Sue-On's 2015 Hillman Family Chronicle
The Annual Massive Missive from 41 Kensington Crescent
www.hillmanweb.com/xmas/2015.html
Adapted from the Hillman Adventure 2015 site: 

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It's 6 Degrees Celsius and the ground is brown. How was I supposed to know that it’s December and time to get my Annual Massive Missive in the mail?! Hearing all the Christmas music in the stores on our recent shopping trip to Minot, North Dakota told me it REALLY was time to get my thoughts together.

Most important thought:  We wish you and yours love, joy, and good health for Christmas, in the New Year, and every day!

This is becoming a cliché, but yeah, it was "a busy year".

With the growing demand at his Reactive Massage Therapy business, Ja-On renovated his building and added more treatment rooms. His studies and monthly trips to Winnipeg for classes are completed and now for the final step - his thesis and dissertation.  When he’s not at work, he’s busy training his little princesses to be more like Princess Leia of Star Wars ;-)

Angela is getting ready to go back to work - nursing at Rideau Personal Care facility. She’ll miss her time with Inara and Tayla. Ja and Angela will coordinate their work schedules to avoid daycare. The two grandmas will gladly fill in any gaps!  Angela is also busy developing her own line of lotions for massage therapy.

Soulin has experienced quite a change this year! For a seventeen year old, he is becoming quite the sharp dresser - think suits, coordinates, shoes - the whole package. In line with this new maturity, he’s also discovered JAZZ! He is enjoying his part-time job at Tip Top Tailors, and his sales often top the more experienced sales reps.

Inara, our three-year-old “ginger” is so much fun to be with! She sings, dances, draws, everything a little princess enjoys. She is taking ballet and can usually be found in a tutu ;-) Their home is a Toyland, but she still loves to come up to the big house to play with the 40-year-old Fisher Price castle!

Tayla is one-year-old, and what an energizer bunny, or should I say monkey! She started walking this week, so there’s no stopping her now.  It’s funny to watch her “get at her older sister” already. It’s never a dull moment, and we grandmas are usually ready for bed when Tayla is! Of course, Ja has started Inara and Tayla on Star Wars movies …

Robin and family just bought a Mazda SUV, so it’s not so crowded now with 4 people and Keifer the Great Pyr/ Akita. Robin continues with his work as Business Analyst at Tactica Interactive Communications in Winnipeg.  He’s been taking some business courses at Red River College.

Jen is back to work at Dasch full time, but she still makes time for her creative sewing and crocheting.  She made her little niece Inara VERY happy by making her the special Tinkerbelle hat for Halloween!

Oriyen is ten-years-old and loves playing Minecraft and the piano. Girl Guide cookies continue to show up at our house;-) She’s growing up and is a great “big sister” for her little cousins as well as younger sister River. She’s not interested in dance lessons but definitely interested in acting lessons!

Two-year-old River, as her name may suggest, is constantly on the move! As you can imagine when all three little girls are here, the floors are covered with toys! Luckily, no little pieces of Lego yet. They all play well together. She does enjoy sitting on Grandpa Bill’s lap when he’s working on his computer. I wonder if she’s taking in all the information on Edgar Rice Burroughs;-)

China is half-way through her Doctor of Radiology fellowship at Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She works hard but is getting lots of experience. With our visit down to see her in Boston in August, her trip home for Canadian Thanksgiving and Christmas, her time away is going by quickly. We are all looking forward to her return to her position at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre.

Ryan, China’s fiancé, continues to be busy with his own web-design company: PEBKAC.ca, Technology Solutions. We are happy that he continues to “come home” to Brandon while China is away. We enjoy his cooking, and he doesn’t mind “Honey-do” lists that I always have for him!

Bill continues to build, add to, and maintain the thousands of websites in his areas of interests: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Commonwealth Air Museum, the Dragoons, John Tyman, music tributes, travel, etc. His longest running projects are ERBzine (a weekly e-zine since 1996) and the on-going book - Bill & Sue-On Hillman: A 50-Year Musical Odyssey. In July, he had the “flight of a lifetime” in a B-17 WWII bomber from Winnipeg to Brandon before being MC at the WWII History Takes Flight Air Show. Bill’s great store of knowledge on all topics makes him a much-in-demand interview subject for talk shows, newspapers, and university research projects.  He has been spending the last few months processing thousands of pictures from our trips this year. These will be completed before we take our next trip!

Sue-On is still teaching with the English for Academic Purposes program at Brandon University. This fall term was a hectic one with full classes in all four levels. Gardening interest was given a boost with a bus tour of five garden centres. At the end, I wondered HOW did I end up with so many plants! For exercise, I look to the grandkids! They keep me moving but not always at their speed ;-) I did have a turn on the acting stage this November. Local drama club MECCA Productions invited me for a role -- as the Chinese restaurateur in A Christmas Story - The Musical.  It was great fun as our family loves this traditional Christmas movie with the infamous Leg Lamp! They even used Bill’s leg lamp in the show.

2015 was a year of major travels for us.  In April, we went on a 28-day tour with GAdventures to Indochina: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. It was a month of sensory extravaganza - the sights, the sounds, the food, the PEOPLE! Transportation took the form of planes, sleeper trains, junks, long boats, motorcycles, cyclos, ATVs and private and public busses. We stayed in hotels in city centres, ones over-looking the Mekong River, a homestay, on a junk - all incredible new experiences.

In August, we drove to Boston to visit China. It’s a beautiful city full of history. Bill had a couple of “hiccups” while there - a kidney stone attack and losing his wallet! After the dust settled, China took us on a tour of the city, which included dim sum lunch in Chinatown, a tour to the top of the Prudential Building, and a Duck Tour to the major historical sites and the Charles River. There was a happy ending to Bill’s wallet incident. A gentleman who lives in China’s neighborhood found it close to China’s apt. He tried to call the number in the wallet, but of course, we were on the road. China brought it home at Thanksgiving.

From Boston, we drove the short distance to Clinton, Connecticut for the annual Edgar Rice Burroughs gathering - the Dum-Dum, hosted by Peggy Adler. It was a great opportunity to visit a part of New England we’ve never been. It’s always a pleasure to meet up with old friends and make new ones. On the way home we stopped at Gillette Castle, built as a private home by William Gillette, an American actor who is most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on stage. Mark Twain house and museum in Hartford was also an interesting stop.

This part of our travels was not far from our friends Ken and Faye Daniels, who live in Niagara-on-the Lake. We got to check out their beautiful new outdoor kitchen and entertainment area. From there, we stopped in to visit Bill’s sister Bonnie. Our niece Noelle was able to join us for supper on the waterfront.

We arrived home in time for a short rest before I headed back to work at BU. Soon we’ll be heading off again, on April 10th, on a 28-day tour of northern and southern India. Maybe by then, you’ll have plowed through the myriad of webpages from our Indochina trip and ready to view our new adventures!

Until next time, have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year with those you love!

Bill & Sue-On
Our Main Website
Our Annual Onlilne Family Xmas Greetings


THE HILLMANS :: 2015

Websites Referenced Above:
www.johntyman.com :: www.ERBzine.com :: www.hillmanweb.com/drums
www.hillmanweb.com/book :: www.airmuseum.ca/memorial
www.hillmanweb.com/soos :: www.hillmanweb.com/soos/food
www.hillmanweb.com/soos/garden :: www.erbzine.com/brandon
Many more of our tall tales are spread across our main Website:
www.hillmanweb.com

ARCHIVE CONTENTS
THE HILLMAN CHRISTMAS AND WINTER SOLSTICE SITES
HILLMAN FAMILY XMAS 2016  ~  XMAS ARCHIVE SITE

 
CHRISTMAS WITH ELVIS
 
Hundreds of Xmas Cartoons
13 Folios: HERE
Christmas Traditions Research
READ HERE
Hillman Family Newsletter
Xmas 2016
2015 Family Photos
2012 Family Photos
HILLMAN ADVENTURE: 2015
2014 || 2013 || 2012
Cleveland Xmas 
Story House
Grandson Soulin Hillman
Through the Years
A Beatles Christmas
All the Annual Greetings
Archive of Annual Newsletters
 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
A Coca Cola Christmas
Over 40 Sundblom Santas | Gallery
 VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS CARDS
Box 1 | Box 2 | Box 3
VICTORIAN XMAS 
3-D Stereocards
Norman Rockwell
Christmas Mosaic
101 SOUNDS OF CHRISTMAS
A montage of Christmas album covers
Stars Celebrate Xmas
Christmas in the Good Old Days
Classic Old Time Radio 
Christmas Shows
A Science Fiction Xmas
Nostalgia Xmas Comics
Magic Lantern Christmas Slides 
from the Victorian Era
2011 Family Photos
Xmas Song Book
Favourite Xmas Videos
Solstice Celebration
Inspiration Pages
XMAS ARCHIVE SITE
 Christmas On The Web
Histories ~ Trivia ~ Scripts
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