Christmas in England

This year we celebrated our first Christmas in England! We were told that they only receive a little bit of snow here if any and that it normally doesn't stick or last. We also know that wherever Doc Sue travels, the weather is completely abnormal. Since she was staying with us this Christmas, England received a deep freeze blizzard that canceled the last day of school before winter break and shut down most of the base. It was actually kind of nice to have snow, especially at Christmas!

The only part that was not nice, was that we lost power to the house from 8pm Thurs night until 1pm the following afternoon. The house needs electricity for heat and with no fireplace either, it got pretty chilly. There was much rejoicing when the lights came back on and it started warming up. Here's Jonah dressed for warmth that morning:

On our trip to London, we went to Hamley's Toy Store - the most crowded, crazy store ever with so many people you could hardly move! Anyway, we did manage to purchase a Lego Advent calendar which was fun for the kids to put together this year - here it is all completed:

We went to Christmas Eve service at Sedge Fen Baptist Church - Tom graciously agreed to drive to the base to check mail one last time as there were still some packages that we were expecting that did not arrive yet. There was only one package when he arrived - thanks to Tom for driving back to the base for us (he made it back in time for the service)! We had a very Merry Christmas and opened lots of presents and it looked like a toy store explosion in our living room (and pretty much still does...we'll clean it up sometime). We are very thankful for God's gift of His son and wonderful family and friends! I think we are now caught up! We are going to Ireland with Doc Sue for the New Year and will post pictures from there after we return!

Catherine and her outfits

Catherine loves to change clothes and wear multiple outfits throughout each day. We have put all of her normal clothes up high now so that she can only reach certain outfits. As you saw, she received several dress-up clothes for her birthday, but here are a few more random shots of her at various times wearing different things - too funny!

Catherine's Birthday

Tom went on his first TDY from England to Germany for a Safety conference the week between Adam & Catherine's Birthdays. He returned on Catherine's birthday and brought Doc Sue with him from the airport! Everyone was happy for the joyous reunion! Later that day we had a party with a couple of Catherine's friends from school. It was a pink Disney princess party! She LOVED everything about the party! Here she is in her pink dress with princesses and a crown, the door banner and the tablecloth:

We try to have no presents at the kids parties as they receive enough gifts from family. After the guests had left, she opened all of her presents and received many pink things to wear and play with and every new piece of clothing/accessory needed to be tried on! Here are a couple of shots:

Clearly during the evening when we opened presents, jet lag set in for Doc Sue. Here she is decorated with some presents, balloons, decorations. She did manage to wake up again to try and make it until 7:45pm before going to sleep in her bed!

Here's Catherine in a couple more of her outfits - she sure loves clothes! It was a wonderful pink, princess day & she is definitely our little princess!

Adam's Birthday

Adam turned 8 this year! He played indoor soccer for the first time through the base youth center. His last game of the season was on his actual birthday. There was an end-of-season party at the bowling alley on base and that was what Adam wanted to do for his birthday! He just wanted to bowl with all of us and his friends from soccer and school without telling them it was his birthday. Then we came home and had a family celebration with pizza, movie and cake - simple and fun! Here are some pictures of Adam on his special day, getting his soccer certificate, bowling & with presents:

In this picture, he received a gift at the soccer party, because he won one of the soccer skills contest and his prize was a cool new soccer ball!

Happy birthday to Adam and thank you to all of the relatives for the presents they sent!

Torkelsons in London

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we ventured into London. The base had a bus that drove us into London and drove us home again at the end of the day and we could spend the day however we wanted to. We tried to hit many of the major sites. It was a cold day, but at least the rain held off until the end of the day! We found that even though we thought we had a plan, we still didn't know exactly where eating places were and it's a little more difficult to find kid-friendly eating places which greatly increased our walking distances and by the end of the day, Tom & I were exhausted. The kids did very well which really helped! Here are some of the sights we saw:

Trafalgar Square:

The changing of the guard - this was one of several guards - there were some on horses and others on foot - this was as close as we could get to this guard:

We saw Big Ben on the House of Parliament and then Westminster Abbey, which was beautiful and we went inside to tour - here are some outside pictures of that:

We also saw Buckingham Palace - here's one of the statues outside of the Palace:

Bird Strike

The day before Thanksgiving, we were planning on attending a Thanksgiving Service at Ely Cathedral, a beautiful cathedral that is in the town next to where we live. It is an annual service that is combined US & British with a choir and is supposed to be spectacular! Well, I received a call from Jonah's school saying that he seemed to be upset and after talking with him and his teacher, we discovered that he was sick, the school nurse took his temperature and he had a fever, so I drove to the school to pick all of the boys up. On the way home, a pheasant flew right into our windshield. It sounded like a sledge hammer hitting the window - very loud. And this was the result:

I called Tom and we decided that I could stil see out my side enough to drive home slowly as we were not that far from our house in Littleport. It took about 2 weeks to get it fixed as they had to order the glass from the States. We now have a new windshield! A little scary, but no one was hurt (except the pheasant who apparently was not a very smart bird). Needless to say, we hope to attend the Thanksgiving service next year!

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: