House O' Sullivans

For the past three months, Sophie has been part of a club called Liberty Girls.  The club consists of ten girls that range in age from 6 to 9.  They get together every other week to discuss historical fiction that they are reading and do activities that relate to the time period that they are studying.  It is fabulous and Sophie loves it.  One of the books they read this semester was about a girl named Kirsten from Sweden who immigrated to America in the mid 1800s.  One of her first tasks in her American school was to memorize and recite a poem for her class.  As a reward, she received a "Certificate of Merit."  The adviser that hosted the past few months, Catherine, challenged the girls to memorize and recite a poem like Kirsten did for their group.  Sophie easily memorized twenty lines of poetry on her own--a fresh poem about an ant and a giraffe (of course). The day came for her to recite at their club meeting and I asked her if she wanted me ...

We started the week off in Wayne's Bar with a family "gratitude dinner" on Monday night.  (Sitting in Wayne's Bar made everyone grateful that THEY didn't have a basement full of orange shag and asbestos-filled sparkling cottage cheese on their ceiling.)  Since we planned to be with Casey's family on Thanksgiving proper, we organized this dinner with my family.  I had a vision of everyone sitting at one long table, passing simple but delicious food to one another old-school style, and actually eating together.  Usually there is a big hustle and bustle to rush through the buffet line, then the kids head in one direction, the adult's in another and soon the kids are running around in a wild flurry and there is not much peace or bonding or quiet meaningful conversation to speak of.  Amazingly we fit 19 people around the two tables that I set up end to end and lived out my dream.  We listened to President Monson's gratitude story about a family living on...

Every year, Casey's boss, John Lambert, gets a couple of elk tags and free range rights on an expansive (we're talking nearly 6,000 acres) private ranch in the Fish Lake National Forest just south of Salina.  The land owner, Dan Jorgensen, owns several historic homes that Abstract works on, and so the hunting and lodging at the old homestead ranch house is offered as trade for the masonry work.  Casey has been down there several times to hunt.  I'd gone once, several years ago, when Sophie was a few months old and was excited to be on the short list this year.  No one else from Abstract could go this time, so Casey invited his parents and his brother Sean (along with his wife, Kim) to come down with us.  For beautiful five days, we lived in this little piece of paradise: This is the ranch house where we stayed.  Although this is the site of the original homestead house, built in the 1860s, that home burned down, and this one was built in the late 180...