Eye Update

We took the boys for a 6 month check up with their Retina Specialist (in Houston) on Friday. The appointments went really well. Gray's eyes are crystal clear and his retinas look great. Dr. Holz agrees that Nate needs cataract surgery, but believes he can wait until the summer. We asked about having the surgery done over Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Dr. Holz said surgery makes for a pretty crummy Christmas present (although I think improved vision would be a great present).

Both boys go back to Dr. Holz in March, so I guess we'll be spending Spring Break down south. Gray will see their regular ophthalmologist at the end of November. He'll probably get prescribed his bifocals at that appointment. Nate will see the ophthalmologist in January for a check up and to make sure we don't need to move faster on his surgery.

On a side note, Gray did better than most adults do at the doctor's appointment. Kenny held him for his dilation eye drops, but he sat in the chair by himself the rest of the time. He even cooperated when the bright lights were shined in his eyes.

We have also begun working with Nate's school to get him a little more help. He's keeping up with his work now, but we're concerned that his vision will begin to hamper his learning. We've met with his teacher, the Principal, the Section 504 coordinator, a district Visual Impairment (VI) Specialist, and the school Diagnostician. We've filled out paper work and hopefully the VI specialist will begin evaluating him soon. She'll watch him work and play and determine what can and should be done to help him in the classroom. We're very excited about this and want it to be done quickly. Unfortunately these things take time (up to 90 days), so here we are waiting again.

We made a couple of extra stops on our trip to the Retina Specialist.

On the way to Houston we stopped and had lunch with Granny Debbie. The boys enjoyed seeing Granny and getting out of the car to play.

We decided to take a different way home after the appointments. This allowed us to drive through College Station and show Nate Kyle Field. I believe it was ring day (which we didn't know) and traffic was snarled up all around campus. We had planned to eat in College Station, but after spending an hour driving around the campus (literally, one time around campus, not aimlessly driving through campus) we decided we would just find someplace else to eat. We ended up at Taco Cabana in Bryan. Luckily, we really like Cabana (and they have "real tequila margaritas").

Then we headed to Marlin to watch the Grandview Zebras play football. Nate was excited to see his cousins and Gray loves to cheer.

After the one day trip around Texas I was extremely grateful for our new Suburban. It's so comfortable and the boys were able to watch the built in DVD player (no portable one sliding around on the center console). I'm not sure we could have made all of those stops in the old Jeep. :)