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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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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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!

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!

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.  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 theme is about more than I could take.

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:

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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