When the holiday season arrives, there will be plenty of reasons for Chuck and Taniesha Matthews to celebrate.
For starters, on Dec. 31, they will commemorate the first anniversary of relocating to Reynolds Lake Oconee, where they live on the fifteenth hole of The Oconee courseThe Oconee course. More significantly, it will be the initial holiday season they will share with their first child, Reid, their 8-month-old son. And, for icing on the cake, the Matthews’ will be welcoming family members for Christmas from Florida, Alabama and Kentucky.
“Now that we’ve relocated to Reynolds, our family is looking forward to sharing the holidays with us here,” says Chuck, who is a radiation oncologist for Atlanta Oncology Associates located on Linger Longer Road in Greensboro. “We’re really excited to host everyone here for Christmas.”
The Matthews are eagerly awaiting their first full holiday season at Reynolds, though they’ll be traveling to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, where Taniesha’s parents also will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. Taniesha, an electrical engineer with Ohio-based GE Aviation, originally moved from her native Cleveland to attend college at Georgia Tech.
Once the Matthews return, however, they will waste little time participating in some of Reynolds’ most popular holiday traditions, such as the Tree Lighting Ceremony and Reception on Nov. 21, Build-A-Gingerbread House event on Nov. 24 at The Lake Club, visits to the ice ice skating rink rink between now and Feb. 24, and checking out the Linger Longer Express Gingerbread Train Station Display. Though Reid is still a bit young to appreciate a visit with Santa, that will be an experience they look forward to sharing with him in future years, his parents say.
Chuck will be passing along one of his childhood holiday traditions to his son, which will be a Dec. 24 bedtime reading of The Night Before Christmas, complete with different voices for the various characters. “My dad did this with me and my sister, and it’s a cherished memory I have to this day,” recalls Chuck, who was raised in a tight knit family that relocated often due to his father’s occupation as an industrial engineer.
Chuck and Taniesha, who met at a housewarming event in Atlanta, moved to Reynolds from Baltimore, where Chuck received his medical training at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital after graduating from medical school at Wake Forest University. Ironically, due to work demands neither Chuck nor Taniesha could be at Reynolds the day they were to meet with their real estate agent to finalize selection of the house, so both sets of parents flew in to pinch-hit for them and select the house on the 15th hole of the Oconee Course.
“From the beginning, we thought out about how wonderful it will be to start a tradition here for the holidays for our own family and extended family,” Taniesha said. “We’re really happy to be here, and are looking forward to raising and educating our kids here in such a safe community.”
