Weekly Update & Poker Run Saturday

Shayla will be starting her sixth week at her new school on Monday. Although she will tell you she does not like it, I think she's doing as well as possible. She has sweet friends there and has thrived academically so that's about all I could ask for at this point. I'm not about to ask her to be happy about it.

She had a very special school week. On Tuesday, she performed "Us" by Shel Silverstein with a sweet classmate in the school talent show. They dressed in black and white outfits, stood back to back and had every other line memorized. When they practiced at our house, I thought it was grand. Shay Shay said it went well.

On Wednesday, she was picked up by a friend's mom at 5:30 am to catch the bus for an INCREDIBLE class field trip to Amish Country. She talked non-stop as soon as she got back home that night. Shayla has many new places she'd like us to visit when we are there next week with Mom and Joe.

Thursday was the after school bowling and pizza party for her class's reading award celebration. When I picked her up she seemed to be having a grand time with a bunch of girls. One told me she won the bowling game, but Shay said it was pure luck. I was also able to speak with her principal and teacher at the bowling alley to get the scoop from them. They think she's doing great.

This weekend she's having both SE and Tiffin friends over to our home to play. Shayla will be THRILLED when school is out, but hey - so will I!

This week we also had family pictures taken at Shayne's suggestion. It's still so hard for me because I think we should be a family of four and when I see just three of us I have to tell myself Christi took the pictures. (Of course, Skeeter - the leased horse - managed to get in the "family" pictures, but oh well, Shayla certainly spends enough time with him to be family, I guess.) Regardless, I'm anxious to see the pictures the photographer took out at "Lane of Dreams".

On Wednesday afternoon, I had laser surgery done on my eyes and it was like a miracle! I'd wanted it done for years, but had been too frightened. (Shayne had his done in the spring of 2002 and when he described the odor of "burnt chicken" that day I knew I would never get up the guts to do it, but somehow I did. OK, I breathed through my mouth so I wouldn't smell anything and it worked, whew!) When I was on the table positioned under the machine I decided to tell them I changed my mind I could not go through with it, but then I thought of Christi and I knew she never had the option of backing out and saying "no thank you" so I went through with it despite the incredible nauseous feeling. I won't say I'd want to rush out and do it again, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I just wish for the first eye I would have told them to be quiet and not describe what they were doing to me....we're numbing your eye, we're opening the flap, we're applying the treatment (all 16 seconds of it), etc. For the second eye I told them to please talk about the Cavs game or something because talking about the surgery was making me sick.

Prior to the surgery, Dr. Young thought I might have better than 20/20 vision when he was done with the surgery and when I went back to him on Thursday afternoon, I found out that is true! It's 20/15! I can't believe how scared I was, but I am oh so very glad I did it! I can see like I've never seen before. And I can see when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can see in the shower, I can see when I look down at the scale. Everything is crystal clear - so much better than ever before. Trees have individual leaves and different shading - amazing! I really can't believe it. Praise the Lord for clear vision and for an easy time of it all!

Humor: One of my classes was really intrigued by the eye surgery I was about to have. One of the students had just watched a show on the Discovery Channel about it and he was explaining it to us, despite the fact I told him I really did not want to know what they were going to do to me. When I was telling that to the doctor he said I should have brought my students because they could have watched it on a video screen in the waiting room. I thought that would have been soooooo cool. I wish I could have done that! Now I wouldn't let just any class watch my eye surgery, but THAT class, oh I absolutely love those kids, that would have been awesome. So, I told them what the doctor said and then we found an Internet site that showed a short simulation. We watched that today, their final day of my reading class. What a hoot! I'm going to miss them so very, very much!


REMINDER: Tomorrow (Saturday) is the Christi Thomas Memorial Poker Run.