Good News All Around

Good news around our place this weekend. You'll note the picture: evidence that I've started to ride again. There's a guy at church named Gordon who has been begging me to take him for a bike ride. In fact, his wife actually asks me about it more than he does. Everyone wants me to take him out riding, but due to the Ti clavicle, I haven't been able to, until now.
Saturday morning Ginna was at a primary activity and Gordon was there too. Sure enough, he was hastling Ginna about when she was going to let me take him on a ride (and we all know that the only reason I haven't been out riding before this is because Ginna didn't want me to start too soon). It turns out that the reason Gordon is so desperate to go for a ride is because he hasn't been able to ride much since moving to Kansas City for residency in--you guessed it--orthopedic surgery. Gordon explained to Ginna in doctor terms why I should be albe to start riding and then promply scheduled time for us to ride this week. When Ginna got home from the activity I was about the lend my bike to Jeff for a couple of weeks while he waited on a new bike to be delivered. Said Ginna, "you might not want to do that."
Yesterday, I went on a ride for about 45 minutes. As I walked out the door Max said, "dad, be carefull on your speed bike." I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous at first, but the feeling went away and I had a great time. Nothing gets the endorphins flowing like a good ride, so I felt good the rest of the night too.


But way more important than my return to cycling is Max's triumph on the toilet. The hoss in this picture was two days in the making. We were nervous, but Max seems to finally have decided that he doesn't want to poop in his underwear or a diaper. He has been doing a great job of staying dry, but the toilet duece has been very ellusive. We celebrated with two rolls of Smarites. If you can't tell, I was very proud of this poop, which left behind Max's first skid marks. What a boy.

Fake out?

We took Max to the theater to see Ratatouille (did I spell that right?) last weekend. He loved it. He was great. He stayed in his seat the whole time and wasn't loud and even fell asleep at the end. We were so excited. And it was a good thing he was good too, because we went down to the plaza, and before we realized it we were paying $30 for us all to go to the movie!!!! They charge full price for kids!!!
So anyway, we were proud and excited.
So this weekend we tried to take him to a planetarium laser show. We were too late and missed it, so we hurried and decided to go to this 3-D dinosaur movie at the extreme screen. It was like a science movie. He was terrible. We made him promise that he'd wear his 3-D glasses, and he said he would but as soon as we sat down, and a dinosaur head came at him from the screen he pulled off the glasses and refused to put them on again. Then he wouldn't sit still and he wouldn't even sit down. So anyway, that was a bust. We're thinking he faked us out. We'll try again with another movie, but now we're a little nervous. Maybe it wasn't an unfair test of behavior because it was a pixar movie, and the only movies he's actually ever sat through are pixar movies.
So we'll keep everyone updated. We'll probably hit the dollar movie for our next test.
Oh for the days::

The Best Husband Ever!

Kris snuck out of the house last night at 12:30 to go get me a copy of the new Harry Potter book. How sweet is that?
He surprised me with it in the morning. I was planning on heading down to the bookstore sometime this afternoon to get a copy, but he was afraid they would sell out, which evidently they did, so he made sure that I had one.
It was a great surprise, and so thoughtful!!!
Now I just have to find time to read it--the fact that I have to give a talk tomorrow morning and teach my lesson for the CTR 5 class makes it tough, but I'm sure I'll find a way.

The Hit List

I finally submitted my residency applications. It's still a few weeks before the first submission deadline, so we're doing well on time. I don't expect to know anything about interviews until late fall. And if I'm lucky enough to have interviews, I won't know anything about where I've matched--if anywhere--until February. It's a long road, but we've made the first step. So, without further adieu here is the list of programs we're applying to:

The Children's Hospital at Colorado
Primary Children's Hospital at Utah
University of Washington
University of Missouri-Kansas City, Children's Mercy Hospital
University of Ohio
Cincinnati Children's Hospital
Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
University of Southern California
Buffalo Women and Children's Hospital
Jocobi Medical Center, Bronx NY
Lutheren Medical Center, NY
St. Barnabas Children's Hospital, NY
Albert Einstein Memorial Hospital, NY

Wow, that's a lot of places. It would be fun to end up some place where we have friends or family, but we'd be happy to go any of these places.

New Max movie

I (Ginna) assembled a new Max movie this morning. This movie was inspired by the "Missing Mama Fish movie" that Kris's brother Kelly made a few months ago. For those of you that haven't gotten to see that movie, I think I'll stick it in the end of this entry.
Anyway, this footage was shot in late April, shortly after the Mama Fish movie. So it's a little outdated, but still a big hit at our house. Max has already watched it like 15 times. He's very proud of it. I like it pretty well myself.
Please excuse the intro screen here, I'm not entirely sure why that's the part YouTube decided to make the introductory screen, it's not a "potty" movie. anyway.....
Enjoy!



I think Max is a pretty good actor. I think he should be earning us money doing commericals. Just kidding. But I wouldn't complain if he earned us some money with his good looks. Ok, just kidding again. ANYWAY

Here's the Mama Fish movie. Big thanks to Kelly, who is the creative genius. He did this with Max while babysitting one afternoon. He put it all together in about an hour or two. Pretty amazing. It still tops the list of Max's favs and captivates him whenever it's on. We don't have to reinact it four times a day anymore though, so that's nice.

Tongue. Blech.

First of all, this is Ginna. Kris and I have combined our nonexistant blogging attempts, and so now there may be a new entry more often than once every six months!

Tonight we went out for Mexican food. We went to our favorite Mexican restraunt, the Taqueria. Some of you have been there with us, those of you that have will know that it doesn't disappoint. Kris has eaten almost all of the dishes they have at one time or another. Tonight he decided to try one of the dishes he hadn't gotten around to yet. It was beef tongue in green sauce. He said "I keep looking at this and wanting to order it, but I don't. I'm going to DO it tonight!" I was skeptical, but this is the same guy who will eat a pizza convered with octopus tentacles, and not even blink.




He's really brave with food. There's not much he won't eat. Except pate.
So they brought out the meal, and it looked kind of gross, but I thought he was going to be ok. But he started to look a little grim. He had suddenly realized that this was really tongue, and it had like little taste buds still on it, and other anotomical details. I even took a bit to try to encourage him. It was really gross, and slimy and squishy, but I pretended it was fine. He took a bite, and I thought there was a chance he would puke. He didn't, but he couldn't eat it. He ate beans and rice instead.
So that's the whole story. Nothing monumental, like losing his lunch on the floor, but the adventure food man outadventured himself, and that doesn't happen very often.

Moral of the story?

BEWARE THE TONGUE - BBBBBBBLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEECH

Extreme Makeover Bike Edition

With all these great cake blogs, I decided I had to hold my own. Murphy needed a new bike, so I volunteered my services, especially since I can't ride bikes right now.

With the help of a friend, I gave this old Schwinn a sweet makeover. It's a vintage Schwinn Le Tour, built in either 1979 or 1980 in Schwinn's Chicago plant. It was a last ditch bid by Schwinn to compete with the Asian imports. They sold a fair number of these bikes, but ultimatly Schwinn closed it's Chicago plant and sold its branding to importers. Pannasonic was already making a lot of Schwinns by this point, so it's cool to find a Chigaco bike.

I found the bike at a non-profit used bike warehouse in North Kansas City. It had no rust and very few scratches. The biggest problem was all the old hardware weighing it down. The lugged steel frame is quite nice once you get some modern parts on it. I turned it into a singlespeed and lightened it up a bunch.

Nicaragua Pictures

I put up a slideshow on my new facebook page. So go and check it out.

Nicaragua Mission

I just got back from a dental mission to Nicaragua. Thanks to the generosity of many friends and family I was able to travel to a remote areas of one of the poorest places in the world to provide dental service. Most of these people are so poor it's hard to even imagine. We charged 50 cents a visit, which represented a sacrafice for the people and we would try to do as much work as they could safely tolerate in one appointment.

I extracted more teeth in the first couple of days than I did during a six week rotation in our oral surgery clinic. We also did a lot of restorations. The Nicaraguans are good craftsmen and they make very nice dentures. But, you can't wear a denture with a bunch of broken down teeth in your mouth. More than a few of the patients we treated traveled for an entire day just to be treated.

I can't imagine being in a situation where you come to a building to be treated by dentists who don't speak your language and don't understand you at all. We had an interpreter, but there was still very little dialogue between doctor and patient.
It is really hard to put the exterience into words anyway.