Category: Archives

A new year. A new start. For each of us and for this blog. Since I’ve had my WalkAway moment with Facebook, I’ve decided one of the things I’ll be doing this year is building A Dad First back up, since it’s only been used sparingly in recent years. I can’t blame FB for all…

I’d previously began a series about the scandal and my perspective from my time there in the 90s. I have since decided to not only not continue the series, but to delete what I had written. Part of the reason is that I just don’t have the time to put into it right now. I…

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…

Sometimes unexpected collaborations and reviews are the best. It’s not so much that I’ve been slacking on the site to explain the fact that I haven’t done any reviews since early last year…it’s just that we’ve had quite the year. For those that haven’t been following our journey, check out our daughter’s site. Anyway, back…

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,…

Wife had heard some good comments about the show Call the Midwife, so we started watching. We were hooked instantly. First, there’s the topic itself: midwifery. We’ve always been that family that uses midwives and planned for home births or non-hospital births (though all but one kiddo had other plans). But the show is very…