Year-End Update

 Merry Fifth Day of Christmas!  What a joy-filled year we have had!  I'm including our Christmas card updates and pictures as well pictures from our visit to Michigan.  We avoided the blizzard and had a wonderful time catching up with everyone there. 

Ward Family 2022 Highlights

The Ward family is thankful to report that we continue to be happily settled in our jobs, schools, neighborhood,

and church. For a family that has moved as often as we have, that is certainly a blessing! 

Amalia (16) had a great school swim season, but her favorite experience in 2022 was getting her driver’s license. 

She’s a willing chauffeur for her siblings’ activities and occasional Target run. 

She also stays busy working at Cafe Hollander and will be pole vaulting again during the track season.

Brinnly (15) now works at Chick-Fil-A and is an expert at responses such as “My pleasure”!  We are also grateful that she can usually be convinced to bake brownies when she’s not working. One of her best 2022 memories was getting up on water skis on her first try.  She’s also willing to occasionally run with her mom to stay in shape for her relay races this track season.

Carrigan (13) played on two volleyball teams this fall and gave her elbow and knee pads a lot of use!

It was fun for all of us to celebrate her teams’ wins as conference and bracket champions. 

She is appreciating all of the 8th grade traditions this year and will also be confirmed this spring at our church.

Delaney (11) became the first Ward kid to ever break a bone this year–a broken finger! 

Thankfully it healed in plenty of time for her to try both volleyball and basketball this year and

she’s looking forward to track this spring. She also has fun biking with her friends and visiting the local custard shop. 

 Everly (7) continues to love school and especially enjoys being in a different second grade class than her brother. 

She did great trying a tennis camp in July and then spent most of the rest of summer in the pool. 

Her favorite things now are crafts, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and playdates with friends. 

Grant (7) played soccer, baseball, and flag football this year –

all of which turned into tackle football/wrestling matches either on or off the field.

He loved each experience as well as going to football games with Jonathan both at

University of Wisconsin and Notre Dame this fall. He was also a convincing Harry Potter for Halloween!

Jonathan and Kaethe are both grateful for our time spent by the pool and fire pit at home this year. 

They each had opportunities to combine friends and running this year too. 

Jonathan did an overnight trail group race in Northern Michigan in June and

Kaethe and her friends did a 50-mile relay run through Door County, Wisconsin in October. 

The beautiful scenery definitely made the miles a bit easier!

We had our annual Shunkwiler lake house vacation complete with fishing, boating, and tubing,

as well as the 75th annual Tucker family reunion in Northern Michigan.

We hiked and kayaked again at Devil’s Lake State Park with Grandma Deni in July

and had a great time on our first (8 mile!) family canoe trip together with her.

Our final summer trip was a family vacation to Boston and New England with lots of great sightseeing opportunities.

Finally, we had a quick trip to Pittsburgh for a wedding in November

and it was wonderful to catch up with friends there. (If only our Steelers gave us more to cheer for this year!)

We are thankful this year and every Christmas for the opportunity to rejoice in the birth of our Savior and to connect with family and friends near and far.  May God richly bless you and yours in 2023!

It's been a while! (2+ years!)

 Hello!  The Ward family is back online!  I hadn't been to stop posting for so long but obviously 2020 was an unusual year and then life became even busier than ever. But recently Brinnly has been looking through the earlier blog posts and enjoyed seeing the pictures especially.  She asked me to start blogging again so the twins could have documentation of this stage of their life just like the older girls do.

So what have we been up to?  A lot!  Namely, we moved!  (Yes, again!)  Not too far this time--literally a mile away into a different city, county, and school district.  Mali had been asking for this move for quite some time which would allow her to go to high school with the friends she had made when she transferred schools in 7th grade.  At first we thought there was no way it could happen--but Covid clarified a lot of things for us and one day while we were on a walk during the shutdown we came up with the idea of moving into this city while renting out the house we had been living in.

House hunting was tricky during Covid but God answered our prayers. We had specifically prayed for a move into this school district but high on my wish list too was a swimming pool, and a neighborhood friend for Grant.  We had two offers declined on houses (not with pools!) and then found a house in my favorite neighborhood, and literally while we we were walking through the yard during the showing and admiring the in-ground pool--I heard the laughter of a dad and a son Grant's age playing nerf guns next door.  A few days later we were on vacation with Grandma Deni and we received the news that our bid was accepted for that house.  We moved in the week before school started for the younger kids and while there has been a ton of work involved to make the house into our home, it has been a wonderful move. (Spoiler alert--the boy next door is now a dear friend of both Grant and Everly!)

Here's a video of the kids' first jump into our pool--less than an hour after we signed the closing paperwork:

I'll post more individual updates on everyone soon but we're doing very well and grateful to look back to see all of the blessings God has provided over the past two years.