Maybe. But they need to learn.

Anyways! So, yes, it is Fall now and I'm a little sad about it. I plan to travel someplace warm like Hawaii when Josh is retired and spend winters there. But for now, here we are in Idaho. As we drove home from Wisconsin, we got to see some really pretty views, especially as we drove from Bozeman, Montana down through the Big Sky/Yellowstone area and down back into Idaho. We wove through a lot of mountain canyons and saw lots of orange leaves on cottonwood trees. I tried to take pictures but this was really the best one I got out my window:

We got home Sunday night at about 7:00pm after two days of long driving. We stopped in Bismarck, ND on the way home from Wisconsin and on the way there we stopped in Jamestown. One the way there, we found a hotel with a water slide that we stayed at overnight, which the kids loved. On the way home we just had a basic pool and hot tub, but it was fun because we had swam a lot in Wisconsin at the Kalahari.

So when we first arrived in Wisconsin, we went to my mom's house and had dinner and just chatted for a couple hours. Then we headed over to my grandma Dahlke's house (where we sleep while we are there.) We always just take over my grandma's basement because she had a living room and a spare bedroom and bathroom down there. But Gabe now also takes over the spare bedroom/office upstairs and sleeps on her day bed. he says he likes it because it's all to himself and he can have it pitch black. (At home he shares a room with Caleb and Caleb likes to have a little night light.) So we chatted with my grandma and then got to bed.

The next day (Saturday) we didn't do anything too exciting. We hung out at my mom's house and we took the kids to Lakeside park to play. My grandpa Bestor stopped by and said hi, but quickly had to leave to get to breakfast with my aunt, Nancy, and her grand daughter, Anna. My grandpa is always in high-demand, so it's hard to schedule time to see him sometimes. ;) He's always got things to do and people to see.

Sunday, we drove up to Oshkosh for church. They are adding on to our church building in Fond du Lac, so our ward is driving up to Oshkosh for the next six months (or until it is finished). It brought back memories of when I was a kid and we used to have to drive to Oshkosh for all of our church activities and Sunday church. It wasn't until I was about 14 that we split off from Oshkosh and got our own ward building in Fond du Lac. I was telling my kids how we used to have to drive all that way and they thought that sounded horrible. Here in Rexburg our church is just down the road (within walking distance of our house.) So, because the building in Oshkosh is being shared by the other ward, I was able to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a while - the Lamont's, the Rhodes' (not any relation to Josh), Alissa Palmer, and more. I was having major de ja vu being back there and around all those old people from my youth! After church we went to my mom's and watched football and hung out. We also played a few rounds of bingo. Avery and Brayden took turns being the "callers" (with help from me and Rachel.)

Monday, my mom and I went to the Oshkosh outlet mall and we dropped off Josh and the kids at the EAA flight museum while we shopped. We honestly didn't know how exciting that was going to be for them (we really just wanted to get rid of them while we shopped) but when we picked them up a couple hours later they said it was surprisingly really fun and interesting! They had lots of old planes and then some hands-on type of exhibits for the kids. We left Oshkosh at about 3:00 and came back to FDL, then left our kids at my mom's house while Josh and I went out to dinner with Gini and Drake. We went over to their house first and then rode with them to this Mexican restaurant. I wasn't too impressed with the food but it was fun to get out with Gini and Drake and catch up. It was funny to see her again so "soon" (for us every six months is soon.) Drake is liking his coaching job at Marian and they are currently house hunting for a bigger house in FDL.

Tuesday morning we went bowling with my mom. I, for some strange reason, was struck by this super human bowling ability that first game and did amazing! Usually my mom is the one to beat (she was a bowling champion back in the day... hahaha nerd alert... lol) but I even beat her on the first game! I bowled a 125! (Which isn't even that good, but still good for me.) Josh did end up coming from behind and winning just BARELY with like a 130. The next game, my ability vanished and I stunk. My mom won that round.

In the afternoon, we went to the Little Farmer. Jasmine, Rachel, and Brayden joined us there too. It was kind of cloudy and muddy from the rain they had gotten over the previous few days. But the kids had a lot of fun riding these giant tricycles around a little race track. (Although I was informed they have four wheels so they are technically NOT TRIcycles.) They also went through the corn maze, but it was so muddy that I turned back halfway and left Josh to manage the children alone! Luckily, I had anticipated the muddy corn maze (I learned from previous years) and brought along Avery's rubber rain boots just for that occasion!

Tuesday night we met up with grandpa again and he treated us to dinner at the Chinese buffet. My mom, Rachel, Brayden, Jasmine, and my grandma Dahlke all came along too. It seems to have become a tradition to meet up there every time we come to visit. Usually the tradition is also that I get to spend about three hours in the bathroom afterwards, but it seems like I passed that on to my grandpa this year as he informed us that he experienced the diarrhea effect this time afterwards. ;) haha (I hope you are reading this and laughing right now grandpa. Don't worry, only you and about two other people read this blog.)

Wednesday was our big Lambeau Field trip day! Josh and Caleb were especially excited about this. But first we met up with grandpa again for breakfast at McDonalds. The kids got to play a little in the newly redone play place!

My mom rode up to Green Bay with us and came on the Lambeau tour too. Rachel was working and Jasmine and Brayden were in school, so they didn't come along. When we first got there, we took some pictures outside and then went in and bought our tickets. The tour was only about an hour long, but we got to go up to the fifth floor and sit in one of the box suites which was really cool. That's probably the only time we will ever be in there! (Unless we magically win the lottery!) Then they took us all the way down on a secret special elevator to the basement level. We were able to walk out through the tunnel that the players run out of when they come onto the field. Then we went out onto the field and took some pictures. Caleb looked at the padded green wall where they do the "Lambeau leap" and decided it was too tall for him to be able to jump up on. After that, we went and played at the "Title town" kids area. They have some playground stuff and a big practice field where you can play around on. They also had this big hill that the kids ran down, but in the winter I guess you can tube down it. That whole section is brand new. They were actually still working on finishing the inside of the surrounding buildings for shops.

Thursday morning we went over to my mom's house and ate breakfast (like almost every morning, which I forgot to mention) and then right after that, my family drove to Wisconsin Dells to check in to the Kalahari. Mom, Rachel, and Jasmine and Brayden didn't come until a few hours later at about 1:30. But we wanted to get down there as early as possible so our kids could have more time to play. However, we weren't able to actually check into the rooms yet, so we ended up just doing to indoor "dry" amusement area with go-carts, laser tag, a ropes course, and more.

Once the rest of the crew arrived, we checked into our rooms and got our swim suits on and headed down to the indoor waterpark area. It was so nice because it wasn't busy at ALL at first! We were the only ones there it seemed like from about 2-6pm. Then people slowly started to arrive, but still not bad at all. Caleb and Gabe got to spend a lot of time on this surfing area where you learn how to ride the waves! There is a little coach that sits there and kind of tells you what to do, but mostly you just keep trying until you fall off and wash up back to the top!

There were about 10 big waterslides that were indoors also. Some of them you rode just one person at a time and others you would sit on a tube with 2-3 people. There was one ride that me, Rachel, Gabe, and Brayden walked up to the top. When we got there we asked Brayden if he wanted to do it and he said he wanted to ride with Gabe! We were a little nervous because it was kind of an intense ride, like a roller coaster but in a tube! So we told Brayden "hold on tight" and told Gabe to kind of wrap his legs around Brayden's waist! (Gabe was sitting in the tube behind Brayden.) After they got down the first time though, Brayden exclaimed, "AGAIN!" haha. He loved it! We couldn't even get Avery to go on that one! There were some other smaller slides that she did again and again. There was also a wave pool and a lazy river.

So we spent a long time there and then at about 6pm we left and went out to dinner at Culver's. Then we went back and did the indoor stuff again like the laser tag, ropes course, go carts, mini golf, rock climbing wall, and some other things. Mom and Jasmine had to leave early the next morning for a braces appointment for Jasmine, so they had to get all their stuff in that night! The next morning, Rachel and Brayden stayed with us and we did the water park again until about noon, then we checkout out and did a couple more rides on the go carts, then headed home. It was very fun and tiring!

We got back to Fondy at about 3pm on Friday. Then we spent some time doing laundry and packing up our suitcases at my grandma's house. Then we had dinner at my mom's house and relaxed and chatted. It was our last evening in Wisconsin and we were all sad and tired!

Saturday morning we loaded up our SUV and said goodbye to the whole crew - grandma Dahlke, grandpa Bestor, mom, Rachel, and Brayden! (Jasmine was at home asleep... we know where we stand with her. lol)

Then we drove away at about 7am! Until next time, Wisconsin!

As we drove home, we were able to listen to General Conference on our phones. It was a historic moment when President Nelson announced that they would be changing the church schedule from being 3 hours long to just 2 hours long. It has been 3 hours long for my whole life, so this was a pretty big deal! Part of the reason they are doing this is because the church membership has grown so much over the past 20 years that they are using lots of the church buildings for multiple wards on Sundays. They are having a hard time scheduling three different wards of people into the same building to allow for the big sacrament meeting, then the two hours of Sunday school classes. In our building for example, there is a group that meet at 8:30am (us), then another starts at 11:00, then another at 1:30, so some people don't get home from church until 4:00! Part of this new church schedule is that they will have some lessons available online that families can talk about at home. I'm a little worried about my kids' willingness to sit and listen to me as I try and teach them Sunday school lessons at home, but we will try! Most churches probably only meet for about an hour every Sunday anyways, but here we are just excited it's now only 2! haha. The other big thing they talked about was how we want to emphasis that our church is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" and not just "the Mormons." This is because some people apparently don't know we believe in Jesus. (Duh... it's in the church name, people!) So now the "Mormon Tabernacle Choir" is also the "Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square." (We are going to call it TabCATS for short haha)

So, now we are back at home and getting back into the swing of school and work again! Gabe had to make a diorama inside a shoebox from a book he read called "The Tripods". Luckily we did that before we left for Wisconsin so it was all ready to turn in the day we got back! It had lots of little trees (that I ordered from Amazon) and he painted a woodland scene around it (I helped a little.)

Gabe is officially done with soccer. He had his last game right before we left for Wisconsin. (See picture below) Caleb has one last football game this weekend so he has still been practicing after school this week. Halloween is just around the corner and the school and church parties are coming up this weekend!

That's all for now!