Category: Family

This year marked the fifth anniversary of our time in PICU at Seattle Children‘s, and I wanted to provide details that we hadn’t previously talked about outside of our family. In part I wanted to do as a sort of catharsis, but also because unless issues are brought to light, they are not fixed…and there…

In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer puts forth an intriguing proposition. He suggests that the one of the fundamental characteristics of the Body of Christ (the Church) is that it is a visible community. I think in the midst of government-forced COVID restrictions against the church, his words have great implications for the…

This time, from AlfonZo Rachel: (I’ll eventually fix the resolution…in the meantime, you have to click into the post to view.)  

Lots of people are willing to give advice, even when not asked for. Sometimes it’s not what you want to hear, sometimes it’s exactly what you need to hear, and sometimes it really makes you wonder about the person giving it. I wouldn’t be so bold as to assume what advice may or may not…

Now that JoAnn’s van is finally fixed, thought I would detail the goings-on regarding this whole fiasco. It all started back in January. JoAnn, the littles, and Evanna were up at Seattle Children’s for appointments. After the appointments, they were in the process of leaving Seattle when a King County Metro bus hit her van…

For many years, I’ve had other families ask about how they could protect their home networks and filter their internet traffic like we’ve done. There are varied options such as using pia vpn (or other similar others), but the answer was never what we’d hope for. The problem is the method we’d used wasn’t simple,…

For the past couple of weeks since Evanna’s gotten home from Seattle Children’s I’ve been thinking of this topic (Pain vs Hope) and how to express it. Today this picture popped up on Instagram as I was scrolling through…and there it was. So often it seems that we think that if there’s pain, there’s not…

This video is of our baby girl Evanna. For those who aren’t yet following her story (her Facebook Community Page is here and her website will be up soon and linked here once published), she was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, chiari II malformation, and clubbed feet. Here in the United States, only 36% of…

I was recently paid a compliment on social media about how we’re handling our little girl’s issues and how we parent. (For those that don’t know, you can follow her journey on Evanna’s Facebook Community Page). I understood the intent–it was a very nice and sincere compliment, but I kind of brushed it aside. To us,…

For months I’ve been somewhat unsettled with the praise we’ve received with Evanna and her care, and haven’t been at ease in accepting (or heck, sometimes even believing) the compliments we’re received. Because here are my more internal thoughts: It’s not, and hasn’t been, easy. We’ve shed our share of tears in fear, worry, frustration,…