Six Weeks ago today .....

It was just six weeks ago that our sweet boy had his surgery to remove the tumor. In many ways it seems like just yesterday, and then other times it seems like a whole lifetime ago. We are so thankful that the surgery went so very well and we are anxiously awaiting the return of his precious smile. Please pray with us that God would continue to bring healing and restore whatever it is that is keeping that sweet smile from us. We miss it .... plain and simple. It seems silly I guess ... and of course, we are more than grateful that we have Ryan here. He is completely himself and definitely makes his presence known :). We take so much for granted .... It has really been a struggle for me lately trying to know whether or not to take pictures ... Ryan has never liked his picture taken anyway, and right now he absolutely refuses to let us do it. It is hard because I don't want to miss these days. I truly believe his smile will return .... but for whatever reason, we must wait for now.

Ryan did really well with radiation the past two days ... he is soooo brave!! I am so proud of him. The tonsils haven't seemed to cause problems this week ..... Praise Him, keep up the prayers. You will never know how much your prayers mean to us .... we truly do feel covered and protected, we do have that peace that you just can't explain. It doesn't mean that our hearts don't break as we must sit back and watch all that Ryan must endure right now, but we do have His peace in the midst of this storm.

Tomorrow will be a long day ... he will be sedated for a longer period as he has the actual treatment and then the simulation for the "boost" treatment. On Friday they will begin treating the area of the brain that the tumor was located with higher doses of radiation so they have to get that all set up tomorrow... this is called the "boost". We also meet with the oncologist and we have our six week check-up with the neurosurgeon. We do have Thanksgiving off .... Yeah!!!!

Overall, I think Ryan had a really good day today. We went to Wal-Mart ... He is so funny and always likes to look at the birthday cakes. It occured to me yesterday that today would be his 1/2 birthday ... we never celebrate 1/2 birthdays ... but, he spotted a small cake with Power Rangers and I decided that it must be meant just for him on his 1/2 birthday. So tonight we celebrated .... he is rotten :).

Each of you are so faithful to pray ... so I wanted to ask you to pray for little Jackson Ashley. Jackson had a brain tumor also, it was different than Ryan's ..yet still a brain tumor. He is getting close to the end of his treatment and has done well. However, right now he is in the hospital with some type of infection. You can visit Jackson at www.ourlittleengineer.com . Jackson's Mommy and I are looking forward to meeting each other in the near future (I hope).

Forgive me for rambling .... I'm just in that mode tonight.