Dear Kids,
      I just got back from snowboarding at Brighton by myself. Normally, I like going with other people, but then I don’t pay much attention to what I’m doing, so I thought I could learn a lot if I just went up and down the mountain by myself. Mostly, I just got tired. I think I improved a little bit, though. Nora and I are going next week, and then on the 28th, a Saturday, I’m going back to Brighton with anybody else who wants to go. John? Kim? Al & Missy? (or maybe we’d better save that for a weekday morning). Tom won’t be coming. When he went snowboarding with some friends from Price, during the Christmas break, he fell really hard and probably cracked a rib. He said it’s terribly painful. People have told him it takes up to 9 months to heal. I was talking to different snowboarders today, riding up the lift, and some of them had experiences with cracked and broken ribs. They said you just have to tough it out. So Tom might be out for the rest of the season. Too bad.
      I drove Donna back to Logan Sunday night, to start her new semester, and when we walked into her dumpy old house, it felt like a refrigerator, and nobody was there. It turned out their furnace was broken, and all the roomies were hanging out in an apartment across the street where it was warm. But we all know how rugged Donna is. She said she would just sleep in her sleeping bag until the furnace was fixed, and at least their heating bill wouldn’t be so high this month.
      When I wrote last week, I thought all the parties were over with, but we had a good time at the cabin Friday night and Saturday with John’s family. There was new snow on the sledding hill, so I had John pack it down with the big flat plastic sled, and then Dad and I took Jacob and Julie and Aaron sledding. Julie really whooped it up, going down the hill. She wanted to start out higher up each time. She and Jacob rode the little black sleds, all by themselves. Dad took Aaron on one of the red eurosleds. Mostly I pulled sleds up the hill, while kids struggled up behind me. What’s so fun about that? But it was.
      Monica, I hung one of the portraits of Ramona in the cabin kitchen, and when Aaron saw it, he called out “Kitty!” I got it down and let him look at her up close. He was delighted, and he didn’t want to give the picture back to me. There’s something spellbinding about Ramona.
      Speaking of kitties, I never did write, last year, that Vanessa and Trent’s beloved Kita Cat had disappeared. It was just too heartbreaking. It was soon after they moved into their new house, and they figured he must have gotten disoriented and wandered off. I told them they’d never have such a fine cat again. Well, last week they got a call from Trent’s brother Troy, who’s living in their old house down on 11th Avenue, and Kita had come back! He was gone for seven months. They have no idea where he went in the meantime, but he might have been adopted by another family, because he’s such a fine fellow. Too bad he can’t talk! The sad part is, there’s probably another family that’s missing him now. But anyway, he’s back to sleeping on Vanessa’s head at night. She hates it, but she doesn’t want him to feel unwelcome.
      On March 11th, the Utah Opera Company is doing “The Magic Flute.” That calls for an opera party. Grandma said she really wants to come, and we can hope she’ll be doing OK by then. It’s a Saturday night, and if any of you want to come, let me know. I’ll have to get the tickets pretty soon. When I looked on the opera’s web site to check the date, it said they needed two more tenors for Magic Flute. Tom, maybe a new career for you?
      Here’s wishing you’re all “doin’ great and lovin’ it!”
      Love, Mom