Dear Kids,
      We finally have a computer up and running, but of course I don’t want to go through the whole story. It works. I can write normal letters again. On schedule.
      Paul has been transferred to Victoria! His new address is: #102 3819 Shelbourne St., Victoria BC V8P 5N3. On the map, you can see that Victoria is on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, even farther south than most of Donna’s mission. It’s probably going to be a great place to spend the winter. No dog sleds. Go, Paul!
      It must be the season for romance. In fact, it must be a monsoon season for love. Can you believe that both Annice Turcsanski and Shanna Spencer are getting married? Annice is marrying Dan Osmond, a son of one of the older Osmond brothers, one of the deaf ones who didn’t sing. He’s been married before and has a 5-year-old daughter. Shanna is marrying a guy named Zach from Washington. Her aunt set them up. She doesn’t have a ring yet, but she sold her condo and moved back in with her parents to save money. We also have a wedding announcement from Matt Bunkall, who’s marrying Jenny Anderson, who’s Tom’s age, and there’s also an announcement from April Ulrich. What a batch of marriages coming up! Dave Michelson made a trip to Idaho to meet Connie Harper, and I hoped a romance would flare up immediately, but he seems to be checking out a lot of different girls, and Connie is just one of them. Well, if there was ever a year for Connie to find her man, this has got to be it.
      Last Friday and Saturday was the annual sisters’ retreat for Grandma Allen and all my sisters and me. We’ve nearly always gone to St. George, but (1) gas is too expensive and (2) we haven’t been invited to Charley’s new house there and (3) Barbara doesn’t live there any more, so we went to the Cabin instead. I had worked like crazy to finish up the inside moldings around the new windows, and put the blinds and shutters and curtain rods back up, because I knew they would look into every room and exclaim over every little thing I had done. And they did. It was lots of fun. Actually, it doesn’t matter where we have the retreat if we can eat out, shop, watch movies, and gossip. And we did it all. We ate at the Gateway Grille in Kamas, and everybody was impressed! Go, Kamas. We watched “The Terminal,” plus Hurricane Rita coverage. (Big flop. It hardly damaged anything!) My sisters shopped at the outlet stores, but I stayed at the Cabin with Grandma, and raked rocks in the yard. And we gossiped. Jane was here visiting, and she had hoped to meet Jamie’s new girlfriend. But every time she visits, things go south with the current girlfriend. Just before Jane got here, Jamie went to pick up the girl for a date, and she’d had her hair cut into a mohawk, and it was spiked. She told him she thinks it’s OK to drink coffee, and the Church is not all that important to her. Oh, and she also told him about how she’d tried to kill herself. Needless to say, he’s starting out all over again. I heard lots of other gossip, which I’ll probably let slip here and there, when I’m not careful.
      Sharon has a new church calling–ward camp director! She’ll have a great adventure, I’m sure. Their camp is going to be in July, but she doesn’t know if it’s ward camp, or stake camp. She’s hoping for Stake, so they’ll pick the theme and make most of the arrangements. You know, they have to have the matching pajama pants, and the workshops for learning camp skills, and the booklet of camp songs, and the crafts . . . But of course it’s all good.
      We’re looking forward to conference this weekend, and it will be fun to see everybody who is able to come to the cabin. Those of you who can’t . . . we’ll miss you.
      Love, Mom