give {thanks}

thanksgiving this year was a holiday to remember.

we started out the day with max's first haircut and then went to my grandparents for a delicious, and perfect thanksgiving feast. we ate wayyyy too much and then somehow i thought that i would have room for five different kinds of pie! i had to make room for the pumpkin pie though; i don't think i've met anyone who can make a better pumpkin pie than my grandma. we played an intense game of farkle and then went to my parents and cuddled up watching movies. my sister was home alone so that night around 11 we decided to venture out and start black friday a few hours early. we went to the modbod warehouse sale and scored on a bunch of $5 tanks and a bag of 21 athletic shirts for ONE dollar. it was great! i wanted to grab a few things at old navy too...but shortly after entering the store we changed our minds. it was insane in there. we got home at 1 a.m. and i was exhausted! at 5:30 a.m. we left for robert's to get a christmas tree for my mom {how convenient that she was out of town! haha} i've never gone out on black friday and i'm not sure that i'll ever do it again.

that afternoon we arrived in layton for the rest of our thanksgiving holiday. danny's sister couldn't get work off for thanksgiving, so we planned to have our thanksgiving feast on saturday. friday we didn't have many plans so we just hung out and enjoyed being lazy. that night, danny met up with three of his buddies to play some racquetball.

...this is when our thanksgiving weekend took a turn in the wrong direction...

i told danny {as i always do when he goes out with his friends} to be careful. my husband has this crazy tendency to get injured when i am not around. he promised {as he always does} that he would be safe. and then he kissed me and ran out the door.

two hours later he came home with one blue eye...and one brown eye. apparently, he got hit directly in the eye with a racquetball and could no longer see out of his right eye. we called his sister {the pediatrician} to see what she would recommend doing and she advised him to go straight to the E.R. so that's what we did. it was crazy. max hadn't fallen asleep yet, so we left him with danny's mom screaming his head off. i was positive that my husband was going to be blind in his right eye forever. and all danny seemed to care about at the moment was the jazz game.

i've never been to the E.R. before and the first thing i noticed was the sign that said, "we see patients in order of severity, not order of arrival." there were surprisingly quite a few people there so i thought for sure we would be waiting for awhile. however, we got called right back. the doctor asked danny a few questions and danny was cracking jokes left and right. and asking if he could get a room with a t.v. so he could watch the jazz game. {i have NO idea when he got so interested in the jazz!} the doctor did a quick eye exam...and danny successfully failed! it was horrible. he couldn't even see the big E right on top. i wanted to cry.

after seeing a bunch of doctors, they finally came to the conclusion that they wanted a specialist to look at his eye so they were sending us across the street to the on-call ophthalmologist. we met up with dr. hess at 10 p.m. and received a bunch of crazy news. because danny was struck directly in the eye there was a bunch of blood {which is why his blue eye turned brown} but he couldn't get a good look back at his retina. he put danny on reading/driving/working probation for a week!, gave him some dilating + steroid drops, and told us to come back in the morning.

the next day, things were looking up. danny's vision had significantly improved, and it was slowly returning to its natural color. the doctor was able to see his retina, and besides some bruising, everything looked good. had his retina been detached, surgery + permanent vision loss would have been in danny's future. thank goodness for tender mercies! he was told to continue to take it easy--and asked to see us again on monday.

monday, dr. hess cleared us to go home and reminded danny to always use safety goggles. we drove home monday afternoon and have been taking it easy ever since. we went to a follow-up appt. today and the doc gave danny permission to read again! hallelujah! he also took him off of the dilating drops, which will hopefully reduce his nausea. we're hoping that he can return to work on friday...he sure misses the kids! since he just got off of his dilating drops, his eye still hasn't returned to normal. this is what my cute husband has looked like for the past five days:

oh, and amidst all of the craziness that went on we still had a wonderful thanksgiving feast with the mckinley family:

i think one of the biggest reminders we had this thanksgiving was how blessed we are to be able to SEE. it is amazing how much we take for granted...and clear vision is among those things.