2013 The Fant's Year In Review



Child Bride and Groom

Russ - What a year for Russ!  He was promoted to President of his company, The Nexxus Group, this year.  We are very proud of him.  He travels a lot more and even makes international trips now to Hungary and Austria.  Still when he is home, he manages to coach Hunter's soccer team, do private goal keeping training and teach high school Sunday School at our church.  In January we traveled to our favorite spot Whistler/Blackcomb British Columbia for our annual ski week.  We also celebrated our 20th Wedding Anniversary this May!  To celebrate, we decided to take all the kids on the Carnival Dream cruise to the Caribbean and had a great time zip lining, swimming with dolphins ,snorkeling, playing with monkeys and cave tubing. 

 

Robyn - Got very involved in the church this past year.  She sings in the choir, is on the Youth Council helping plan fun youth group events, is on the Nominating Committee and leads music for the Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and Youth Group.   She checked reading the bible off her bucket list when she finished a Disciple class. It was a ton of reading and a big commitment to study the Bible contextually, geographically,
historically, philosophically and metaphorically, but she loved it.  She was a room Mom for both Hunter and Drew's classes at Rea View Elementary school last year and joined an awesome book club.  She continues to love Zumba, running, tennis, skiing, swimming at her parent's lake house and waterskiing. She also loves taking the kids to the National White Water Rafting Center, (which they did several times this
year), jumping waves in Hilton Head,(our favorite Spring Break spot), playing in the waterfall and apple picking with the kids in Greenville, SC and playing family soccer games in the rain.  She would like to start working part time while the kids are at school but has been too busy with our three boys to put her resume together as yet!


Tyler -  The big news with Tyler is obvious - he's gotten big!  At six feet tall, Tyler is now14 and in 9th grade at Marvin Ridge High School.  Tyler was excited to make the middle school soccer team last year and the JV High School soccer team this fall as a goal keeper.  He graduated middle school last year and attended his first High School dance this fall- the Sadie Hawkins dance, where he was named Mr. Marvin Ridge.  He now has to compete with boys in other grades for the title in a talent show in February.  Robyn is trying to convince him to sing in the competition.  Tyler also made the Varsity Swim Team and is back in the pool this winter competing in swim meets for his school.  This past May, Tyler finished our church confirmation program and was confirmed in a church ceremony.   He did a lot of community service work in order to finish so we are really proud of him for that.  All the family traveled in to support him and we had a fun family reunion weekend at Lake Norman to celebrate.  Tyler is still interested in studying medicine but currently he loves his World History class and picking out super preppy clothes on vineyardvines.com with his babysitting and lawn mowing money.






Drew  -  Now 11, Drew graduated elementary school last spring and is now a 6th grader at Marvin Ridge Middle School.  He also graduated his cotillion program last Spring and Drew and Robyn won a dance award for best parent/child Waltz and Fox Trot.  Russ had fun coaching Drew's soccer team last spring and Drew continued playing this fall, switching with Hunter to the Charlotte Soccer Academy league.  Drew swam for our neighborhood swim team last summer and he and all his brothers
made it on the All-Star team.  He is now wrestling on the Marvin Ridge Middle school team.  This is a totally new sport for our family but Drew is a natural at it.  All those years of wrestling his brothers in the family room are really paying off and more importantly, he is having fun.  Drew's favorite thing to do is play outside with his friends and build crazy things out of household objects like rockets out of pens and straws. 




Hunter  - At 7 years old he LOVES football, well really he also loves: swimming, soccer and basketball.  You name it, he plays it.  He swam for Hunter Oaks again and now swims at Mecklenburg Aquatic Center (MAC) in their JSL league.  Russ had a blast coaching him in soccer this past spring for Weddington and this fall for CSA.  Hunter is currently working on his rebounds in the driveway as he is playing YMCA basketball this winter.  He also loves Math, talking to Siri on my phone to get football stats and playing outside and on the trampoline with his cul-de-sac buddies.  We all laugh as he loves giving his oldest brother Tyler advice on topics ranging from clothing to dating. Hunter is now in second grade at Rea View Elementary school and is also a Wolf in Boy Scouts.  We now have all three boys at three different schools on three different schedules which makes life and logistics very interesting.




    


Two New Girls in the House ...  Sadly this year we lost our beautiful white fluffy cat Smudge who just wondered off and never came home.  We spent most of the summer putting up flyers and trying to find him.  In August, Drew suggested we rescue a kitten from the Animal Control Shelter and so we went and picked out our new kitten, Lilly.  In September we ran into a woman looking for a good home for her rescue dog, Lucy, who is a cross between a Yellow Lab and a Corgi.  She is such a good, sweet dog, we could not refuse.  So that is how we got our two new additions, Lilly and Lucy.  So nice to finally have some girls in the house.  Of course we still have our big Maine Coon cat Skittles, our guinea pig Snickers and our fish, Goldie.  What a zoo!

We hope you and your family enjoy good health, happiness, love and joy this holiday season and throughout 2014!  Love, The Fants