First Days of Ryan’s Homeschool Co-op
The journey has begun! Ryan embarked a few days ago on his new adventure of “real school.” He has been homeschooling, as most homeschoolers do, soon after God brought him into this world and already at his ripe old age of 5 1/2, he is fairly proficient at reading simple words. This is thanks in part to some hard work over the past year  having recently completed the “Hooked on Phonics” Kindergarten levels 1 and 2 (along with his 4 year old sister Kaitlyn).
The big change came as Ryan started a Homeschooling Co-Op where he goes twice a week with eight other kids at “Gloria Deo Academy.” The co-op uses the “classical method” of learning with lots of early memorization, making it a pretty rigorous work load.  The rest of the week he is still homeschooling away with his brothers and sister. Getting a head start on his memory work, Ryan has already mastered Psalm 1:1-6 over the past few weeks
Below are a few pictures and a video of the last few days for you to enjoy:
Ryan’s new found interest is math as he loves numbers. Of course, treasure map drawing is still number one in his book! :p
Read MoreWho Needs Salvation?
God is perfect. We are not. How do we measure up to God? We don’t. Christ lived a perfect life to die in our place. Jesus provided what is called the divine exchange. Our sins for His perfection. Repenting of your sins and trusting in Christ along for the forgiveness of your sins is the only way! Give up your life and give it back to your creator Jesus! Watch this video for an interesting explanation of salvation:
Read MoreOur trip to the South and Cruise to Mexico
If you would like to see the pictures from our latest family adventures, please and they will magically appear! If you have not yet registered, take a moment to do so here: After I have approved your account, you will be able to Thanks and God bless!
There are lots of pictures in this one (~170) be patient for it to load!
We are very thankful to the Lord, Jesus, for allowing our entire family to travel down to the southern United States and then board a cruise ship to Mexico! We had a blast and in the words of Alex (2) ” We went on a ‘space ship’!”
Click here to see more photos from the battleship and sub!
Tea Party – Tampa April 15th, 2010
As we see our country quickly loosing its footing as a free, sustainable society with the debt we are incurring (well, I guess sustainable is relative when you look at God’s long term plans anyway) 
 Sarah and I decided to finish up our Florida trip with a visit to join up on a tea party gathering. We were very excited to see so many people standing up for conservative principles!
Cooking Finished
After cooking for 4 hours with 3 different batches, Sarah turned in her finished product to the judges. Now we just have to wait! During the course of the event, we were both interviewed by Alexandra Wentworth, who is the wife of George Stephanopoulos. Maybe we will see that interview at a later date!
Now, we can relax for a few hours in the pool of the resort before the awards ceremony tonight. The category winners will be immediately flown to Chicago via Pillsbury’s private jet to prepare for the Grand Prize announcement on the Oprah Winfrey show on Wednesday. Quite an exciting time!
Pillsbury Bake Off Dinner
The night before the competition, we gathered with the 99 other finalists and all the guests and enjoyed a gourmet meal.
We learned quite a bit about the process of how recipes are selected. Well over 10,000 recipes are submitted and now they are down to 100. First, they weed out obviously not original recipes, ones that don’t meet the requirements, etc. From those thousands left, they send them to the main Pillsbury selection panel to weed them down to what think will make easy to make, yet unique and good tasting items. Then, all those remaining are cooked and taste tested by a panel at a rate of 4 dozen a day for weeks. Then from those hundreds cooked, they put the team to work looking though every known recipe book, online, etc to make sure they are original recipes. When cleared, the final 100 are chosen. Quite a process.
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First Day at the Bake Off
We arrived in Orlando Florida last night and kicked off the first day of the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest.
Sixth Surgery Complete
God once again shows His mercy and Grace by bringing Ryan through another surgery on his hand. This time, Dr. Seitz removed the lengtheners and pins and preformed a syndactyly surgery. The syndactyly release’s purpose was to remove scar tissue between the pinky and ring finger that was just stretched over 20mm and and lower the skin connection. Even though one set of pins came out of the bone on the middle finger during the distraction augmentation, we found that God created some solid bone in the finger anyway! It is not as long as the other, but we did gain somewhere between 5-8mm. Below are some pictures for you to see the progress!
God brought Ryan through 5th surgery!
Ryan did great with this second round of surgery. Dr. Seitz placed two lengtheners on his middle two fingers and placed a bandage for healing. That will stay on for one week and then the stretching will start.
Coming out of anesthesia is always the hardest part for Ryan. He struggled for a while, but with some pain meds, he fell asleep and then has been his normal self ever since. Coloring, watching movies, and eating lots! He had to go without breakfast and lunch today, so for dinner he ate 3+ big pieces of pizza, his favorite!
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Fifth Surgery for Ryan Scheduled
We are all excited as Ryan gets to continue his hand reconstruction with his fifth surgery scheduled as he starts the second round of treatment. Dr. Seitz of the Cleveland Clinic in Beachwood, Ohio will continue to be his surgeon. 
We ask for prayer for Dr. Seitz, his team, skilled hands and work, and for Ryan’s safety during the surgery and that he will not have any complications from the anesthesia or surgery itself. He is always allergic to adhesives, so pray also that God will calm his immune system in response to these types of things and move his body’s defenses over to fight off bacteria from the incisions.
For those of you not familiar with his condition of the procedure, feel free to read the whole story here, but for a quick synopsis read on. Ryan was born without fingers on his left hand from Amniotic Band Syndrome. He had a few stumps, but without much function at all. After much prayer and searching we found Dr. Setiz in Cleveland Ohio, who is one of the few people in the world who performs distraction augmentation on the hand. Basically, he implants bone if necessary (toe bones) breaks them, attaches a device screwed into the bone and extends outside the hand to slowly move the two broken pieces apart. Then God’s miracle of bone regeneration takes over and fills in the space. Sometimes it is necessary to cut the skin that “webs” between the stretched fingers and fill in with skin graphs taken from the groin area. Sometimes this is not necessary.
Ryan is ready for stage #5. Last time he had four fingers stretched, this time only the shorter, middle two fingers. These are the fingers that are entirely toe bones. The longer thumb and pinky finger he had did have a small amount of bone to start with, so they are a combination original finger and toe bones and do not need further lengthening as they are growing well. The other good news is all the transplanted and original bone still have active growth plates with means they will all continue to grow naturally as well.
Some pictures of his pre-op condition are shown below with daddy’s hand in comparison just like those original pictures before the 1st surgery.
Click here to view the entire story…
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Sarah’s Pillsbury Bake-Off Finalist Recipe
We are all very proud of Sarah as her entry into the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest was selected as one of a hundred finalists! She will travel to Orlando to make a case for her recipe as the winner next spring.
Coming up later this month, she will be featured on Channel 10 in Springfield on January 21, 2010 on the 6AM morning show. She will make the recipe on TV for everyone to enjoy!
Be sure to visit the official page and vote for her recipe!
Click Here to view official Pillsbury Page
Sarah started baking long ago as a young girl and always enjoys baking a good treat!
Read MoreThe Study of God
We are reading a book called “Gospel-Powered Parenting” by William P. Farley. This one paragraph really stood out to me:
Theology is the study of God. Theological emphasis is unique to Christianity. That is because Christians don’t earn salvation. It is a gift. Rodney Stark notes that the other world religions all share one teaching in common: self-salvation. Therefore, their focus is on behavior rather than God. They study rules and regulations–how to be good, to meet God’s standard. But because Christians believe that salvation is God’s gift, which can’t be earned, they study the giver. They focus on right belief about God himself–that is, theology.
Have you ever stopped to think about why we study God, why we study theology? Christianity is unique when compared to the other religions of the world as we try to understand God and His amazing grace. While we will never fully comprehend an infinite God, our study of our creator and savior gives us greater and greater appreciation for all of his attributes, from wrath to grace. In fact, the more you understand those things about God that we don’t tend to like, i.e. wrath, the more we are grateful for his goodness and marvelous grace! In fact to really even understand and appreciate the Good News of Christ, you must first understand our sinful state and the rightful judgement we all deserve! With this framework in mind, I am forever grateful for our awesome God!
So, pick up your Bible today and read about all God says about Himself in the pages of His Word. Then thank Jesus Christ for His payment for all the sins of those who trust in Him!
Read MoreAvatar Review: 3D is great, but it is so anti-military, pro-environmentalism, and really new-age
Avatar the movie is quite a sight to behold in spectacular 3-D. I would have to say the computer graphics are really top notch and you can really enjoy the beautiful scenery created as a backdrop for the movie. Some great battle scenes and really high tech gizmos add to the fun and adventure. However I have to give the movie a really big thumbs down for it’s heavy left-wing slant and satanic/new-age ideology. The entire movie is about how bad and evil the military is, how greedy corporations are, and how great and good is all the “earth” (or their planet) is. It is so overtly new-age and that it is hard to watch. Not only do the Na’vi people “connect with all living things,” they seem to posses light or power within them, shared by everything around them. Sound like Hinduism? That’s what I thought. A very big, yet subtle attack on Christianity and God’s true Word.
There are many direct hits on the American military as they are portrayed as power hungry force with no thought about life, which of course is absurd. References to Vietnam with napalm, helicopter attacks, to the names on the ships also degrade the Vietnam war. Then Camron brings attack on the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as they say the “out of control” military is going to use “shock and awe” tactics.
To top it off, they something similar to this quote (can’t remember it word for word) “You go as a soldier trying to bring peace though force, but eventually you have to wake up.”
Environmentalism is rampant. If you love all “mother nature” and believe we should be “one with the trees” and never drill for whatever valuable ore they were trying to mine from the native people, (e.g. we shouldn’t drill for oil in the USA) then this movie is for you.
Basically you get a big adrenalin rush with the graphics, 3-D scenery and battle scenes, but the anti-American, anti-Christian theme is more than I could take.
Avoid this movie at all costs.
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Update: Added 9/27/2010
Do It Yourself LED Dental Headlamp – Less than $85
I know this is a really pressing topic for a lot of you (:p NOT!), however if you are in the dental or hygiene profession, this is for you! As you know, LED dental headlamps cost quite a pretty penny, most of the time coming in at around $600-$1000. The trick is, getting one bright enough to use through magnification, and focused enough to not blind the patients and get the battery to last 8 hours at maximum intensity. Not an easy feat, even for LEDs. Orascoptic, Designs for Vision, Surgi-Tel, and High-Q are a few of the manufacturers out there making lamps for dentist, but I just couldn’t stomach the cost. So, thanks to a thread on Dentaltown.com, I found out some people were making LED lamps from a consumer light called the Lenser H7. It is very bright…brighter in fact than my current halogen light that tethers me to the light source box on the counter. The only problem is it only lasts 1-4hrs on the included AAA batteries. Rechargeables run out even faster. So, I decided to make my own battery back by buying a $1.99 AA battery holder from Radio Shack and in theory, increasing the run time considerably (850mAh to 2450mAh). I just finished my trial version and am testing it now… Below are the pictures:
The original version was powered by 3 AAA, so to get longer life, I added on a 4 AA pack. If you put 3 Alkaline batteries in the unit, the total voltage is 4.5volts, With rechargeables, the light output is reduced because NiMH rechargeable are only 1.2 volts each instead of 1.5, so the total voltage drops to 3.6v. To compensate, I added a forth battery in the series and brought the voltage up to 4.8v. So far at full power, it is certainly brighter, but runs HOT. Now, the original pack has a dimmer, so if I dial the dimmer down just a bit it seems to function just like the regular batteries with the same intensity and heat! Tomorrow is the big test as I will find out if it actually lasts a whole work day…
Composite light filter:
http://www.lumaspectra.com/order.html
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