Mother's Day 2012 and LASIK!

This morning I woke up to a yummy breakfast, some cute decorations, and the best family in the world! Here are the decorations that Dave had put up. Dawson gets really excited about decorating for every holiday and his excitement has definitely rubbed off on me and Dave.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an "all about my mom" questionnaire that I thought would be cute to hear Dawson's answers to, so I emailed the link to Dave as a hint that I wanted it for Mother's Day. He got the hint. ;)

I love his answers, some of them made me laugh. :)

We were able to spend time with a lot of my family today and we skyped with Dave's parents before we put the kids to bed. I love days that are filled with family and lots of love! Thank you all for making my Mother's Day so great!

We went to Arctic Circle for lunch and ice cream and I snapped this picture of Ashlynn because she reminded me of Santa Claus. :) She definitely enjoys ice cream and she looks adorable while she's at it.

Here are some pics of me and the kidlets.

I wanted to try and get a picture of them each giving me a kiss on the cheek, and they did, but Ashlynn also was trying to pull off my sunglasses. That's ok, though, I still love the picture.

A couple of weeks ago Dave entered me in a contest that The Eye Institute of Utah was running. They were giving away LASIK eye surgery to four deserving mothers... and I won!!! I didn't believe it at first. They called me to tell me that I had won and I was totally confused and thought it was some sort of scam. But after I talked to Dave and did a bit of googling I realized that it was real! Yippee!! The lady that called to tell me that I had won sent me an email with what Dave wrote about it. I thought it was too sweet and it totally mad me cry when I read it. Here is what he wrote:

"Jamie, the mother of my 2 wonderful children has two incredible reasons she deserves to get the LASIK she has been wanting for so long. For the last 5 years of my service in the Navy she was the most supportive and positive part of mine & our children's lives. Even though I was gone on deployments for most of those 5 years she never once questioned why and always had a positive outlook for our children to see. I can't even begin to tell you how active she is with our children. She is always doing some sort of project or music classes with them. One of the traditions she started since we were away from our families was to do a calendar for the grandparents with pictures of them doing projects relating to each month so they can see how they are growing. That is just a small example of her creativity and time she spends with them.

The second is for her positive change in not only hers but our entire family. Both of us for the most part have been at least a little over weight for most of our adult lives, we were both heavier than either of us realized. One day she was ready for a road to a healthier life and she brought the rest of us with her. She exercises daily now and even wants to be a fitness instructor to help other people. Although the focus is on a healthy lifestyle not weight loss she has lost almost 80 lbs and I have lost almost 50 lbs due to the changes she encouraged in our life. I love knowing that my kids will grow up much healthier because of her. She is even running a "Biggest Loser" competition for the rest of our family. I think she has received the biggest compliment from some of my former co-workers. When they read her blogs and saw how active she is with our children they told me that it made them feel like they had an inadequate childhood seeing how much she did with our kids. It made me feel incredibly proud of her. Jamie absolutely is the most deserving mother you could find to give the gift of LASIK!"

Awww! Everything happened so fast after that. I got a call on Wednesday saying that I had won and a week and a half later I had the surgery. I first had to go in and make sure I was a candidate to have the surgery. The first appointment only lasted about 20 minutes and they determined that I was a good candidate for LASIK. I had another appointment two days later that lasted about 3 hours. And then two days after that I went in for surgery. I was SO nervous, luckily they gave me some valium and that completely calmed me down. The surgery was over pretty quickly. Everything was a little blurry because my corneas were swollen but everything still looked better then it did before I had the surgery and didn't have my contacts in. I had to wear these eye shields (you'll see lots of funny pictures in just a minute) and had to put eye drops in my eyes every 20 minutes. They told me to expect a little bit of blurry/foggy vision for about a week but all of that went away after a few hours. It is SO weird to be able to see perfectly without my glasses or contacts. I have another appointment on Thursday to check my vision and everything. I think they said I would have appointments at one week, one month, three months, six months, and twelve months. All of those appointments are free, too! And then after that I have to have regular yearly exams which are not free but I can choose where I go for my exams and as long as I keep up with my yearly checkups my LASIK is guaranteed and if I ever need any enhancements those will be free. Sweet!!


Here are the flowers that they gave me when I got there.

And after surgery. I had to wear the eye shields and when I was in the sun I had to have dark sunglasses on. I actually ended up wearing my own sunglasses over the pair they gave me because the sun was too much for me.

That night I was super paranoid that I was going to rub my eyes in my sleep so I made Dave put extra tape over my eye shields. (Worst picture ever, I KNOW, but it's funny so I have to post it.)

And another bad picture.... Dave bought me some safety glasses to wear when I'm holding/playing with the kids so I didn't have to keep taping on the shields (I still tape the shields on at night because I don't trust myself in my sleep...I'll continue to do this for a week) because the kids like to poke me in the face a lot. Seeeeeeeeee....

Good thing I was wearing my safety glasses right then! haha