Trip to Poland

Jack attends a youth group at the base chapel called Club Beyond. The middle schoolers for this club were having a Service Project to go to Poland and help there with some manual labor for some Christian centers. We decided that this would be a wonderful thing for Jack to be involved with and that Debbie would get to go to help chaperone and Tom took leave to stay home with the kids for this 4-day weekend trip. The Club Beyond Leaders are in contact with a couple who run a youth group in Poland. They recently purchased a "resort" for very cheap that they are trying to turn in to a Christian camp/conference center in the next two years. We helped rake, sweep, clean, move dirt & trash to help clean up the place for them. We all had sweatshirts that said "Live. Love. Serve." on the front and tried to get the kids to focus on those themes. We were there to live, love & serve - people that we will probably never meet, but that we helped in a small way by our contribution. Here's Jack the first night eating dinner (Polish food was wonderful!):

Here's Jack with his favorite high school leader as they were digging/moving dirt from one place to another:

Here's half of the group - we are the ones that were at this new center they purchased - this building we're standing in will be the main reception/conference building:

Here are all of the girls - we were sweeping and raking to clean up a parking lot area:

This is me with Yola, who runs the youth group and will be working at this new Christian center. She was wonderful to talk to - she spoke English very well!

I did forget to mention the most interesting part of this service project. We were originally flying to Poland, but the numbers of kids that wanted to attend grew too big to get seats on the plane, so we rode a double-decker bus to Poland. The estimated time that it was supposed to take us to get there was 16 hours, but in actuality it took 27 hours just to get there and 24 to get back. Lots of bus time - at least it was a big bus that allowed us to stretch out and move around some! That was the majority of the time - we were really only in Poland for 24 hours. We were all flexible and adapting to these challenges and thankful to get off the bus when we returned! Great memories and I'm glad that I went on the trip! Here Jack & I are in front of the bus:

Catch Up Post

It has been FOREVER since I have posted on here! So sorry for the delay - moving overseas will do that to you! I will try to hit some highlights to catch us up to date with everyone, especially since most of you received our Christmas letter with blog address and may pop on to see what's up and if you see the last post was last summer you might start to wonder! Okay, here's my attempt to catch up:

Leaving Colorado/Maine Trip

We were VERY sad to leave our home, friends, church, & my sister in Colorado Springs! However, we were ready to embark on this adventure that the Air Force sent us on! We drove to Dallas, Texas to stay with our dear friends and the kids' godparents, the Thomas family. While there, we delivered our van to the port for shipping to England. We had a wonderful time there just hanging out and visiting - the kids all played and swam and the adults swam and played games after the kids went to bed!

Our next leg of the journey was flying to Maine to visit Debbie's parents and sister, extended family, and many close friends. We stayed at my parents new beautiful summer home in Maine. The weather had been very rainy all summer until the week we arrived and it was absolutely beautiful the whole time we were there! Here are the kids eating breakfast at my parent's house:

Another fun event was that my 20-year High School Reunion was in Maine in August, so I was able to visit with many close friends. One of my dear friends, Jeffa (her name is Jennifer but when we were growing up her little brother called her "Jeffa" and the nickname stuck, even to this day!) and her husband hosted many close family and friends at their beautiful lake house! We had a wonderful time catching up and meeting each other's children! Here are several of my closest friends from high school:

The next day was the actual reunion where we were able to visit with even more people:

There was also a big family reunion with my Mon's side of the family - many aunts, uncles, & cousins that I had not seen in YEARS! My Aunt Betty & Uncle Ben hosted all of us at their beautiful house on the lake. We waterskiied and rode on paddle and motor boats and swam in the lake - it was great fun! Here's a group photo minus my cousin Jillaine who took the picture:

We also went to the coast one day and found snails, hermit crabs, regular crabs and fish - it was so much fun! Another day we were able to see cousins, the Connollys who drove up from Connecticut - always a pleasure to see all of them. And of course, we HAD to have some "lobstah" and the famous and delicious whoopie pies - see below:

We packed many events into a little less than a week in Maine - it was busy and fun! Here's a picture of Catherine with Grandpa - they had lots of fun going on walks together up in Maine!

[Wanted to insert here that we left from Maine to fly over here to
England and about 1 1/2 weeks after we arrived in England, my Dad had a heart attack, out of the blue. Praise God that he is alive and doing well now. I thank all of the people who are out there that prayed for my father and mother during the time of the heart attack and during his recovery. It was very hard being so far away while all of this was going on. Thankfully my sister was able to fly to Maine to be there while Dad was in the hospital and to get he & Mom back home. Also, Mom and Dad had many dear friends and family in the area that helped out during this time - thank you to all of them too! I thank God for my Mom & Dad - they have done so much for me and my family and they continue to adjust to their "new normal" with God's grace and help - Love to you, Mom & Dad!]

Trip to England

After all of the fun in Maine, we began the long journey to England with 4 kids and 7 carry-ons and 9 checked bags - wow! My sister was able to help again as she had the same flight from Maine to New York and helped get all of the kids and baggage from one terminal to another before returning to her terminal to fly back to Colorado. Our favorite part of the trip was when we showed up to check in and were told that we had no tickets - only a reservation made a long time ago. There we were with all of the kids and bags, so Tom called an emergency travel number and they were able to fix the problem and about 30 minutes later we did have actual tickets for the flight we were scheduled for!

Our next adventure was that on the 7 hour plane ride from New York to London through the night, we discovered that Adam does indeed have motion sickness as he threw up several times on the flight and then continued to be sick (into his air sickness bag) as we walked through the airport, customs, and rode the bus for 2 hours to our new base, RAF Mildenhall - poor Adam! Here are the kids on the plane over to London:
Here are all of the kids once we arrived in England wearing all of their new rain gear to head out into the rain: We actually experienced wonderful weather here in England when we arrived - it was sunny pretty much every day with a few sprinkling showers a couple of days. We are told that this is abnormal and we should not always expect this kind of weather, but we enjoyed it! Once we moved into our new house, we did not yet have our shipments of household goods, so the first night, Tom read by nightlight plugged into our transformer as the voltage is different over here:

Newmarket Family Day

We ventured out to the town of Newmarket while we were still living in the TLF(Temporary Living Facilities) on base. They had a family day one Saturday with some fun events. We saw our first live Punch & Judy show - lots of audience participation and some very interesting content. At the end of the show there was a disclaimer that this is a traditional show and no one is really hurt during the show (it's all puppets, there is lots of whacking each other):

Both Catherine and Jonah wanted to try the horse racing simulator. Newmarket is famous for horse racing. Here they are below taking their turns as jockeys:

Kids Start School

The boys' first day of school was before we had moved into our new house, so we were still in the TLF for this picture. They are all going to Department of Defense schools (DoDS) on-base. They now have to ride a bus from our house (they all ride the same bus, but Jonah & Adam are in the Elementary School & Jack is in the Middle School) that picks them up at 0730 and drops them off at 1550 - makes for a long day!

Catherine started going to school for the first time over here too - She attends a preschool called Busy Bees - it's off-base. The school is absolutely wonderful. It's in an old English cottage with beautiful flowers blooming everywhere and it's on a farm with lots of animals including Alpaca's that she gets to go out and see/feed/pet. The staff there are wonderful and she loves it there! She goes 3 mornings a week for about 4 hours. Here she is on her first day with her new book bag:

That is probably long enough for our first post since being here! I'll now try to break up the remaining info into other posts.

Friends

I love getting to visit with friends. One of my very best friends from the Air Force Academy, Laura, was in town camping with her family and I was able to go visit her and let all of our kids play at the playground. It was wonderful to get to see her again and catch up on our lives. We talked about the different personalities of our kids and how life is going now, how did we get to be as old as we are now, reminisced about the old days and enjoyed each other's company. Of course, the visit was too short, but sweet and hopefully it won't be 4 or more years before we get to catch up again! She did say she'll try to make it to England - woohoo! Thanks for the visit and memories, Laura!

Montana Trip

I drove the kids up to Montana for a visit - I took 2 days as it's around 14 hours from our house to theirs. The trip up went pretty well - actually only stopped for lunch and one snack break, then made it to Sheridan, WY for the night. The next day we made it to Ulm, MT & were very excited to see Grandpa T & Grandma Rosemary! There were minor things on the road trip, like Jonah almost getting stuck in his seat belt like Jack did on the drive out to CO, and LOTS of talking from Catherine, getting a little lost in construction zones, but not bad at all. We had wonderful weather while in Montana & were able to do many outdoor activities.

We were able to meet the ladies that work with Rosemary - here's a shout out to her office that reads the blog - thanks again for your hospitality & the flashlights & pink "hair crown" as Catherine calls it!

Tom was able to fly up from OK for 2 days to join us for a camping trip to the Dearborn River. Tom's plane landed at 12:30am Friday morning and we left around 9:45am to drive out there. Here are some pictures from the camping trip - First, Catherine loved to throw rocks into the water just like her brothers - here she is with Grandma Rosemary as they watch the rock splash in:

Jack's favorite camping activity was tending the fire. This is where you could find him when he wasn't throwing rocks in the water. He fell in the creek while throwing rocks and got pretty wet!
Here's the gang relaxing by the fire:

Here's everyone gathered around the table while Grandpa T made pancakes & bacon for everyone - a very yummy breakfast - "These are the best pancakes I've ever had!" Adam said and he ate at least half of the bacon that was cooked!

Here's Catherine taking five while we packed everything up the second day. She stayed up pretty late in the tent with the boys - they were asleep or wanted to be asleep, but she was the one who kept talking!

The night that we returned, it was the 4th of July - we all went to eat pizza and met Tom's sister Pam & Uncle Jim there - we ordered way too much food, but had fun visiting!
Tom left early the next morning and the kids threw more rocks in the river. Also, the boys LOVED riding on the 4-wheeler with Grandpa!

The kids also were able to do some craft projects that Grandma Rosemary had bought, we watched Wall-E one night, and went on a terrific boat ride the day before we left. It was a fun trip! The ride back was not as easy as the ride to MT - there was car sickness, many bathroom stops, more arguing from the kids, and even MORE talking from Catherine. I was very thankful to arrive back at our "yellow house" in CO once again! Now the big push to get everything ready for our move! Thanks to Grandpa T & Grandma Rosemary for the great visit and all of the hard work that was involved in housing our large, energetic family!

Kids Playing

I've been trying to enjoy the summer with the boys and play some during all of the craziness. In a rare mood one day, I decided that they could all play with playdough & they had a ball - it's been a LONG time since I've gotten the playdough out - it always seems so messy and not worth the hassle for me. But, I decided to relax and let them play and they had a lot of fun - see:

Here's a couple of candids from Catherine, who loves the camera. I don't think we have to worry about not having many pictures of our fourth child!

Sleepover

We had 4 of our kid-friends come spend the night on Saturday. The four Geertsema children came over and all 8 kids played, ate pizza, watched a movie, played some more, slept in beds and sleeping bags (eventually), ate bagels and cereal together and then we all headed to church for an encore presentation to the congregation of some VBS songs. Here are all 8 of the kids dressed in VBS shirts for church:

Here's the theme song from VBS and notice that Catherine once again joined in with some moves at the end:

Now, you are all finally caught up on the Torkelson family happenings! For the rest of this month, we hope to do more house organization/prep for our upcoming move and the kids and I will be driving up to Montana for the 4th of July to meet Tom's Dad, Rosemary, Pam, and other family to celebrate the 4th together, then Tom will return to OK for another 2 weeks before returning to CO for the pack-out. Crazy busy times!

Catch Up Post

I feel like the last month since I've posted has been a time warp! Anyway, here's the last month in a nutshell:

My parents came out to visit for two weeks and helped tremendously during a very busy time. There were many functions, a garage sale, parties, etc. and they helped us so much. Apparently we were so busy during the entire 2 weeks that none of us thought to take even a single picture - unbelievable! Anyway, we'll have to take more pictures when we travel to Maine to visit them and go to my 20-year reunion this summer before we fly to England!

School ended for the boys - many parties, activities & a continuation ceremony for Jack to celebrate the end of elementary school and the start of middle school next year - so weird to think that our oldest will be in 6th grade next year - wow! My parents and sister were able to join us for this occasion & he received a Presidential award for Academic Excellence. As an added bonus, the Air Force Academy graduation was the same day as Jack's celebration, so we had an excellent Thunderbirds show to watch when we were eating after the ceremony - very cool! Here he is after receiving his award:

My parents left on the 3rd of June, Tom & I celebrated our 16th Wedding Anniversary on the 4th - he's in OK & I'm still in CO so we celebrated over the phone and by exchanging cards/goodies through the mail. On Friday, 5 June, I went out to eat with a bunch of wonderful ladies from our church family and my dear neighbor, Tresa Flanegin. We all had a wonderful time and several ladies came back to my house after to hang out. They all chipped in money to buy a beautiful bracelet & necklace for me - I will deeply miss each of these ladies when I leave, but we all agreed not to talk about the leaving part of our upcoming move so there were no tears shed yet as we all continue to live in a certain state of denial! Here's a few photos from that night:

Monday, 8 June, we started VBS week at our church - Crocodile Dock. I volunteered there and all of the kids went and had a blast! Anna Fish, our Children's Ministry Director, does an OUTSTANDING job putting on VBS and it was excellent from start to finish - games, crafts, snacks, stories, music. Even Catherine had a blast and learned some songs and movements! Here's a video of Catherine doing some of the moves to the songs (she loved to be with Jack during song time!):