Killpacks journey in 2007

As we are new to this blogsite, the following is a short summary of our lives in 2007. We will officially begin our new site on January 1st 2008. Happy New Year !


Jewel Isobel Killpack Age 8

Jewel finished 1st grade (2nd grade curriculum) at the Greater Brunswick Charter school in New Brunswick, NJ. We picked this school for their individual work plans and mixed age groupings. She served as the class representitive and enjoyed attending meetings. She is now in 2nd grade with 3rd grade curriculum.

Games....Pixle Chix, Polly Pockets, Cranium, Apples to Apples, Wii sports, My Little Ponies

Books: Franny K Stein series, Junie B Jones series, Harry Potter 1, Little Women,
Journey Under the Sea and Race Forever adventure books.

Movies: Shrek, Harry Potter, West Side Story, Cars, Enchanted, The Producers

Her hobbies included ballet and tap class where she did very well and enjoyed immensely. She took art classes as well and we hope to enroll her again in 2008. Those art lessons are so pricey. She started swimming again this summer and loves to dive. She still does her weekly Friday roller skating with Mr. Jan and Andrew from school.

Her biggest news is that she was baptized on November 11th and is now is member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Her baptism had so many friends supporting her on her big day. She even had birthday cake too.

Jewel began attending Activity Days with the 8-12 year old girls at church, she goes twice a month

Dakota Lovell Killpack Age 14

Dakota began his last year at Middlesex County College taking English 2, Physics 1, Discrete Math and Applied Music Studio in classical piano. He will graudate with an AS (two year degree) in Mathmatics/Chemistry

He is excited to finally be finished after spending the past two years there. He hopes to attend Rutgers University in the Fall of 2008.

Dakota has made special bonds with his young men friends in church. he attends activities every Wednesday evening with other teens and does Scouting as well. It has been fun going to the Court of Honor to see the merit badges that he and the other young men have been working on during the year. He earned his Life Guard certification over the summer. He is serving as the second counselor in the Teachers Quorum at church.

Our wonderful President (Dean) Rankin at our church, invited Dakota to take an Intro to Engineering summer course at Rutgers. It was very intense and only five weeks long. He also enjoyed looking around the campus and seeing all the different buildings.

Hobbies and passions: Classical piano and music theory. Running 5K races around NJ and training for a Marathon in 2008 (go Dakota) Japanese, wii sports, playing with Jewel, talking to mom about everything, attending early morning seminary with dad.

Dakota attended his first youth dance in Eatontown and loved it!!


Patricia Nadine Killpack Age 48

Patricia was the family chaffeur as she took Dakota to classes, carpooled taking Jewel and her four friends home in Highland Park and picking up Daniel from the train station after work. Also serving as the East Brunswick ward Young Women President kept her very busy in 2007. She had tons of fun spending time with 15 or so teenage girls ages 12-18. These young vibrant girls were a joy to spend time with. Patricia spent each Sunday, Wednesday and sometimes Saturday mornings with the youth. She attended camp for a week in the summer, planned activities, meetings, went to dances and spent lots of time on the phone and emailing. She also spent some time with an old highschool friend from Hunter College High School even going to our first family Chanakah party.

To make some extra money, Patricia would take small jobs at Q-research, and other test sites during the week. It doesn't pay much but every little bit helps.

Between cooking, cleaning, driving around, church service and little jobs, Patricia had a full and busy 2007.

Hobbies: Mostly on hold this year as time was unavailible, some journal writing, some old favorite movie watching at night, taking photos and saving them to update my scrapbooking (hopefully in the near future).

Wishlist: To earn enough money to take dance lessons again, to become active with Pilates again, to travel with my family, to fly to SC to surprise my mom, to paint and decorate my liitle house that we've lived in for two years now, to budget better. To attend one highschool reunion in NYC. To be able to attend a Broadway show or the ballet again (Jewel and I saw Cinderella and Manon at the Met over the summer), To lose 13 pounds and to have the grey and silver hair slow down their growth in my head.

2007 ended with a change in church callings. I was released after 3+ years as the East Brunswick ward YW president and will now serve as the 1st counselor in the Stake YW Presidency. I am so excited!!

Daniel Helmut Killpack Age 46


Daniel continued to work at the American India Foundation in NYC as the CFO and did the daily commute from NJ. Daniel has enjoyed his calling in church as the Stake Executive Secretary and so enjoys his weekly meetings with these men.

He has made some wonderful friendships with the Presidency and occansionally plays piano for the Spanish branch.

Most of 2007, Daniel would spend time with his family when time permitted and would play games and take us to the movies. He even started training with Dakota and ran his first 5K race this Fall.

In addition to his passions, (his family and the church) Daniel found a new job that will certainly bring him much joy in 2008. After 10 interviews, he was offered a position in the tax department at KPMG. He is SOOO excited and we are very haapy for him. He has always wanted to do consulting and this job provides this opportunity with some travel but not too much.

Hobbies: Reading (both fiction and church scriptures, also church related materials) movie watching with the kids, occasional date with Patrica =), training for 5K races.

First time to tryout our new family blog.

This is just a test as Dakota and I try out our new family blogsite.

Of course I am doing this in red ink as we wind up our 2007 Christmas season. For the next post,I will summarize our 2007 year and also our Christmas as we welcome in 2008 with our new blog.

Test

This is Big D here, testing out the new blog!