Kelsey & Vincent Wedding

January 20, 2023 – Our Granddaughter, Kelsey Negron married Vincent Anderson on Friday, January 20, 2023. It was a beautiful ceremony at a wonderful venue in Washington Station, NJ. We refer to Kelsey and her sister Megan as our bonus granddaughters. They came into our family with our daughter Charity’s marriage to Felipe Negron in 2017. We really enjoyed the wedding and the experience of meeting family and friends of Kelsey and Vinny. It made the 2,300 mile round trip worth every effort to attend this delightful occasion. Love and Blessings to Kelsey & Vinny.
Kelsey’s number in our family is #96. Vinny is #110. Click on the link here to read our family numbers story. http://ambassadorman.com/numbers-story

Florida Vacation 2023

June 18-25, 2023 Tim & Nichol brought the kids to Florida for their family summer vacation. They arrived at the Saint Petersburg airport about 11:30 p.m. Sunday night so the first sleep of vacation began at 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. This was the first flight ever for six of the eight family members. They enjoyed it. They especially enjoyed the short travel time compared to driving to Florida. We had eight days of fun almost non-stop. That much fun can be hard for Grandma & Grandpa to keep up with. In addition to the beach and theme parks we enjoyed the pool and shuffle board courts at Uncle Mike & Aunt Ida’s park. The two videos below give a feel for vacation activity. Haley made the video on the right which does a great job of communicating the fun of being with kids/grandkids along with the sobering feeling of the short period of time that kids are kids.

Brady Family 2023

July 6-9, 2023 we joined family at Leon’s farm in Sears, Michigan for a bi-annual gathering. Family members came to Michigan from Colorado, Minnesota, Ohio, and Florida to spend time together. They have about two hundred head of beef cattle on the farm at the moment after the calving season. Having grown up on a farm I am familiar with the idea that kids will find ways to play and have great fun without any planning to provide ways to occupy their time. That happened during these few days with the kids climbing up on the big round bales of hay to play. Several times during the gathering the kids, and some adults, would go to run and jump on the bales. It turned out it was a great way to play tag. We enjoyed family, food, fun…and flight during these days. Watch the video below to see some of the fun we had “down on the farm”.

Kompound Kids Day

July 15, 2023 we joined family at the Kompound in Hartville, Ohio for a our sixth annual Kompound Kids Day. The Kompound is the 47 acre farm where we grew up. Our Dad was a dairy farmer so all of us were dairy farmers. Dad retired in 2001 and parceled the farm out to us seven siblings. Six of us built houses and lived on the farm. Eventually we referred to it as our Kompound. We shared the care of Mom and Dad during their later years. Their children and grandchildren would visit when possible. As a result family members were often drawn together by the desire to see Mom and Dad, or Grandma and Grandpa. After Mom died in 2015 and Dad died in 2017 we wanted to continue to draw family together. Kompound Kids Day is an event that brings family together. This year 70 people enjoyed the day. Watch the video below to see some of the fun we had together. One thing not obvious in the video is we threw 1500 water balloons at each other during the day. Even the old people got wet at sometime during the day. We are thankful for the legacy of love and family Mom and Dad passed along to us. Love doesn’t mean everyone agrees with every other person, but it does seem that everyone cares for others.

Minnesota Moments

September 2-10, 2023 We traveled from Ohio to Minnesota to spend a few days with our Minnesota family. The travel schedule changed along the way so it took a bit longer than planned. We left Hartville, OH. August 23 in order to spend a little time with friends in Midland, MI and attend the Moore family reunion in Merrill, MI. on Sunday, August 27. We left Merrill on Monday for the Brady farm in Sears, MI. We received news that our Uncle Eldon Wolf died during Sunday night. Later we learned the funeral was scheduled for Thursday. We wanted to attend the funeral so we turned our rig around and drove the 400 miles back to Hartville. On Friday we restarted our three day travel to Minnesota.

We found a nice campground in Apple Valley, MN. From there we were able to spend time with family at the campground and participate in their various activities around the area. The kids were very involved in gymnastics, swimming, soccer, and mountain biking during this particular week. We participated in all of that along with a couple restaurant meals, visiting Scoops Ice Cream Shoppe, and celebrated Faye’s birthday. By the end of the week we felt like tired old people filled with the joy of loving on our children and grandchildren. What a BLESSING! This video is a quick look at the week.