Millennial Greetings from the Helseth-Pearlman household!
Well, it’s the Millennium (at last!). No more Y2K hype, no more Millennium parties, well, maybe just one more (this was written before New Years)! We hope you had a great celebration! Now we need to get used to a lot of new terms (is this the year "double not", "null-null", "double zero", or "MM"?).|
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Sarah (13 years old now, 8th Grade) Kim (10 years old, 5th Grade)
As always, our year has been busy and full of significant transitions. We started the year in sunny Hawaii, then arrived back in Chicago at 5:30am the morning of the Great Blizzard on ’99! (Ours was one of the last flights to land before O’Hare airport was closed!) We spent the next few days digging our cars out of the 22 inches of snow! Laurie sent Larry to the store the first afternoon, and he couldn’t get past the end of our alley! He tried for 45 minutes but never made it around the block!
| After winter break, we settled into our "regular" routine, with Laurie continuing her MBA program at Kellogg, going to school alternating Fridays and Saturdays, and study group meetings one or two nights a week. The girls continued their ice skating, ballet, and music lessons and relentless homework! Spring break was pretty low key this year. Laurie’s school was on a different schedule from the girls, so we stayed in town. Larry and the girls built and launched some model rockets, after having seen the movie, "October Sky". Larry used to launch rockets as a kid growing up in Phoenix, and had a blast rediscovering the hobby. We had so much fun that we continued building rockets throughout the year, and Kim took "Rocket Building" in summer school. Larry finally broke down and built a web site to share pictures and news about our hobby (and other family pictures). Please visit the Helseth web site to learn about our hobby (http://www.geocities.com/lhelseth/)(we also have lots of pictures of the kids and other family activities on-line, behind the password protected "Family pages"; password="Milo"). Please be sure to sign our guest book! |
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The rest of spring flew by. Larry visited Vienna and Brussels on a business trip, but still helped with homework long-distance (using Yahoo’s instant messenger). Sarah had a solo in her school’s music show, then a solo in the ice show. She had prepared for the solo for months, and turned in a magnificent performance! Sarah and Kim were in multiple numbers. This turned out to be Kim’s last Ice Show, however, as she decided over the summer to stop skating. Our school year ended with a bang! First, Kim graduated from Central Elementary School, which she had attended for the past four years. Then, Laurie finished school, except for the one test she postponed taking because it was the same day as Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah. Sarah had been studying for years, and working with our rabbi and her tutor since December to prepare for her turn to join the Jewish community as an adult. She stunned us with her poise and maturity, and made her parents exceedingly proud. Those of you who were able to join us will, I’m sure, attest to what a terrific job Sarah did, how lyric her voice was as she led the congregation with her chanting in Hebrew, and what a great party we had afterward!! |
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In addition to hosting our out-of-town guests, we were the last minute hosts for a wedding!! During the week before Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah, Laurie’s brother, David, called to say that he was thinking about getting married, "Since you’ve got most of the family there anyway." We ended up having the wedding in our house, the day after Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah. It was crazy but fun! We had invited our out-of-town guests to our house for a brunch from 10 till 12, then quickly cleared off the tables, set up rows of chairs and plastic champagne glasses, and had a wedding at 1pm! We had to have everything indoors because of torrential rain that day. Needless to say we spent a few days just staring blankly into space to recover from that marathon!
The kids spent the summer in various camps. Kim’s friend Kristin flew out from Boston and went to camp with Kim in Michigan. Kim then attended summer school (building rockets!) while Sarah spent her mornings skating at the park district camp, and then Kim and Sarah flew together to a three-week camp in Boston. While they were gone, Laurie and her sister, Brenda, flew to Scandinavia for a week. They visited Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and even spent a day with our former au pair Henriette. While they were out of the country, Larry flew to Denver to stay with his brother, Pete, and help him finish his new house. We all gathered at O’Hare on August 8th. Two weeks later, our au pair, Sandra, returned home for Germany. Our next au pair (she’s number 9!), Ewa (pronounced "Eva") arrived from Warsaw, Poland, to spend the year with us.
| Much of the fall was spent with various trips "down memory lane". In September, Larry went with his friend Art to watch Northwestern University play Texas Christian University in Evanston, near our home. This was the first match of NU and TCU, and held special significance because Larry and Art both attended TCU for undergraduate, and both attended NU for graduate school. To top it off, both team’s colors are Purple and White! We weren’t sure which team to cheer for, but knew "our team" would win either way. A few weeks later, we all flew to Los Angeles to help throw a surprise 75th birthday party for Laurie’s dad, Norm. We held the party at Ed Debevic’s restaurant, where the waitresses try to be in every picture! Please see the web site for more photos from the party, as well as some early shots of Norm we found in a closet somewhere…. |  |
| In early October we went hiking at Devil’s Lake near Madison, Wisconsin. We hadn’t been there in several years, and it was prettier than we remembered. The following week the girls went to see the Backstreet Boys. Laurie and Brenda flew back from Stockholm with the Backstreet Boys in August, and got autographed scarves for Sarah and Kim (but no tickets!!). Larry took the girls to a "Halloween Bash" a few weeks later, and remembered the Surgeon General’s warnings about loud music!! |
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Kim, who decided to stop skating this summer, began horseback riding this fall. She takes lessons at a stable a few miles from our house. She’s learning to canter and beginning to jump. Her favorite part is feeding the horses carrots! |
The weather was perfect when Halloween came to Chicago. That meant that we went through 12 bags of candy, and that our kids cleaned up! Sarah came home with fourteen pounds (yes, that’s not a typo; she had 14 pounds!) of candy, and Kim wasn’t starved either. Sarah was a "Got Milk" model, and Kim a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans! It’s easy to see why people gave them so much candy. ;-)
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| Thanksgiving came before we were ready. We flew to Phoenix for the week to stay with Laurie’s brother, David, and his wife Renee. Larry grew up in Phoenix, but hadn’t been there since 1970! He took the girls on a real trip down memory lane, when he went to visit his old neighborhood. We’ve all heard "you can’t go home", and it’s probably true, but it was great to see how much my childhood neighborhood had changed! Larry even met a neighbor who remembered him, and she spent an hour telling Sarah & Kim what their dad was like when he was their age! Phoenix was cool, but a lot sunnier than Chicago. We had a wonderful feast, and a full house with most of Laurie’s siblings as well as her mom and dad. |
Larry, Ewa, and Laurie near Sedona |
-Larry, Laurie, Sarah, Kim….and Milo