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