Christmas Decorating

Hannah here...

Thanks to Emma's grandma, I didn't have to throw away the second batch of cutout cookies I was trying to make as a side to the sorbet we're having with company tonight. Note: recipes can't be turned in to lactose-free recipes unless specified. Margarine is NOT the same as butter!I promised her a picture, as well as a picture of our Christmas tree that we went out to get today.

Not much else is new around here. We've been really busy lately. I'm going to hate leaving the apartment now that the tree is up.

Other random note: We live in a great state for getting Christmas trees. We go to this place that even has a hay ride for people to take their kids on to go out and chop their own. Someday we'll do that, but for now, we're all about the pre-cut.

The Next Generation

We told both girls they were not big enough for this kind of picture, but Alison insisted. They both look GREAT! How exciting!

- Posted by Shelly.

Sullivans Report on Hawkinson Hunting Lodge

For those of you who don't know, Uncle Mark purchased a Finlander Estate 30 miles north of Hibbing. On the property are 10 buildings including a sauna, bunk house (main lodge), trailer house, well house, mini barn (doll house), tool shed and other buildings that we just can't come up with a name for.

Hunting party consists of: Mark Hawkinson, Andy Heim and Mark Hawkinson.



First deer was shot on the Hawkinson property using Grandpa Krumwiede's gun. This was the first deer this particular gun has ever shot, oddly enough, within the first hour of hunting.








Main Lodge








Mark, inside of Main Lodge complete with heat, refrigerator, microwave, toaster, bunk beds, table, chairs, and futon. All the comforts of home including running water (except you have to "run" for the water). (Uncle Charlie's joke.)






We will admit that the land is beautiful!

Hello from the Sullivans

Here's the REALLY BIG NEWS from the Sullivan House. The above ticket is a scan of the actual Viking Ticket sold on October 28th for that game. Someone recognized PJ and Jim and gave us a copy. At the Sullivan house, LIFE DOES NOT GET BETTER THAN THIS! The picture is reported to have appeared on a Vikings Program also.

Dawn is busy, started Tennis and Basketball and also Daisy's (the first step to Girl Scouts). Charlie made a 'tennis room' in the basement for her and I sewed 7 little Daisy aprons (the uniform) for her troop. Nothing has changed.

Jim was home for a week looking for a job. While he was gone they colored his dog green with unsweetened Kool aid. Jim is now a lawyer, his swearing in ceremony took place a couple of weeks ago. But he has a green dog. Nothing has changed.

PJ is at West Point with Ellie this weekend going to a wedding. Most of his friends will be there, one is still in Iraq. PJ and Ellie are doing great.

April still loves her job and everybody loves her. She went with us to the Broadway play, The Lion King last weekend.

*** CAMP GRANDMA PICTURES ***

Here's everyone on our way to the Park. We had a really wonderful day. There was a craft project, music, a play, lunch, snack, no nap except for Aunt Shelly who was the only one there without any real grandchildren so she thought it would be ok to take a little break from all of the excitement.

I don't really qualify as a grandma because I'm not old enough yet, but here is my picture with the other grandmothers.

Words

The following pictures are of what's going on around here...BEAUTIFUL fall leaves on the mountains, and our obsession with canned applesauce. We spent TEN HOURS canning 2 bushels of apples on Saturday, and we ended up with 35 quarts. We had to make enough for ourselves, a few Christmas presents, and to give to Naomi, since she canned 10 jars of salsa for us. I particularly like the non-staged picture of Todd working. Notice the hot mitt in his back pocket. He was more into it than I was. :-) The blanket picture is to benefit my sisters. I wanted to show them what the blanket I just finished making looks like. I hope you're all having a great day! Talk to you soon.

Hannah and Todd

P.S. Our apartment is usually spotless, so I put the picture of me sewing during our canning day in there to remind me what our apartment CAN look like if I'm not daily obsessed. This is not normal.

More...

Pictures from Pennsylvania

Greetings From Africa

Hello everyone. Just thought I'd post a quick little note from Brooke and me. Things are going well here in South Africa. We are working with an organization called Hands at Work (check out their web page www.handsatwork.org). They do work in 7 different countries and are also spread out throughout all of South Africa. They are a Faith Based Organization (FBO) and they are doing amazing work. Being here is definitely an answer to our prayers. Many of you know Brooke and I applied to the Peace Corps and waited for almost 2 years before we got our assignment. During our waiting time we had thought maybe God was calling us to do something else. We looked at several different missions trips, but none of them felt right. We wanted to live in a community and stay for an extended period of time without having to spend our own money to get there and live there. We wanted a two year experience like the Peace Corps, but wanted it to be like a mission trip. Well it just goes to show that God has his own timing. We could not have picked a better organization to be with had we picked it ourselves. Thank you Lord for answering our prayers. Please continue to pray for us as we are here. If you have a chance check out our blog at heubner.blogspot.com. Hope all is well back in the states, and feel free to come and visit!

Love,

Jed

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Happy Birthday, Uncle Charlie!
--Sweet Pea



Charlie, Happy birthday from the Texas Valines! --Micah, Emma, & Sebastian



Happy 54th Birthday Uncle Charlie! (Uncle Steve, not quite as old as you!)



Dear Uncle Charlie,

Happy birthday! It's too bad we are not getting to celebrate birthday
week with you as in years past, but hopefully you are doing something
really fun to make up for the fact of not being with us. Ha ha.

Love,
Naomi



Happy birthday dad! The older you get the older it makes me...I'm not sure
how I feel about that! But you might as well enjoy getting closer to being
a COG-I still don't think you're old enough to qualify
--April Sullivan



Charlie: It itsn't enough that the entire church softball group has to sing birthday greetings to you, now you get e-mail greetings too! You must be pretty popular!! Hope your day was especially happy. Have a piece of licorice for us. Love, Pam and Wally



HAPPY BIRTHDAY, UNCLE CHARLIE!!!!
It was great talking to you on the phone this past weekend, and we're looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks! Party hard!

Love,
Hannah and Todd



Happy Birthday Uncle Charlie - happy to save your life so that you can enjoy
another birthday celebration!

Josh

Sleep Camp

As many of you know, I have recently spent some time at a sleep clinic to help discover the reason behind my daytime sleepiness. Since it's summertime, we have decided to call it "sleep camp" (Jimmer will be attending "study camp" sometime this week where he will go to an undisclosed location away from his friends and stay until he takes his bar exam). I stayed 2 full nights and one day designated to taking naps. I am happy to report that I was the winner for the day-I was able to sleep on all 5 of my scheduled naps! I'm sure if they handed out trophies like other camps I would have received my fair share. Also noteworthy is that they discovered I have sleep apnea, which is a fancy way of saying I stop breathing a number of times a night. It sounds serious but apparently it's the popular thing to have these days. I now have a machine that I use at night, called a CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure), that looks really funny. On the bright side, since I always wore ear plugs and a face mask to bed at night anyways, it's doesn't make me look much funnier that I already did! Since I have stated the machine I have noticed a huge difference. I used to have to go to my car during lunch everyday to take a nap and I haven't done that at all in the last week! This is very exciting for me and want to thank everyone for their prayers. Life is good. God is good!

Before

electrodes were placed on my head and body with glue and tape to record brain

activity, eye movement, oxygen and carbon dioxide blood levels, heart rate and rhythm, breathing rate and rhythm, the flow of air through my mouth and nose, snoring, body muscle movements, and chest and belly movement.

After

Just imagine the looks I got from people when I went down to the cafeteria for breakfast!

Is this a record?

I don't mean to brag, but I am just wondering if a 5-1 success/failure rate is a record for Grandma's chocolate sheet cake with the hard chocolate frosting. So far I've only flopped it once and this week I made one that turned out exactly perfect. Do I win? ;-)

Also, I suggest a family poll on whether or not cracked glass jello salad is made with or without a graham cracker crust. Wouldn't that make it like a dessert?

Hi from Philadelphia

Greetings from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! Martha and I are here living with the volunteer coordinators for Joni and Friends Family Retreats in Pennsylvania. Martha has been here (with a few weeks break) since April, and I got here last week. Right now, we're mostly working in the office, but we're leaving for camp on Sunday! We will be there for two weeks. We have had the fun opportunity to help out a family with twin eight-year-old girls with cerebral palsy while we have been here. They are adorable! Here are some pictures from our time here.

Martha and the girls
At a party with friends from camp
We've ben trying to walk while we've been here...
Martha and a lady working on putting together a mailing
Martha and a friend from camp

--Alice Valine

June

Since I was so domestic today, I thought I'd show you what I did so that you can all be impressed. My neighbor told me about an Amish produce stand about 15 miles away, where they sold strawberries for a good price. I left at 8:00, went to Wal-Mart for jars, sugar, and Sure-Jell and then headed out into the middle of nowhere. The place was FABULOUS! The little Amish boys were playing on the porch, the older girls were in the fields picking, and the oldest in the family were running the stand. I bought a bunch of vegetables, too. I was home by 9:30, and proceeded to spend approximately 6 1/2 hours in the kitchen. Personally, if I had known how long it would take ONE person to can (I'm not used to being the only one in the kitchen when it comes to canning), I might not have been quite so ambitious. As it was, I canned 13 jars of jam, and froze a bunch more berries. By the time I was finished, it was time to make dinner. We had stir-fry tonight with a bunch of the vegetables I bought (which they had picked THIS morning!) Now, I am RESTING for awhile. Thank you all for being impressed. :-) Oh, I'm also adding a picture of the gorgeous view from the strawberry social that we went to with Todd's family when we were up visiting them for the weekend. It's one of my new favorite pictures.

Grandma's Birthday Video

Grandma's Birthday Party

Eloda Krumwiede a.k.a Patt, Celebrating her 83rd Birthday.
Date: June 8 2007
Location: Hibbing, MN

Send-off Party for Jed and Brooke

All family members and any other interested parties are invited to a send-off party for Jed and Brooke. The get-together will take place on July 14 at Jodi's house and will include a pot luck meal and prayer time. The exact details have not been worked out yet, but mark your calendar to attend. Either Jodi or Pam can be contacted for specific information.

Jim finally made it!

After 23 years of schooling, we are proud to announce that Jim has received his Juris Doctor from Hamline University School of Law. SO, he thinks we should all address him as Doctor Jim or Doctor Sullivan from now on.

He plans to study for the bar exam which is on July 24th and then pursue a career in Intellectual Properties. We just hope and pray that he grows up and gets a job, soon, any job.

A day in Rapid City, South Dakota

Meet the two new kids at the Sullivans house. Actually, Dawn needed someone to play with. James and Rachel are siblings of Sasha who lived with us a few years ago. It started as a 30 day placement, but now they are talking about staying the entire summer. We have been having a wonderful time doing lots of crazy things. We spent the night at Charlie's sisters house in Minneapolis then left in the morning for Rapid City, South Dakota. It is an hour and a half flight so we were there by 10 am and back on the plane shortly after 5 pm. The car rental company made a mistake so we had to rent a mustang convertible. :) We saw both Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, then did a little shopping. Great fun! Don't know what the highlight was - either the revolving door at the Rapid City airport, or moving walkway, or flight - as Rachel put it, "Everything I wanted to happen to me in my entire life has happened today!"

A note from PJ

Just to let you all know that PJ has a wedding website.

www.theknot.com/ourwedding/EleanorPilon&PatrickSullivan


Aren't they cute? This is Ellie after spending the day moving her stuff to our garage. She's a little tired, but still cute.

South Africa

Hi, family! We're thrilled to finally be able to let you know we've accepted an invitation to serve as volunteers in the Peace Corps! We leave on July 16th for orientation, probably in Philadelphia, and then it's off to South Africa (SA) on July 19th. After two months of training, we will be placed in a community in SA to work on a project called NGO Capacity Building/HIV-AIDS Integration. We will be working with nongovernmental organizations already in SA to integrate HIV-AIDS awareness and education into their current programming. We're thrilled! (Can you believe it's been almost two years since we first submitted our applications?!) We have a lot to do in the next 6 weeks in preparation--quit our jobs, move out of our apartment, pack, and complete lots of paper work. We'll keep you posted on what's going on. If you're interested, the Peace Corps website has some good resources for family and friends of volunteers. Just go to www.peacecorps.gov and click on Resources for Family and Friends. There is even a special section for kids.
With love,
Brooke and Jed

Road trip: Destination - Heaven

Family takes a roadtrip for a weekend get together in heaven.

Iowa City, IA -- In 1989 there was a movie called Field of Dreams. This movie is a baseball movie, so it comes as no surprise that David Stricker is quite familiar with it. Over the weekend he and Wendy parodied this quote:

Shoeless Joe Jackson (David): "Is this heaven?"
Ray Kinsella (Wendy): "No, it's Iowa."

Iowa. Practically heaven. It seems like a good place to go, right?

So on the morning of Saturday, May 26, Jason, Shelly, and youngerlings stopped in Red Wing to pick up David and Wendy. Half a dozen hours later, they met up with Philip, Aimee, and their troop. Each group had traveled 250-300 miles to get to Iowa City, IA - less than 90 miles from Dyersville, IA, the site of the famous movie.

This was not a long visit to heaven - err, I mean Iowa. The groups separated for the drive home on the afternoon of Sunday, May 27. So while the time together was short, there was still plenty of fun!

Some of the highlights.

• - Olivia and IdaMae meet for the first time.
  
• - Playing with a frisbee, soccer ball, and beach ball in the field next to the hotel - while the Moms talked about babies.
• - David going to get new batteries for their camera 'cause they were taking so many pictures.
• - David and Wendy required a new room because the first one smelled so bad.
• - Wendy going to get more film for their camera 'cause they were taking so many pictures.
• - Visiting a city park so the kids could play - and the Moms could talk about babies.
• - The hotel swimming pool was closed "For Maintenance".
• - The Jacuzzi was open.
• - Playing a game of pool with the help of Mateo and Nicolas
• - Two-person pinball - 'cause some of the players' arms were too short to reach both flipper buttons.
• - A group game of video bowling.
• - Moms talking about babies.
• - For the two vehicles:
  • * aprox. 600 miles per vehicle
  • * aprox. 350 photos (c300 digital, c50 film)
  • * about 36 total hours per vehicle (time gone from home)
• - Which means there was one photo taken...
  1. * Every 3.5 miles of travel (approximately).
  2. * Every 12 minutes while gone from home (approximately).
  3. * Every 246 seconds while together in heaven! I mean Iowa.

So while it wasn't truly heaven, it's the opinion of many that it was mighty close! (like about 90 miles?)

-- Philip