PRK

Whoops! I started this as a draft last week and accidentally published it! I just finished it so now it’s ready to read!

This past fall, Kevin and I spent a couple days trimming all the trees in our yard and burning branches.  Great news: the yard looked a million times better! Bad news: when Kevin was throwing branches into the fire, one of the branches caught his glasses and took them into the fire. I was outside when it happened and we frantically looked everywhere for them with no luck.  A day later when the fire was out, we found the ear pieces. The lenses must have melted in the fire.  We had just purchased the brand new glasses in the spring and we paid a pretty penny for them.  Kevin had mentioned several times over the years about having eye surgery so he didn’t have to wear glasses anymore.  We felt like now was a good time.

We made a consultation with the best eye surgeron in town, Dr. Hayden, and did the necessary tests to see which surgery Kevin qualified for.  Lasik wasn’t an option because his corneas were to steep, but PRK was an option.  They recommended taking a few days off work since he wanted to do both eyes at the same time, and Kevin had already taken he first week of December off.  It worked perfectly they could get him in Friday, the week before his vacation started.

The day of his procedure he was nervous.  I felt pretty calm about the whole thing but that’s probably because I was just there to take pictures and be his driver home :-P  The PRK procedure took about 10 minutes total from start to finish.  They had told Kevin the laser would come into focus as it was correcting his eyes.  He thought that was the neatest part of the whole process.  

We left with a handful of eye drops and he came home and went straight to bed.  The more you let your eyes rest, the better you’ll feel.  They said to think of your eyelids like bandaids and the more you keep them closed the better.  The kids and I rented some Apple TV movies and stayed at home.  We spent a quiet, dark, weekend at home.  I say dark because we kept all the lights off, we put poster board up over the windows, and we closed every curtain and blind we have in our house.  Funny story: the first time kevin woke up in our bed after having the procedure, he was not happy with me because he thought I had left all our bathroom lights on.  He was fumbling to get out of bed and get the lights turned off.  When he got to the bathroom he realized the lights were off and the light that was blinding him was our little salt lamp.  It really doesn’t put off much light, so we both thought it was funny that light was “blinding”.

The severe light sensitivity lasted 3-4ish days.  His eyes felt the most uncomfortable on Day 3, but he didn’t need any pain meds.  Slowly as the week went on, we were able to turn on lights in the house, but sometimes he’d still wear his sunglasses inside. As his eyes healed, his vision was changing - sometimes several times a day.  One eye would be blurry, then the other, or close up would be blurry.  This coming Friday he will be 8 weeks out. He’s seeing great!  He still has a little light sensitivity but he says being able to see without glasses is 100% worth it!  

The first several weeks after his procedure, he’d still wake up and reach for his glasses.  We both got a kick out of that too!  One day he was actually on his hands and knees looking under the bed for his glasses and realized he could see, then remembered he didn’t need them.  :)  He’s convinced I need to have lasik or prk done.  I’m not opposed to the idea, but it will probably be several years before that’s even an option.  Right now it has its perks... we’ll be laying in bed and if one of us needs something, I’ll tell him get out of bed and do it since he can see and I can’t! 

It took me weeks to look at him and not think “where are your glasses?”.  Family commented how different he looked with out them.  But I think we are all use to the new look!  If you’ve ever thought about having it done, he’d highly recommend it!  

Here are some pics :)

Waiting in the waiting room for the Dr to call us back!

That’s his eye on the screen!  It was pretty neat to watch the process!


This was after he was all done.  They had us come back in a room to answer any last questions we had and get us the eye drops we needed!

Ringing in the new year glasses free!

4 Months of Flipagrams!

Here’s the quickest way to see what we’ve been up to the last four months!  I look forward to making a video of all my cell phone pictures from each month, so here’s September, October, November, and December!

Happy Birthday Austin!

It’s been Way. Too. Long. since I’ve posted on my blog!  It seemed like when I had free time, other projects and commitments took precedence over my blog.  We’ve also not replaced our computer which is a set back, BUT I found a new app that lets me blog from my phone!  I have plenty of things to blog about, so hopefully I can get all caught up this new year!

As 2017 came to a close, we got to celebrate one more special birthday.  Our baby, Austin, turned 4!  Here are some current things about him:  He’s as tall as Krissy and outweighs her, he constantly chants “I-love-my-fami-ly,” he loves when everyone is at school and it’s just me and him, he loves milk (he’s now limited to two sippy cups a day because he just wanted to drink milk instead of eat food!), he’s a very expressive little talker, he loves to wrestle with the boys, he can’t wait for soccer to start again, he still needs a nap but usually fights it and falls asleep around 5 o’clock (some days he’ll sleep through till the next morning), he’s so tough (when he got his flu shot he didn’t even flinch and said “that didn’t hurt”), he’s constantly saying hilarious things and making us all laugh!

We celebrated his birthday with a little family gathering at my parents house.  We had planned to have the party at our house, but Kevin had to be at work the next day at 2am.  I figured he wouldn’t sleep very well if we had 9 kids and a party at or house! 

Ok time for a little confessional... I always feel so guilty about the lack of planning I do for Austin’s birthday.  It’s hard to pull off a big themed party the day after Christmas!  You know how much I love making the kids cakes, but I don’t have enough time to ever do anything great for his birthday.  It’s too cold for an outdoor photo shoot, and I don’t think I’ve ever done a birthday quiz with him.  All that being said, I decided at his half birthday this year, I’ll do a photo shoot of him and an little quiz!  

Here’s some pics of our celebration this year!

Austin loves cars, so we made candy cars with all the cousins!

Throwback to the sweetest little Christmas baby!

Krissy's 5th Birthday Photo shoot

Happy Birthday Krissy!!!!!

Krissy is a little mini-me.  She wants to do whatever I'm doing.  If I'm baking, she's on the counter asking to help.  If I'm working in the yard, she's right next to me doing what I'm doing.  I can't believe how well she's adapted to pre-k and she's actually upset I don't let her go everyday.  Her teacher tells me how much she loves Krissy and how sweet she is.  She loves to play Barbies with Allie.  She thinks Hayden is hilarious and imitates anything he does.  She thinks of Austin as the baby and likes to tell him what to do.  And he never pushes back, he just accepts that role.  I love her little raspy voice and tiny freckles on her nose!

Earlier this month, I took Krissy to the Master Garden in Evansville (she said she would have rather gone to Florida to take pictures - me too, kid!) for some birthday pictures.  Turns out the garden has become a hot spot for rock hunting.  We had to dodge a few more people than usual for our photo shoot.  

You'll be able to tell pretty quickly that Krissy #1 loves flamingos and #2 likes to work it for the camera.  She posed and twirled and posed and cheesed.  It was so fun to take her picture!  I finished the photo shoot with 85 "keepers" but I'm only including my favorites on here :)

We took a break from "Mingy" and the flamingo dress.  I know that these wedding dress pictures may not be everyone's favorite, but I love the idea.  Allie got her picture in my wedding dress when she turned 5, so Krissy did too!  She was SO excited to get to wear it and loved me carrying her around the garden in it.

We still had some sun light after the wedding dress pictures, so we put the flamingo dress back on to wrap up the evening.

We found a painted shell (apparently what everyone was looking for) and Krissy was so excited.  She kept telling me funny things "the ocean" was telling her.