Dec. 1, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
As I look over my Christmas address list at all of your names, your beautiful faces come to mind and I thank God for the special times we have had together in the past. Remembering how God related to Adam and Eve in the garden each evening, I think He loves it when we relate to each other in love and kindness. So, here I go, relating to you about another year in the Wallen family.
Our lake house in Alpena, MI, is almost finished. We enjoyed a wonderful summer there with some of our children and grandchildren. In addition to working on the house we enjoyed fun times kayaking, swimming, skiing, tubing, fishing, and, of course, bonfires with s’mores.
This year is somewhat bittersweet as, when Jade graduates in the spring, I will have finished 40 years of homeschooling. I will miss the teaching, but am excited about having more time to spend on my hobbies and with Tom. I may even camp outside Jade’s college a few times next year, just in case she needs me!! Jade and I were privileged to take a mission trip to Guatemala recently. What a treat to get to know and be blessed by some of our brothers and sisters there. To God be the glory!
Tom’s work continues to be a blessing. He so enjoys working with his team and clients. To his pleasure, his travel schedule has decreased this year, which allows him more time to work on the lake house!
As usual, the children’s personal letters are below. Photos of all of them are posted on our family website, www.wallenstreetjournal.com.
Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!
Lynn, Tom, and families
Jade
Greetings! I am now a senior in high school and have been busy filling out college applications. My senior year is going well. The focal point of this year will be writing a senior thesis paper which I will defend before a panel of judges. One of the fun projects I worked on this year was building my own desktop PC. I researched and selected all the parts and then built it. With no prior experience, it was very confusing. Think of it as a Lego set, where you know what the end product should be but there are hundreds of slightly different instruction manuals you could follow. I must have picked the correct manual because it worked perfectly when I flipped the switch! My favorite trip this year was a week-long mission trip to Guatemala with members of my church, including Mom. We went to a remote village near Tiquisate where we helped build a church, handed out food, and held a ladies’ conference. The people in the village were extremely hospitable and grateful for our visit. I appreciate getting to know the people there and definitely look forward to another mission trip one day. I hope you all have a merry Christmas!
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| Senior photo |
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Learning to lay block
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Front of the church we worked on
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Loading beans into bags
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Ladies' conference in village
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| Jade and new friend, Noemi |
Micah and Christy
We are still living in the DC area. Micah is looking forward to completing his first full year at a law firm as a licensed attorney. Christy’s job in the insurance industry has allowed her to work fully remote this past year. In July, we enjoyed an adventure of a lifetime as we toured Krakow, Rome, the Amalfi coast, and Paris. Neither of us had ever been to Europe and visiting the Colosseum, the Eifel tower, and the Mediterranean were unforgettable experiences we will remember for a lifetime. Some of the adventures were quite unplanned, like getting stranded in Germany because of a cancelled flight and having to drive cross country on the Autobahn to a different German airport. It was quite the experience! However, trying to sleep on the airport floor waiting for our flight was an adventure we could probably have done without. While visiting a famous amusement park in Poland called Energylandia, Micah, an avid roller coaster enthusiast, was able to ride one of the tallest wooden roller coasters in the world. Although Christy also enjoys coasters, one of her favorite Poland memories was eating hot, fresh Pierogis! Looking forward to many more years of adventure together! Merry Christmas!!!
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| Micah and Christy in Italy |
Bekah and Kevin
The Bushey family has had yet another amazing year. Francesca, 17 months, has learned to walk, talk, sing, and so much more. She knows several children’s nursery rhymes, her ABC’s, and 123’s. She runs to the door every time Kevin gets home and yells, “Daddy’s home!” She “helps” with chores and thankfully is an amazing sleeper! Michael, my little threenager, has been a little less helpful with chores lately! But he loves being outside and has even been riding the ponies a bit. One of his favorite discoveries this year is that pants have pockets! When he introduces himself, he always follows it up with whether or not his pants, or yours, have pockets. The other day Kevin asked him what was in his pockets. He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “My hands.” His hands were indeed in his pockets. Patrick turned 13 this year and is doing very well in his hockey endeavors. His team travels about once a month, usually to Chicago, but occasionally they get to visit Texas, Pennsylvania, Nashville, and Florida. Stephanie is 16 and has recently acquired her license. Now we just need to find her a car! This year was her first year in a 4-H club. She worked so hard to prepare her goat, Millie. They performed wonderfully at the fair! Kevin has continued with his hobby farm projects of beekeeping, maple tree tapping, planting all sorts of fruit trees and bushes that we hope to reap from in a few years. He, the kids, and I are loving farm life! Have a wonderful Merry Christmas and Happy Trails!
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| Harvesting honey |
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Bekah and Francesca
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Francesca helping with chores
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Michael and Kevin
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Michael and Stephanie
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Stephanie and Millie
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| Patrick in action |
Christian and Rebecca
Greetings from North Carolina's High Country! I am halfway through my third academic year as a professor at Appalachian State University and I am really enjoying working with students in class and in the research lab. I was thrilled to receive a grant to support my research and also publish some of my students’ work this year. Rebecca has continued teaching part-time at App and has also taken on a leadership position with a local mothers’ ministry group. We have become actively involved in several ministry opportunities with our church this year, which has really grown our local community. Kaitlyn is turning four soon and is growing up to be quite the artist. Her drawings are all over the house and she loves to make cards for friends, neighbors, and family members. She is very excited for snow this winter and keeps asking when we can build a snowman again. Melanie has started talking recently and adds a few dozen words to her vocabulary each week. It has been fun, and entertaining, to see her personality expressed through this newly-acquired skill. We pray that your lives are filled with peace and joy this Christmas season!
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Visiting Madison last summer
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Best friends
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Apple picking
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Mountain climbing
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| Blue Ridge Mountains |
David and Amanda
Merry Christmas from the Wallens out West! Yes, we have moved back to Colorado! Due to an unexpected career change, we decided to sell our house in Michigan and return to the West. And if that wasn’t enough stress and change, we also added another member to our posse! Judah Thomas Wallen was born on April 19th, and has been spoiled by his mom and sisters ever since. We are blessed to have him; he greets everyone with a big smile and is growing like a weed. Ellie is 4 and started pre-school this year. She enjoys being homeschooled. Seraphina is 3 and loves to sing and play games with her sisters. Attalie is 2 and loves to dress up as a princess and play at the playground. Amanda is still working remotely with her property management company in Michigan. All of the kids have really enjoyed exploring new territory out West. After arriving in August, we managed to check out several national parks before the weather started to get cold. Some of our favorite moments were: seeing a grizzly bear in Yellowstone, watching some Bighorn sheep during a sunset in the Badlands, and walking around Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park while a mama and baby moose waded in the water, feeding. We hope and pray that you and your families are well and are able to have some great fellowship this Christmas! God bless!
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Ellie
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Seraphina
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Attalie
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Judah
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Rose and Michael
Greetings from the Grays! Thankfully, this year has been relatively uneventful compared to the last two! God has blessed us in many ways, but perhaps our only big change this year is Michael moving away from general contracting into a more specified field. He is working with Renewal by Anderson replacement windows. This has been a pretty big change, but it didn’t take long to realize the significant reduction of stress, compared to that of custom residential home building in this economy. And, obviously, less stress is good for us all! Our family has grown again this year! Aniya, now living in Louisiana, married her fiancé, Cody, in January. We are excited they are joining us for Christmas this year. Nakiya and her fiancé, Gregg, live in Pittsburgh and welcomed baby Penelope in August. We continue to homeschool as Rosalind is in 6th grade, Asher in 5th, Calem 2nd and Angus Kindergarten. Verity is keeping up with everyone, and doesn’t miss a thing at three years of age. She charms us with her fairytale perspective, and is completely in love with our new puppy, King Louie. The kids all love reading and playing Legos, as well as playing basketball and riding bikes and scooters. We did venture into a low-key sports homeschool program, which gave them all a taste of football and baseball. We learned Angus has some natural ability for baseball, and Rosalind is very competitive. Michael and I even played on our church softball team. Thankfully, they don’t recruit by tryouts. 😉 We also enjoyed ballroom dancing again this year, and attended a couple of tribute concerts to Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra by the Nashville Symphony. Life is full of different phases, some challenging, others refreshing…but we are so thankful for Immanuel, God is with us, through them all. God bless you during this Christmas Season.
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Verity
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Papa Dame and Rosalind
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Calem and Angus
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At the Lake House
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First day of school
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| Asher |
Tony and Rachel
Many have made the joke that “2022” is, in several negative ways, “2020 too.” We decided to break out of those and many other patterns by outfitting our pickup truck as a nomadic home for the foreseeable future. After months of planning and designing, followed by a fair amount of trial and error, our setup now includes solar panels and a battery to power a refrigerator, satellite internet, and some cooking appliances. We have a sleeping platform in the bed of the truck and living space in the great outdoors. This was made possible in part by Tony moving to a 100% remote position within Link Engineering. Since hitting the road this fall, we’ve focused on family time. We’re grateful to have been warmly welcomed by parents and siblings in Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. We’re setting our sights to the west, next, eagerly anticipating further steeping ourselves in God’s creation. We’re already planning on decorating a cactus with a string of solar-powered LED Christmas lights! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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Truck outfitted with a kitchen in a drawer
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| One of Tony's work stations, fueled by solar panels! |
Katie and Roberto
Veni Emanuel! The Diaz branch of the family tree continues to thrive in Florida! We bought a piece of land last year and are building a beautiful home! We are all excited to get out of a planned neighborhood and have more privacy and space. The process of building is overwhelming, so we cannot wait to move into the finished product. This summer, Roberto led a mission trip from our church. Thirty people, including our three oldest children, went to the Dominican Republic and volunteered at an orphanage, distributed water filters to rural areas, and hosted a marriage and youth conference at a local church. It was a life-changing experience for our kids and I’m so thankful for this opportunity. Work and school continue to go well and keep us busy. The kids continue to develop their musical talents and passions. I love listening to them gather around the piano and sing together! May God bless you and your family this year!
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