A Dad First

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…

Had the opportunity to review these bars during our time in Seattle with Evanna‘s birth and stay in NICU. I preface the review with that for two reasons: it is long overdue and it was the perfect time for them, since during the NICU stay, I wasn’t exactly on a regular eating schedule. These bars…

  (The first pic is Evanna on September 30th, the day after she was born. At that point, two surgeries down already. The second pic is her on November 8th, after having been home two days.) We’ve been home now for just shy of two weeks. And not a day goes by that I am…

Relevance. Churches (and people within) chase it, always looking for how Scripture fits into the culture, or how it speaks to this topic or that topic, or in what seems like increasing measure, how Scripture can be modified to make it relevant. All missing the mark. Scripture is always relevant, even if it doesn’t specifically…