Christmas Holidays with Our Families

Jim’s extended family is a very close knit family. His parents believe in doing everything as a family. He is the only child, but has a large extended family with a number of cousins, aunts and uncles who are very close by. Jim is able to visit them often.

Jim was very close to his grandparents. One of his grandmothers spent 33 consecutive birthdays with Jim and drove nearly five hours each time to see him on his birthday. He has fond memories of his grandfather working in the garden, allowing Jim to drive the tractor and help plant trees and flowers. Jim's other grandparents owned a farm and the family spent numerous weekends at their home. Jim and his father spent a lot of time hunting on the farm and this was just part of the quality time Jim was able to spend with his father. Jim remembers his dad teaching him the moral and ethical things in life during these outings. He stressed the importance of being responsible, caring and to do the right things in life.

Some of Grant’s Cousins

Jennifer has a rather large extended family. She has one younger sister and three older step brothers. Each of her siblings has at least one child. Jennifer's sister has three children whom we spend a great deal of time with. Her mother has seven brothers and sisters whom Jennifer has also spent time with growing up. Jennifer was lucky enough to know her grandparents and her great-grandparents. She spent many summers with them when she was younger.

Jennifer's sister's family lives about ten minutes from their parents. We have spent 11 Christmas' with Jennifer's sister as her family grew. We were so happy to have their family come and spend the Christmas holiday with us for the past two years. Thanksgiving and Christmas have joined our families together. There is always a large group of people - we love to watch movies, sports and play games together.

Jennifer's family has a yearly canoe trip that we have had for the past 15 years. We camp and spend a full day canoeing on a national river near where we live. We enjoy the outdoors and this is an opportunity to fish, play in the water and make s'mores by the campfire. This weekend is anticipated nearly as much as Christmas.

Our Home

Our home is an all brick custom built home and is 9 years old. It is a 4 bedroom/3 bath walkout basement home, located in a small secluded subdivision. We designed our home specifically with children in mind. We plan to have the baby's room close to our master bedroom for safety. Our home has two large living areas, a hobby room, a concrete safe room, home office and exercise room.

Fun Fishing as a Family

Our home overlooks about 20 acres of the commons area in our subdivision. The commons area creates a lot of room for children to play football, baseball or fly kites. Our subdivision also has an 11 acre well-stocked lake for fishing. This is a favorite spot for our son to go and feed the ducks and fish. The homeowners association holds a children's fishing tournament during the yearly picnic. Our subdivision will be building a pool this fall with a special pool for smaller children.

We have a lot of children in our neighborhood. We see them out playing in the commons area, riding bikes on the trails, fishing and feeding the ducks. Our neighbors’ children love to ride bikes in the driveway and play baseball with our son.

Our community has recently completed building a state of the art high school. A new kindergarten/first grade school is now underway. We are located ten miles from a city of 150,000 residents. This city is home to three universities, three hospitals and a number of churches.

Everything we have described to you is why we decided to build our home here. It is a model community with everything a family could ever want.