About a month ago I visited Morgan in Knoxville while my Mom, Gigi, and Granddad were on a cruise, so it was just me, Morgan and Sasha. I was SO EXCITED to spend some much needed one-on-one quality time with my sister. So I drove up Saturday morning and got there about 1:00pm. Morgan and I immediately started running her errands to her dorm, getting her some school clothes, shopping at Walmart and walking Sasha. We decided to take Sasha to our annual Ijams nature center hike. We love Ijams so much. They wonderfully run and keep up their trails and nature center!
So all three of us hiked for 2 1/2 hours and by the end we were dead ha. We had to take a mid hike stop for errr, uh Sasha... right. ;)
But she was ready to get up and get back to it. Morgan and I love exercising Sasha and love hiking. It feels good to know we are helping Sasha (and ourselves!) stay healthy.
Fall leaves 😍😍
The leaves were just starting to turn beautiful colors but unfortunately it was 92 degrees that day.
Back home I got in my 'sorority girl' gear and relaxed while Morgan worked on her engineering homework. We told stories, talked, looked at photo albums, and ate a delicious dinner together. I was so proud of us for not ordering pizza and actually each cooking for ourselves! We are finally growing up.😅
While Morgan and I were up late, I cut us up a snack bowl for healthy snacking. We LOVE fruit so this bowl was definitely gone by the next morning.
Sunday morning rolled around and we went to early church service at my old church. The sanctuary is now finished so this was the first official official service for me in it. So magnificent and meaningful! Then we came home, ate lunch together and I sadly had to hit the road back home.
The next weekend Cody and I ate at First Watch, our absolute favorite breakfast place! I got the superfoods bowl (below) which is chia pudding/granola/fruit and almond butter toast! Cody gets the chickechanga. We could eat here every day!
Sunday after church we went to Bonefish Grills brunch and Cody had this scrumptious egg and lobster benedict while I had a crab and cheese omelette. We hadn't been to Bonefish since Valentines day! It is one of our favorite places!
The next weekend we had our long awaited corn maze weekend! Edgar and I drove half way to meet mom and Morgan at the River Maze in Cleveland TN.
'Dyar' girls
The corn maze theme this year was grandma's house!
The corn was really tall this year and very thick! It made for a very good, very confusing maze. We were stuck in the maze for a good hour and a half! So fun!
The really neat thing about the maze is there were bible questions to lead you through the maze where you would have to go the direction the correct answer would tell you.
Then we walked the river walk and through the soybean maze. There is so much to do at this place! Then we grabbed some kettle corn and headed to the rest of the festivities. We slid down the slides, played corn hole, tether ball, pet goats and sheep, played pumpkin volleyball, jumped on the jumpy mat, and got to choose our pumpkins.
😍
The hay ride led us to the pumpkin patch and I picked my perfect pumpkin which I later turned into Spongebob 😆
We had so much fun spending our very warm day all together at such a fun place. This was our second time and we plan to come back again. We LOVE corn mazes and especially having the perfect excuse to be all together.
After leaving the River maze we went straight to my apartment and all watched the UT game with Cody while munching on the delicious snack plates that mom got for us! She is so sweet and thoughtful always making every event so much fun! Mom has done that for us our whole lives from making ants on a log to writing our initial in pb and sprinkles on top of our sandwich to drawing on the bathtub walls with our popsicles (but not eating that one after!). She is so creative!
So on to the sad part unfortunately....
Fast forward to late October. I decided to "relive the glory days" and join a soccer league again. I hadn't played in over 7 years but missed the competition and being active on a team. For a month and a half, I ate fish, veggies, lean protein, ran every day, practiced my soccer ball handling skills, did T25's for endurance. I went all out...just to destroy my ATF ligament in my first indoor soccer game at D1.
Me before my daily soccer practice.
Eating all of the right things for my body.
Jogging every day and truly having fun with it. Finding myself again in the quiet fall breeze on the local Greenway.
All just to badly sprain my ankle. 😑 I conditioned and practiced pretty much every day for 5 1/2 weeks. I was so excited and so ready. I paid my fee, signed up, joined a team, and showed up for the first game. I played two games that day and then towards the end of the second game, my ankle turned in 90 degrees and snapped. It was the absolute worst sound I have ever heard in my life and I immediately knew something bad had just happened. I laid on the ground and was too afraid to get up and face what I knew had just happened. Yep grade 4 sprained ankle with over 3 places on my tendon torn in half. Why? I don't know. I was just running and my ankle gave out like it always did....but never this bad. I mean come on!?! I am an athlete! I never get injured and never really have! I have played sports my whole life and am very active! I NEVER get hurt. My ankles roll themselves all the time and I just pop up and shake it off and keep going. What in the world?!?!?! My soccer career is over, and I will never gain full range mobility again. My chance of this happening again increases 70%. I have to wear a brace every time I exercise from here on out. I hate that. Now I am recovering very very slowly with an kankle and barely able to put weight on it. I am very sad. It is like all of the sporty/active things I imagined for myself is now altered/gone. I can't properly play tag with my kids, play on a pick-up league in the future, jump on the trampoline without extreme worry. I will always have to be on guard ready for it to happen again, being extremely cautious. I don't want to be cautious, I have always been able to just go without thinking. I am a safe person but not cautious when it comes to sports. I am really down and just can't even properly do my job right now at work. I can't even drive. I will have to do physical therapy and will have to wear a boot for at least 6 weeks. If all of that doesn't work, I will have to have surgery. That is the worst case scenario but it is still there. I am trying not to make this a bigger deal than it is but this is a big deal for me. But right now, when all I am dying to do is play sports, I will be the best physical therapist patient and recover faster than they have ever seen. And recover well. Then I will slowly work my way back up to get as close as I can to where I was. I just want to ride a unicycle again.
WARNING! The pictures below are graphic!
This is what happened immediately after it happened and I hobbled to the car. It got twice this size and I couldn't feel my toes. It was so incredibly scary but I didn't cry or carry on. I was proud of myself!
After the ER, realizing I didn't have a broken bone, I got a splint to wear at night which helped so so much!
I had to take Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wednesday off of work due to extreme swelling and sensitivity and had to ice and elevate it about every 2 hours. It was so painful.
Now fast forward to a week after the fact. My foot is a nice yellow, blueish-black on both sides and still a good bit swollen. It is hard to see the swelling in the pictures but trust me, my pinky toe is a small swollen sausage, ha.
Why it looks like this on the other side, I have no idea.
I met my mom half way from Knoxville to get a little scooter to get around the apartment better and stores and such. I was so happy to see her!
Quick Halloween update since I wasn't able to partake in my usual surprise-the-famiy Halloween traditions. I still gathered up my Halloween spirit, threw on my costume, decorated a pumpkin to go with my costume, and sat by my door with my leg propped up passing out candy to the cute little kids.
Love,
Kayla
11-11-17
P.S. Be sure to keep scrolling and check out the next post! It is new too and all about my 30 days of thanks in November!
