The Krohn Family

Merry Christmas!  A number of you have received our Christmas card and letter, but for those of you who haven’t, you can see them here.  Click on the card thumbnail on the left to see a full size version.

This is the first year that Melissa or I didn’t write the Christmas letter.  Emily, now 9 years old, wrote our letter and did a great job.  Here is a link to the letter.

May you rejoice in the true hope for all generations in this Christmas Season.

Love in Christ,

Tom, Melissa, Emily, Joshua and Matthew

On a cold December rainy day, the three boys (yes, dad counts on this one) sat down in the living room and started with the Lincoln Logs.  Each one of us took a project and pretty soon we had made good progress on many of the logs.  Then the challenge was on: Could we use them all?  We did!  Check out our Smugmug photo gallery for pics of our great work.

Update: We have added trains to the Lincoln Log Town.  You can see a short video of the fun in our video section.

December has come and we have entered the Holiday season.  After a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with good friends, we prepared the house for Christmas.  This is an exciting time in our home with 3 little kids.  The love decorating the tree and enjoying the fireplace when the weather turns cold.  Dad loves the real fireplace too as it brings back lots of memories of real fires on cold North Dakota nights.  I’ve uploaded short video of Christmas tree decorating and warm fire video.

A week ago we also held our annual Pie and Thanksgiving social.  This is a special tradition of ours to invite our family friends from all walks of our life.  We invited lost of people and had friends from the neighborhood, church, work and school come over for pie and a drink.  About 50 people showed up and ate 14 pies over the course of 4 hours.  At one point we had about 30 people in the house, men in the basement watching the Colts, women scattered around in small groups and about a dozen kids upstairs in the playroom.  What a blessing to have so many friends and enjoy a low key afternoon together over dessert and drink.

Back in 1991, on one of my home-leave trips back to the States from Madagascar, I stopped off in Tanzania to rendezvous with 2 friends to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

It was an unbelievable climb and all three of us made it (about half don’t due to altitude sickness).  I’ve converted the old video I took of the climb and uploaded them.

The first video is of the last 4000 feet to the summit.  On the eve of the accent, one tries to sleep from 3PM – midnight at around 15000 feet.  Then at midnight you climb up the loose volcanic scree and get to Gilman’s point on the east side of the crater rim for a magnificent sunrise.  From Gilman’s point it is another 2 hours around the rim to Uhuru peak, the top of Africa at 19340 feet.

The second video is of the whole climb, starting in Arusha and Moshi then entering the national park on the Marangu route.  The video is 45 minutes long and gives you an idea of the type of climb we faced.  One starts at around 5000 feet and makes their way up to the top in 4 days, going through 4 unique climate zones: rainforest, tundra, high desert then glacial ice cap.  Each climate zone had its own beauty.  Combined with great friends, Charlie Whelan and John Davison, it was an experience of a lifetime.

I have used a little bit of this week to convert some old movies into digital form.  You can see two classics in our video section: one of Emily singing when she was three and another of Jumpin’ Josh.

We had a great visit with Grandma and Grandpa Krohn.  We celebrated their anniversary downtown with Uncle Kelly by visiting the Eiteljorg Museum full of western art like Remington and Russell, capped off with a pizza dinner.

The highlight of the trip for the boys was a trip with Dad and Grandpa over to central Illinois to watch the NDSU Bison clobber the Illinois State Redbirds.  Matthew and Joshua especially enjoyed the alumni tent and getting to meet Thunder.  More pictures are available of the NDSU outing on the alumni page.

During their visit, our 3 kids set up an interview show just like on TV.  They welcomed G&G and asked them lots of questions about their childhood, ranging from their pets to how they had light before electricity!  You can see the full interview on the video section of our blog. You’ll need to crank your computer audio a bit to get a clear sound.  The kids also enjoyed playing games with G&G.  Watch a video of them playing Connect4 with Grandma.

 Our church, Northview Christian Life Church, is completing a 6 week spiritual growth series.  It has been a great series that has challenged all of us to the heart in how we use our lives, our Life on Loan.  The series is based on a book of the same title, “Life on Loan“.

This weekend is a big milestone in the series for our church.  About 2200 people from our church, in small groups from 8-20 people, are reaching out to serve our greater Hamilton and Marion County communities.  Our group teamed up with another group to help an elderly woman in Indianapolis clean up her yard and paint her house.  The other groups are reaching out to some 50 plus areas in need as an act of service.  Romans 12:1 states “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”  Northview’s worship this weekend is 2200 people being servants, being a blessing to others.

Additional photos our service project can be seen on our SmugMug site.  You can also see videos of the Life on Loan projects on YouTube.

Our backyard is full of maple trees and today the sun was shining beautifully on the leaves.  I was able to capture a few photos of this natural canvas.  Check them out on our SmugMug site.

Fall has come and the trees are beautiful with their many colors.  We are blessed with a backyard outlined in maple trees.  Check out some some photos of our red maple leaves.  The kids love the leaves, from making the big piles to jumping on the trampoline.  More kids fun photos can be seen on our SmugMug site and video of fun in the leaves can be viewed in our video section of this site.

Part of the tradition at Matthew’s pre-school is the fall hayride to the pumpkin patch on the church grounds.  Matthew loves the adventure and is excited to pick out his own pumpkin.  More photos available on our SmugMug site.