Happy Holidays from the Willard family!  We feel honored to be part of Stroll Magazine this month and have the opportunity to let our neighbors know a little bit about our family. There’s a lot of us so you might want to grab a drink!  Here it goes… 

    Rich is originally from upstate NY and graduated from Amherst College, where he received a degree in poetry. He decided to keep poetry as a hobby and take a job in New York City working for Merrill Lynch as a Wall Street trader.  I am from the panhandle of Florida and received a Science Business degree from the University of Notre Dame.  After scoring terribly on the MCAT, I moved to NYC after I graduated and pursued a job in medical device sales for Medtronic.

    One fateful weekend in 2005, Rich and I both traveled to Las Vegas for different friends’ birthdays.  Although we were both living in NYC at the time, we didn’t know one another.  Luckily, Rich had extremely good taste :) and spotted me from across the club and the rest was history. 

    After welcoming our first child, Clementine, into the world we knew we had to make a change so our daughter could have a similar upbringing to the one we both experienced.  Fortunately, Rich was able to take a job with a company that had an office in Charleston and we moved in 2010 not knowing a soul.  Subsequently, we had 3 boys to complete our family and my parents and sister moved to Charleston as well.

    A little bit about our children.  Clementine is 14 years old and is a freshman at Academic Magnet High School.  She plays lacrosse and loves boating, water sports, and spending time with her friends.  She is very creative, responsible, and driven academically.  Simms is 12 and is in 7th grade at Buist Academy.  He plays football, basketball, and tennis and likes to trade football cards.  He is very sweet and a great big brother.  Beckett is 10 and is in 5th grade at Buist Academy.  He plays soccer and basketball and loves jumping off the Creek Club dock.  He is a total thinker and a great listener, and nothing gets past him!  Eason is 8 and is in 3rd grade at Christ our King.  He loves playing any sport that involves a ball.  He is a true 4th child in every sense of the imagination and is up for anything. As a family, we all LOVE to travel!

    About us…Rich absolutely loves boating any chance he gets and if you swim, then I’m sure you’ve seen him at the I’On Club in the wee hours of the morning.  He loves biking around the neighborhood and has most recently added yard work extraordinaire to his resume.  I can be found any day of the week on the path running our Viszla, Irish.  I also love swimming off the docks at Creek Club, paddle boarding, and laundry…not!    

    We have lived in I’on for 13 years now and couldn’t imagine calling anywhere else home.  We have had newborns up through teenagers here and can honestly say this neighborhood offers something amazing for every stage of life. The path, docks, parks, neighborhood restaurants, friendly sidewalks, beautiful homes, and the proximity to downtown are unbeatable.  The best part of it all though, is the community of people that make up I’on.

    Our holiday wish for our family and all of our neighbors is that we don’t sweat the small stuff.  If we have our health and the health of our family then we have everything!