Duecks 2025 Wrapped
The Dueck Family 2025 Wrapped
Highlights
- Celebrated 1 year at Tesla
- Hosted 8 family members
- Took 12 flights (praying for a direct flight from SFO to Winnipeg one day)
- Lost count of number of beach visits
- Most visited beach: Shark Fin Cove
- Grew family by 33% (adding another girl!)
- Anna was diagnosed with Celiac Disease
- Star Wars Lego Minifigure collection increased from 0 to over 100
- Caleb Biked to work 184 times
- Melody's most requested albums/artists - Frozen Soundtrack, Forrest Frank,
- Melody's most requested songs: Jesus Loves Me followed by Frozen Heart
Travels and Visits
We were thankful for many opportunities to travel and host this past year. Here are some highlights!
- Started off the year visiting family in Canada for Christmas and New Years
- Anna's sister Reynia visited for a month in February and we took her to Yosemite
- We returned to Manitoba to help the Learning House at a homeschool conference and see family
- Caleb went to our church Men's Retreat
- Caleb's parents visited and gave us our first weekend getaway since Melody was born
- We went camping in the mountains with a group of 45 friends from church in July
- We went to our first summer church retreat
- We returned to Canada in September to meet our two new nieces
- Anna's sister Cherish visited in October. We took her to Lake Tahoe (or as Melody affectionately calls it "Lake Taco")
- We went on a roadtrip over thanksgiving to South California and enjoyed attending Grace Community Church in LA, going to the Tesla Diner, Legoland, the San Diego Zoo, and spending Thanksgiving Day with friends
- Over Christmas, we anticipate a visit from Caleb's brother Stephen from Australia
The Dueck Family 2025 Unwrapped
For our family and friends who are interested in hearing a bit more about our past year in California please continue reading!
Caleb
Caleb celebrated 1 year of work at Tesla in July and is thankful for the work he got to do there. He got to be a part of many cool projects including programming the windows on the Cybercab and the headlights on other vehicles. He also helped make the accent lights inside Tesla vehicles sync to music (check out this video to see it in action)!
In October, Caleb was approached by a few local companies and had the opportunity to interview with them. While asking a friend from church for career advice, Caleb learned about a startup in Santa Clara that a few church members recently joined. They invited him to apply and after much prayer and many interviews, we are excited to share that Caleb will be joining the team at Nexthop AI this year to build network switches for AI datacenters. The more Caleb has learned about this company the more excited he is has become to learn from industry experts, work alongside friends from church, and have a more collaborative work environment.
Outside of work, Caleb has enjoyed serving our church, Redeemer Bible Fellowship, by playing e drums, leading a small group, and hosting several events for a short term missions trim service auction. For RBF's annual Children's Night on Oct 31st, Caleb had the opportunity to use his juggling and entertainment skills to share the gospel with ~400 people.
Caleb also enjoyed spending time with his girls. We celebrated 5 years of marriage in August and have made it our goal to go out on a date every month.
Caleb enjoys teaching Melody to bike and taking her on weekly bike rides. What started out with a bike seat over the back tire, has now evolved into a seat at the handlebars and a bike carriage for two! So we are well equipped for the future as our family grows.
Caleb loves to see how Melody grows. She amazes him with new skills every week and is thankful for how Anna is intentionally teaching and training Melody. Being a girl Dad is great, and he is excited to soon be the father of two little girls!
Anna-Mae
After over a year of testing and treatment, Anna was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in January. While she is sad to have to stop baking sourdough for her friends and family, she is thankful to be feeling much better and is that much more excited for heaven when all things will be made new and she will be able to eat sourdough again! With her extra free time she has taken up an interest in coffee and latte art. See below for how it started and how things are going!
Anna meets up regularly throughout the week with Moms from church for bible study, preschool playdates, and coffee dates. She is thankful for the community of women who have supported, prayed, and encouraged her this year!
Many of you will know she had a very difficult pregnancy with Melody and struggled with fear afterwards. We are so thankful that when we discovered our family was going to be growing once again, God encouraged her through our church community, provided for her daily needs in the more challenging early weeks, and has overall blessed her with an easier pregnancy! This has been a redeeming and joyful experience.
She has enjoyed lots of quality time with Melody and has implemented some "homeschool" playtime throughout the week with the goal of teaching Melody bible verses, songs, catechisms, numbers, letters, colours, shapes, and doing lots of fun crafts.
Anna finds much joy and fulfilment in the daily and weekly tasks of being a wife and mom. She enjoys opening up the house to host friends from church for a meal, have the neighbors over for supper, throw games night parties with our Canadian friends, and have many young adults over for dessert night. She has also had many opportunities to tour visiting family and friends around the Bay and share some of our favourite spots with them.
She is testing out new gluten free recipes, filling up our freezer with snacks and meals for when our new baby arrives, and preserving fruits and veggies for the coming year.
Melody
This summer Melody enjoyed 4 weeks of swimming lessons. We have since learned that nothing will stop her from wanting to play in the water. A puddle can't be passed without jumping in, and no lake or pool is to cold for her.
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| Melody enjoyed the freezing waters of Lake Tahoe after an October snowstorm |
Melody's weeks are filled with many activities including a preschool co-op (AKA 'mommy school') organized by families at church and gymnastics where she has learned to jump, climb, slide, and balance. She has spent lots of time practicing biking on her balance bike and enjoys riding along with Dad on Sunday afternoons.
Melody's love for music has grown. Daily she requests a variety of songs. She also enjoys singing and has now begun making up songs of her own including classics such as "Praise the Lord Until the Kingdom Come" and "Mommy Chopped Cilantro". Spotify has also informed us that Melody is a Top 1% Global Forest Frank fan.
One of the highlights of the week is getting to do a weekend car wash in a Tesla. Although Melody is disappointed that Daddy will no longer be bringing home a Tesla on the weekends, she is excited to spend more time with him while he works from home twice each week with Nexthop AI.
She is excited for baby sister's arrival and practices with her dolls carrying, burping, bathing, feeding, and putting her down for a nap. Daily she informs us of her plans to read books to her baby sister and teach her skills like how to somersault!
To Caleb's delight, Melody has developed a love for Lego. She often asks Daddy to play "Yego" as soon as he is home from work.
Melody is a wonderful helper and likes to be doing whatever Mommy and Daddy are doing. She is always eager to help wash dishes, load the washing machine/dryer, tidy the house, cook, and clean. She often asks to pray for her cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends. She is thankful for the people in her life.
Melody is a clear communicator and loves to talk to anyone and everyone! The funny things that she says bring us joy and laughter daily. Here are a few for your enjoyment:
*Melody and Caleb cooking breakfast together*
Anna, "What are you two making?"
Melody, "I'm making a mess!"
Melody, "I'll have another treat Sunday."
Anna, "Do you mean some day?"
Melody, "Yeah!"
After teaching Melody that God created boys and girls, we wanted to see how much Melody understood. We asked her:
"What is Mommy?"
Melody, "Mommy is girl."
"What is Daddy"
Melody, "Daddy is boy."
"What is Corey (a little boy from church)"
*Melody thinks very hard*
Melody, "Corey is friend!"
The Dueck Family 2025 Prayer Requests
- Pray for us as we transition to a family of 4 and a safe arrival of baby girl.
- Pray for Caleb as he begins a new job.
- Praise God for how Melody is growing and learning. Pray for wisdom as we parent her.
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