Matthew 2:10 - When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
A very Merry Christmas to you. We hope you have had a great year.
Our family road trip this year took us camping in Shenandoah National Park, along with stops in several other parks. The biggest highlight, though, was spending about a week in Washington D.C. We were able to take a tour of the Capitol building and hit most monuments and several Smithsonians. Zeke, our Lincoln lover, got his fill of stops with the Lincoln Cottage and Lincoln Monument and the most important on his list, Ford’s Theatre.
On a sadder note, we said goodbye to Daisy this year, after almost sixteen years of being a part of our family. Things had been on a downward swing, but COVID forcing us home for a while helped give us two more years with her. It was hard to lose her, but we were happy that she was with us as long as she was.
Steph and Ryan are both still with Best Buy and UnitedHealth Group, respectively, but are in new roles. Beyond that, they continue to be very involved with many of the kids’ activities. Our season tickets to touring Broadway shows are now back to a normal schedule, so we are looking forward to going back to Hamilton this spring when it returns. We originally had tickets to see it in fall of 2020.
Elisha is continuing to do very well in school, now as a sophomore, and got his license a couple months ago. It has been very helpful to have a third driver who can get himself to his own things - one less trip a day for us to have to make. Elisha ran track in the spring, hitting his goal of running a sub-five minute mile. He then went straight into summer running with his cross country team. They even went to a couple sleep-away camps. He ended up running mostly JV during the cross country season, but ran Varsity for a few meets. They made it to the state meet and Elisha was an alternate. He decided to hang up the basketball shoes and commit to running full time through the winter too. He has also really got into lifting through a local gym for youth athletes. He also joined the math team at school and has been doing well at meets held a couple times a month.
Izzy is now in sixth grade. Her travel basketball team finished second in state this past year, only losing a couple games all season, including the championship game to a team that was actually an AAU team. That went straight into the AAU season where Izzy again played well and won the Minnesota Division II title. She also did summer running with the high school cross country team. She ran at school, winning the individual state championship and earning an invite to a national cross country meet. She ended up placing fifth, earning first team All-American honors. She also spends a lot of time at the youth gym. Outside of sports, Izzy likes to try her hand at new recipes (often to Steph’s chagrin) and really likes to listen to music. She is looking forward to seeing Taylor Swift in person this upcoming summer.
Zeke started fifth grade this year. His travel basketball ended up winning consolation at the state tournament last winter. He is playing again this winter and has developed quite a bit from last season. He is getting much more confident with the ball and can always be counted on for good defense. He played flag football with his buddies again this past fall and ran cross country for school. His robotics season just wrapped up where he played a big part in helping with a team half made up of new participants. He loves his time at home to sit on his electronics (hopefully with his big brother, if he can), but has also been getting into reading quite a bit. Of course as mentioned before, he got a lot of checkoffs this summer on our trip. On top of the things in Washington, we also stopped at Antietam and Gettysburg.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hope to see you in the coming year!
Love Ryan, Steph, Elisha, Izzy, and Zeke
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