Get to Know a Garden City Member: The Calhouns

Hi Garden City! We are the Calhoun family- Christian, Michele, Ryan, and Lucas. We live in Almaden and love our neighborhood and community here.  Christian is originally from Redding and spent his childhood on Lake Shasta. Michele was born in New York (still her favorite city in the world) but has been in the Bay Area since she was 12 and this is definitely home for her. We both found ourselves in Mountain View after college; Christian went to Cal Poly and Michele UCSB. We met when we were living in the same apartment complex and 21 years later here we are! We love to travel and spend time outdoors especially if there is water involved.  Whether it’s a lake or the ocean you can find us paddle boarding, boating, or watching our kids swim, surf, or wakeboard. One of our favorite local spots is Calero Reservoir where you can hike, fish, or just picnic by the water.  We also never miss a chance to head over the hill to Santa Cruz and spend the day at the beach.

We had the privilege to lead a Life Group for many years and loved gathering at our house and sharing a meal with others. We are now blessed to be a part of the Garcia’s life-group and we are so thankful for how they have been leading and caring for us and our group during this crazy time. While we spent many months only being able to meet on Zoom (Michele had to teach Christian proper Zoom etiquette, mainly how to mute himself) we are now so happy to be able to meet together outside. Praying for one another and being able to encourage each other during this time has been so life-giving.

There have been lots of ups and downs since March, but we are grateful for so many things. More family time- our teenage daughter has been forced to hang out with us. We have had more time to read- The Prodigal God by Tim Keller and With by Skye Jethani (and binge Netflix). While we miss so many things, especially gathering together as a church, it has been nice to slow down. God has brought so many wonderful people into our lives through Garden City and we can’t wait till we can all be together as a church family.