The Cramer Family
Living Life Loudly!
Your Names? Michael and Victoria Cramer
Tell us about your children? Twins, Ryan and Parker Cramer, 7 1/2 going on sassy, 2nd grade at Las Sendas Elementary School and they love to bike, scooter, roller-blade, ice-skate, snow ski, dance and tumble, swim and dive!
Tell us about your pets? The family dog, and Victoria's soul mate who goes everywhere with her – Rigsby, 12-year-old Shih Tsu. Family cat – Harmony, 4 years old Bengal. Family bunnies – Snowball and Chubs, 10-month-old mini-lops.
What do you do professionally? Mike is a rocket scientist (it's complicated but he leads a team of engineers but can't tell you about it because it's top-secret) and Victoria is an author, public speaker, and leadership expert. She wrote, Living Life Loudly – How Will You Face Your Speed Bump? and may finish her second book in the New Year.
What are your favorite hobbies or activities? Both Mike and Victoria race mountain bikes for Jetset Racing (a cycling team based in Mesa), love to snow ski, travel the world, scuba dive, and camp.
What is your favorite sports team(s)? We don't watch much sports except the Tour de France and football. We are Denver Broncos fans, and since we hail from the University of Arizona, we always cheers for Wildcats... rawr-rawr.
What is your favorite type of music? Our girls would say anything you can dance to and specifically love AJR (band). Victoria loves all genres and her mantra songs/favorite songs are "Fight Song" by Hailey Batten and "Warpath" by Drezus, because the words "who gonna ride with me" just lift her up! Mike loves anything with a guitar, and for sure blue grass.
What is your favorite restaurant? Tough one! None of us agree, ha ha. Parker and Ryan would always choose Echo 5, DVine, and Board & Batten. Mike and Victoria would always choose J&G's in the Phoenician or Board & Batten for a Mesa favorite, but you'll always find all four of us in Hava Java throughout the day.
What are your favorite movies or television shows? Yellowstone for Mike and Victoria. Ryan and Parker love War with Grandpa, Parent Trap, and Adam's Family.
What do you like to do to relax? We don't understand this word "relax." Our version of relaxing is enough to wear down most...camping to us is relaxing and playing games like any of Grandpa Beck's games (Cover Your Assets, Gnoming Around, Skull King, Cover Your Kingdom), Uno, or Rummikub.
Do you have a family tradition that you'd like to share? Our tradition is that for all holidays we do not do anything "traditional" and definitely no sitting around. For Thanksgiving, we can usually be found camping and biking as a family (grilling filet mignon), or this year we are planning to be in Mexico snorkeling with whale sharks and eating Mexican food. For Christmas, we always ski and hand out candy to chair lift operators to say Merry Christmas. For Valentine's Day/President's Day we are always racing mountain bikes and camping at the 24-Hours of Old Pueblo 24-hour mountain bike race, and Easter is usually spent camping in Sedona and biking.
What would you like the readers to know about you? We are a family who has been blessed and forced to really understand what it means to live life loudly, which means you choose joy and choose happiness, deliberately. It means to choose intentionally to master the exploration of happiness and to strip away the incrementalities in life to discover the things you can do every single day to make that day impactful (ie; let the laundry sit and pick an adventure; skip a week of school and explore the world) Victoria calls it "infusing a mini-vacation in every day" and is often known to ask what you're doing to make life epic. This is because she has been battling breast cancer since the twins were born. She has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and it is in her bones. As a family, we stay focused on the good stuff because we don't have days to squander. We believe we can learn every day and that helping others is the best gift because it helps us forget about pain and hardship in our own lives.
Tell us about your children? Twins, Ryan and Parker Cramer, 7 1/2 going on sassy, 2nd grade at Las Sendas Elementary School and they love to bike, scooter, roller-blade, ice-skate, snow ski, dance and tumble, swim and dive!
Tell us about your pets? The family dog, and Victoria's soul mate who goes everywhere with her – Rigsby, 12-year-old Shih Tsu. Family cat – Harmony, 4 years old Bengal. Family bunnies – Snowball and Chubs, 10-month-old mini-lops.
What do you do professionally? Mike is a rocket scientist (it's complicated but he leads a team of engineers but can't tell you about it because it's top-secret) and Victoria is an author, public speaker, and leadership expert. She wrote, Living Life Loudly – How Will You Face Your Speed Bump? and may finish her second book in the New Year.
What are your favorite hobbies or activities? Both Mike and Victoria race mountain bikes for Jetset Racing (a cycling team based in Mesa), love to snow ski, travel the world, scuba dive, and camp.
What is your favorite sports team(s)? We don't watch much sports except the Tour de France and football. We are Denver Broncos fans, and since we hail from the University of Arizona, we always cheers for Wildcats... rawr-rawr.
What is your favorite type of music? Our girls would say anything you can dance to and specifically love AJR (band). Victoria loves all genres and her mantra songs/favorite songs are "Fight Song" by Hailey Batten and "Warpath" by Drezus, because the words "who gonna ride with me" just lift her up! Mike loves anything with a guitar, and for sure blue grass.
What is your favorite restaurant? Tough one! None of us agree, ha ha. Parker and Ryan would always choose Echo 5, DVine, and Board & Batten. Mike and Victoria would always choose J&G's in the Phoenician or Board & Batten for a Mesa favorite, but you'll always find all four of us in Hava Java throughout the day.
What are your favorite movies or television shows? Yellowstone for Mike and Victoria. Ryan and Parker love War with Grandpa, Parent Trap, and Adam's Family.
What do you like to do to relax? We don't understand this word "relax." Our version of relaxing is enough to wear down most...camping to us is relaxing and playing games like any of Grandpa Beck's games (Cover Your Assets, Gnoming Around, Skull King, Cover Your Kingdom), Uno, or Rummikub.
Do you have a family tradition that you'd like to share? Our tradition is that for all holidays we do not do anything "traditional" and definitely no sitting around. For Thanksgiving, we can usually be found camping and biking as a family (grilling filet mignon), or this year we are planning to be in Mexico snorkeling with whale sharks and eating Mexican food. For Christmas, we always ski and hand out candy to chair lift operators to say Merry Christmas. For Valentine's Day/President's Day we are always racing mountain bikes and camping at the 24-Hours of Old Pueblo 24-hour mountain bike race, and Easter is usually spent camping in Sedona and biking.
What would you like the readers to know about you? We are a family who has been blessed and forced to really understand what it means to live life loudly, which means you choose joy and choose happiness, deliberately. It means to choose intentionally to master the exploration of happiness and to strip away the incrementalities in life to discover the things you can do every single day to make that day impactful (ie; let the laundry sit and pick an adventure; skip a week of school and explore the world) Victoria calls it "infusing a mini-vacation in every day" and is often known to ask what you're doing to make life epic. This is because she has been battling breast cancer since the twins were born. She has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and it is in her bones. As a family, we stay focused on the good stuff because we don't have days to squander. We believe we can learn every day and that helping others is the best gift because it helps us forget about pain and hardship in our own lives.
Where were you raised? What schools/colleges/universities did you attend? Victoria was born in Germany but mostly raised in northern Arizona, Mike was raised in Tucson, and both of our families have a long history at the best university in the state – the University of Arizona. Victoria would say she really got her degree at the Marriott business school, because of her nearly two decades working for Marriott!
Where did you move here from? What neighborhood do you live in and how long have you lived there? We moved from Queen Creek in 2017 and live in the Trail Ridge enclave.
What is your favorite vacation or vacation destination? We would all choose Bavaria (Austria/Germany)! Ryan would also say Laguna Beach and the JW Marriott Starr Pass in Tucson; Parker says also Mexico and Park City, UT; Mike says Park City, UT, and Victoria would choose Cozumel.
What is your favorite part about living in Las Sendas? The people!! For the first time in our lives, we feel truly "at home" in Las Sendas. We have never had more amazing friendships and our girls have been loving the 13 little girlfriends who live in our enclave and call them "the girl gang." Covid brought them all together and they learned how to find fun through tough times. We all love the activities, parks, and amazing food truck events, to name a few. Thank you for keeping the community hip and evolving to be a place to stay. Now, the mountain bikers in us would also say the trails! Thank you to the Hawes Trail Alliance for working with so many organizations to make this area the best in class place for trail hiking/biking.