Happy Holidays from the Vogel Family
2020 sure started with a BIG impact! As many people feared Covid-19 as a Global Pandemic had huge reaching effects on all our daily lives. I was given the opportunity to work from home for Capital One starting mid-March. Eston still went into St. Cloud to work each day at the only operating T-Mobile store within 75 miles. We really wanted him to be able to work from home too but took extra precautions to make sure he didn’t bring any germs back home with him. In April he was told to start wearing face masks at work all the time. Before the Pandemic, we got to have a great celebration of Basil’s 13th Birthday on February 26th! She chose Olive Garden for her birthday meal and everyone was full up on delicious pasta and another great day to celebrate another year for Basil. She tells us almost daily how grown up she feels and that she is so excited to be taller and how different things seem to her.
Distance learning has been really good for Riley and Basil. They both have AirPods and the school-issued Apple devices for the school year so they love that they don’t have to be tethered to listen to their classes or videos. Even though they don’t get to see their friends in person every day, we can hear them having a good time during the class and their discussions virtually.
We celebrated Easter in Social Distance style, just us at home. I made sure to plan some fun activities and bought 5 pounds of Reese’s, KitKats, and Hershey’s chocolate ahead of time! Leander and Theodore had so much fun on their Bunny Hunt following the footsteps left behind by the Easter Bunny who hid for them Squishy Mallows. Decorating Easter Eggs was a lot of fun, eating them was much tastier.
Riley turned 16 years old on May 9th! He will go through driver’s education soon to get his Learner’s Permit. Until then no one really goes anywhere. His birthday was still a great day of celebration at his Mother’s home. He celebrated his birthday alongside a Gender Reveal and another Graduation Party for his other family members on his mother’s side of the family.
Sometime in June/July, I found that my face had been put up on a billboard in downtown St. Cloud for Capital one as a hiring advertisement. It is still up so far too if anyone wants to go check it out! Basil also got to have her braces put on. She is very excited to fix a couple of teeth that we’re not quite aligned with and is a very happy “brace-face”, even if it hurts a little to eat and she has to brush her teeth like 5x’s a day now.
All of August we worked with a realtor to help purchase our home and on September 4th, 2020, we officially moved into our new home after the sale of our home in Rice, MN. Our new home came with over 2000 sq ft of living space, two garages, and a commercial size playground! Needless to say, our whole family is loving the extra living space. We look forward to many many years in this home.
Our first big party was Leander’s 4th Birthday, Halloween style in September, which he celebrated mostly without pants. The rest of us were fully dressed of course. He loved his ice cream cake and time spent with family! We enjoyed spooky decorations and a wonderful day together as a family! Leander also had his Early Childhood Preschool screening, he is right on track for his age and hopefully will start pre-school later this school year and Kindergarten next year. Leander also is now fully potty trained!!! We are so proud of him!
I learned that I will get to work from home until well into 2021. This pandemic has really reshaped how work can get done. In October I was promoted to the Capital One High Priority Team to start that role at the beginning of November. Eston has been doing an amazing job at T-Mobile getting great commissions and being a great example of a rockstar hitting all of his goals. He is working on a role promotion to get full-time benefits on his full-time hours instead of being classified as part-time. Eston and Riley picked up their seasonal work at Molitor’s Haunted Acres again for the month of October, hauling in another great year of scaring the pants off of people, and other scary and funny things. Basil is happily shopping her money away on her Amazon account for herself and the people she likes to buy gifts for. She really has a knack for being a kind and genuine person who cares a lot about others. It’s amazing to see her engaged in being a wonderful and positive person!
Theodore celebrated his Taco Two’s-day Birthday here with us all at home and absolutely loved all his gifts, especially his snuggly weighted dragon plush toy and his book “Dragons Love Tacos!”. We all spent the day together, and when Riley and Basil were done with school we decorated birthday cupcakes and enjoyed Tacos together!
Eston turned 36 this year and officially became “Lord Eston Vogel” by the purchase of 1sq ft of land located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland from Established Titles. The title is real and the land is real and someday we hope to go visit Scotland! A tree was also planted in his honor.
It has been an interesting year with social distancing and with both Riley and Basil distance learning for school this year. They are both doing very well still, getting good grades and they still get to socialize with their friends online and on facetime. Now that we live in Sauk Rapids all of their friends are a lot closer and there are more opportunities for them to hang out one-on-one or as small groups allow. We were able to hire a wonderful Nanny and the boys now get to stay home and their Nanny comes to our home to watch over them while Eston and I are working. I am so grateful that we all get to be home together during this time and other than
Eston who still physically leaves to go to work, we do everything we can to stay healthy and safe.
From our family to all of yours we wish the best of Holiday spirits and prayer for safety. Right now it’s tough in the world but this too shall pass and eventually we will be able to see each other again in person. Whatever our new normal may look like, we all hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year 2021!
8 Years of Marriage, 7/27/2020
8 WHOLE YEARS! And officially a DECADE (10 years) together since we first met. We first met in the Fall of 2011 going into the winter of 2012. We would never have dreamt in our entire lives that here and now are where we’ve ended up together. Still haven’t taken an official honeymoon but that doesn’t really bother us. We’ve had so many other fun adventures up until this point that we’re going to make it until we’re 80 together! Four kids and many pets, everyone is alive and well, so we must be doing at least something right, LOL. We hope that in 2021 we will take a family vacation somewhere warm, time will tell!
The Vogel Family 
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