Long Live Dirty Dan!

Our family has a new reference point for our timelines. Everything
is now referred to as an event before Daniel died or after he died. A
year ago yesterday Daniel went into cardiac arrest and (technically)
died for 11 minutes. He was miraculously revived and had open heart
surgery to repair the problem. He's had an amazing recovery this year
and we thank our Heavenly Father every day that he is still here with
us. We also tease Daniel on a regular basis for all the crazy things
he did while under the influence of whatever medications they were
pumping him full of. He doesn't remember any of it of course, so it's
a riot to remind him of how many nurses he hit on or what kind of
dances he did from his hospital bed. How he kept his sense of humor
through the entire ordeaL (well - except for the part right after his
surgery when everyone would tell him to hug that heart shaped pillow
and it wouldn't hurt. Yeah right it wouldn't hurt - he had quite a
few things to say about that under his breath)

He's bounced back like a champ - jumped right back into college life,
basketball and girls. And he is still the big personality in our
family. I remember turning to Jud in the hospital one night and
crying to him "If we lose Daniel our family won't be fun any more!"
Thank goodness that didn't happen. I also remember Skyler and Anna
and I gather around Daniel's bed while he was in a coma and telling
him that he had to wake up because all of our future kids were going
to need an uncle! We told him they couldn't grow up without uncle
dirty - and this year he stuck around to make sure that didn't happen!
He's amazing with his new little nephew Jack and I'm sure they will
have many adventures in the future.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support! This whole thing
made our family stronger as well as our faith. We'll never forget all
the miracles that happened to make this possible and I think that we
all cherish our time with him more now that we've had to consider
living without him. He's an amazing man with an amazing heart :)
Here's to another 50 good years! LONG LIVE DIRTY DAN!