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.

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.

The only one missing is Cody, and I know he’s in good hands.  He’ll be joining us in a little less than a month, and then we can move forward, together.

We officially left the islands on December 30. And we made it to the mainland mostly in one piece. Unfortunately we had to leave our Cody behind due to issues with the airlines. Thankfully we had a friend with us at the airport who took him home to take care of him until we can afford to get him here with us.

Shortly after our arrival we had to separate the family because of an emergency with the family in FL (see George’s blog for details). Well, after a week a part and  having a complete emotional break down in Norfolk International Airport, George and I were in Hampton Roads once again to get him a job. Thankfully not even a week after the conference George recieved an offer and we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Currently George and I are in New York preparing for him to start his job. The kids are in Oklahoma with my parents, and will be joining us in two weeks. So that is about it for now… more updates to follow.

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?

• 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!

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).

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!