Romaka Family Blog

*Sigh*

There comes a time in child rearing where a family must let go of certain things. Things that wear out, break, or become obsolete due to new technology or the age of a child.

Our Combi double-stroller has become a casualty of time

This stroller got us through the first few years of our life as a family of five with two infant/toddlers.

It survived malls, beaches, the tourist trap that is Waikiki, restaurants, and New York City. Alas, though, a few months ago the death throes began. The cup holder crossbar broke off. Then the joints began to crack. The final straw was when one of  the supports that hold it open snapped.

We gave her one more romp though NYC and decided that we’d now be better served with more mobile, lighter umbrella strollers.

Honestly, at times, we were close to tears. It’s hard to let go of things sometimes, and it’s amazing exactly what items one can become emotionally attached to.

So goodbye Combi. We’ll miss you.

Yeah, so we never update this thing do we?

That’s going to change. First of all, I’m working on a way to integrate Lara and my individual blog posts into this one. Also, we need to post more about the family for everyone to stay up to date on.

So this is a quickie, but it won’t be the last one for a long time or anything.

I promise.

Maybe.

Updates on the family:

George has started a new job at the shipyard: working the IT helpdesk. He’s loving it. He’s also started working on a certification in Arabic Language and Culture. See his blog for insight into why.

Lara is busy keeping the household togheter, with an eye towards this time next year, when life as they know it will be totally different.

Quinlyn is learning well in school. She has her off days, but on her good days, she’s brilliant.

Kevyn is testing boundaries. Most of the time, when you tell him to do something, he does it. But if he digs his heels in…

Caelyn is becoming a wonderful, beautiful, manipulative little snot. But isn’t that how the youngest is supposed to be?

If you’re wondering why the family blogs all look different, there are a few reasons for this:

• I wanted to cut costs, so I moved the family site from my old hosting company to my reseller account. This required a complete re-installation of Wordpress (our blogging software), and thus, I felt it a good time to change the look and feel.
• Somehow, our old server/site got infiltrated, and was being reported as a malware-hosting site. I’m still investigating to make sure there are no lingering effects of this, but Google seems to think we’re ok, os I can breathe, a little.

So if you like the new look and feel, let us know!

Yesterday morning, Quinlyn fell off them monkey bars at the playground. She fell, and upon landing, broke both bones in her left forearm, right above the growth plate. Mommy and Quinlyn spent all of yesterday at the hospital, but she’s home now, and doing fine. More details will be in mommy and daddy’s blogs, I think.

So after a snafu with my hosting company, we’re back online. I’ll get this thing caught up later, though.

In case anyone hasn’t heard via IM or phone, the littlest ‘maka has taken her first unsure, unsteady, terrifying steps. She still prefers to crawl, but with enough prodding and goading, she’ll take a few steps. We’ll try to get some pics and video of it.

I called home today form work to discuss some people coming over on Friday, and after Lara was done with me, Kevyn wanted to talk. He might not know a whole lot of words yet, but he’s definitely learning how to use conversational tones. You should hear him run around saying “Hey, daddy.”

Quinlyn is being her normal rambunctious self, but she got a break from homework today because the teacher misplaced it. Lucky girl.

That’s it for today’s update. We’ll get better at this (actually, technically it’s yesterday’s update, but you get the drift).

Boy, has this blog fallen by the wayside…

This part of romaka.net was intended to keep everyone abreast of the goings-on of the family as a whole, but I can honestly say that it has not been successful. Starting tomorrow, that will change.

An effort will be made to update this every day, with pictures, video, or jsut a message saying how our day as a family went. Lara and I are both trying to maintain our individual blogs on a more frequent basis, but that is mostly for us to tell how we feel, not how the family is doing, if that makes sense.

In other words, expect to see a lot more stuff coming your way (whoever you are) from the family!

P.S. If you’ve searched “romaka” in Google lately, you might have seen a warning that “this site may harm your computer” under our search listing. I never was able to figure out what flagged us, but whatever it was is gone now. I did a thorough sweep through the sites code and database, and Google did it’s own review, and we both determined that the site is clean. The demons have been excorsized. So visit with impunity!

Ok, so now that my computer is back from Alienware, and I’ve spent the requisite week re-installing, configuring, fixing, troubleshooting, and messing with it to get it right the way I need it to do all my techie things, I’m back trying to get caught upon months worth of family video. As before, the music videos will end up here in the podcast, and the full videos will be mailed to family members on DVD.

This video is from July 20th, 2007, when my dad was here. We visited the Macadamia Nut farm, drove around Oahu

Ok, this is a random video clip from May of 2007, where Kevyn is dancing to the blue man group. Finally starting to get caught up on the videos! Yay!