It will not be one they celebrate, nor will they mourn. Their eldest child Jake suffered a freak spinal stroke just days after his 16th birthday, and has been paralysed from the waist down since.
In the past year, Jake has taken up adaptive skiing and is often up Cardrona skifield, learning how to ski on one ski. He has become so good he is aiming to head to Colorado to speed up the progress with the goal of becoming a competitive athlete.
Jake, a student at Mount Aspiring College, had never been one who wanted to stand out, his mother Madeleine Berry said.
"Jake doesn’t like to stand out he just likes to fit in, he doesn’t like to make too much of a big deal of things. It is so nice to see him up on the mountain, he has got good at it really quick."
Jake’s accident was one of those out of blue moments that could change the direction a family took, Mrs Berry said.
He had been at the gym lifting weights just as he would always do with his school mates.
He was flown to Dunedin Hospital after his body started to cave way, and it was confirmed the injury had likely been caused by a "fibrocartigenous embolism from weight-lifting".
The family, who moved to Wānaka in 2023, were in town temporarily, to take a break from the faster pace. They had now decided it was the ideal place for them, especially their son who had everything at his fingertips.
"We do more with Jake now and we need to help him more to adapt to his new life to work out the new balance
"It had made us realise that Wānaka is a great environment to have a disabled child. Less hills, less rainfall, which is a big deal for someone in a wheelchair, and less wind.
"I was in Wellington a while ago and I saw a woman up against that wind and she was working hard."
Mrs Berry said the first year for Jake and the family was about acceptance, and it was now about adapting and gaining confidence, which skiing helped him with.
The family have received a lot of generosity from the Wānaka community such as being gifted free skis, and the Wheels at Wānaka charitable trust granting Jake $5000 to put towards his skiing lessons and gear.
Friends of the family are also running the Queenstown Marathon to raise money for Jake’s trip to Colorado.
"We have just been so thankful for this community, it is a calming place and it is also a place of great opportunity for someone with a disability."
From those early days of spending four months in Christchurch while he was at Burwood Hospital to now, taking Jake skiing up the mountain, they have all come a long way.
Jake has taken his disability in his stride, and kept largely positive.
"He’s doing really well, he just gets on with it. They said in Burwood the young ones deal with it a little bit better. He’s just trying to figure it all out.
"I am all right, I am just so thankful I have Dave, as a partnership.
"It has been a year of dealing with what’s in front of us really. You kind of have to adjust; it is not what you want for your child by any means, it is not the future you planned for, but you deal with it anyway."
Jake is now rediscovering school from a different perspective.
As a 15-year-old, he wanted to enter the trades and likely become a builder, but is now concentrating on other subjects that will open doors to less physical occupations.
He uses a wheelchair at school and is the only student who is in one.
"We really wanting to push his skills, so many jobs have been cut out of his world now, so he needs to focus on NCEA," Mrs Berry said.
"He wants to think about the pathway to go overseas to compete, he is starting to think about competitive skiing."
