Dear Kids,
      Here’s the latest New Baby News: Uncle Ben reports that Jeff and Emily had a baby girl on October 18th. Her name is Kimberly Joyce, she was 19.75" long, weighed 7 lbs 13 oz, and her voice sounded like “a very small bear.” Not to be outdone, Uncle Andy reports that Dan and Amanda are now the parents of Micah Paul Allen, born Oct. 20th, no size or weight. But Andy says, “Apparently some of the Allen genes made it through this time. The young boy reportedly has big hands with short stubby fingers, and space for an extra toe between the 1st and 2nd toe.” All this information came to us by e-mail, but on Sunday, Dad and I went to Brigham City for Gary’s homecoming. It was lots of fun, as always. We saw Mark and Tamry’s little girl, Elsie, who was born soon after the family reunion in August. She has cute auburn hair, lots of dimples, and smiles a lot. In case any of you are keeping up with Grandpa Allen’s number chart, the newest baby, Amanda and Dan’s, is #157. #158 will be Jamie’s fiancee, Andrea Fleming. #159 and #160 will be a toss-up between Andrea Hill’s baby and Bevan. Since Andrea and Dan are living in China, she’ll go to Hong Kong to have her baby, scheduled for December 15. That’s the same day as Donna and Bevan’s wedding, of course. But when you factor in the time difference, the baby is likely to come first. One interesting thing about Andrea is that her baby won’t be able to go back into China for about 2 weeks after it’s born, because they have to apply for its passport. There’s a special hotel where the new mothers stay, waiting for their babies’ passports. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Renae’s going to fly to China to take care of the older kids while this is going on.
      Back to the numbers: #161will be Charles Allen’s fiancee, Julie, and #162 will be John and Heather’s baby. Sharon and Seth’s will be #163. Since I don’t know of any other babies or weddings before July, Neil could come into our family as #164. But of course you can never keep up with all the new happenings in the Allen family. (Edit: Kim is due December 8th)
      While Dad and I were in Brigham City, Andy demonstrated his new web cam for us, like we’d never seen one before. A year ago he didn’t even have internet access, and claimed he didn’t need it, and now he’s hooked. He’s made all his kids get web cams, too, since two families are in California and one’s in China. Andy dials them up and has the parents put the kids in front of the cam, so he can talk with them. So we got to see Dan and Amanda’s new baby in Santa Barbara, and watch Dan act goofy, like always. Andy told Dad and me that we absolutely had to hook all our kids up with web cams, but I told him when you’re going on 18 grandkids, it isn’t such a big deal. (Just kidding of course.)
      News from Price: Paul reports that he and his engineering buddies are building their trebuchet (like a catapult, I think) for their class project. All the kids in his statics class get to take their catapults to Moab, where they’ll stay in a motel and hold a competition. I think they’re going to throw pumpkins with them. Sounds like a good use of students’ tuition money, doesn’t it? Or our tax dollars? But of course it’s all good.
      News from Pocatello: Vanessa and Trent started laying their sod last weekend, and Vanessa finished up Wednesday morning just a couple of hours before it snowed. Meg can sit up now. Sterling is finishing his soccer season, but with 4-year-olds, it’s pretty casual. At their most recent game, Sterling’s team only had 6 kids, but the other team had 11, all of them on the field at the same time. If they kicked the ball out-of-bounds, they just kept kicking until they got it back in. You can guess who won.
      I just finished reading Missy’s blog, about their trip to St. George. There’s a cool slideshow, too. Here’s the link: http://www.justthe4ofus-missy.blogspot.com/ I wish you all had blogs. It’s really easy to start one on blogspot. In fact, I had to create one so I could post a comment about Missy’s pictures. Also, Amber has some cool pictures of their record-breaking snowstorm in Buffalo. And her story of their power being out for 2 days. Here’s her link: http://amberackerson.blogspot.com/ Have I convinced anybody else to start one up? I hope so.
      Bevan is moving to the cabin on Nov. 11th, when he starts working at Deer Valley. Meanwhile, Donna has discovered that for spring semester, her classes will only be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So she’ll move into the cabin right after the wedding, and just be in Logan from Tuesday mornings to Thursday afternoons. She won’t even have to rent an apartment there! And she can work at Deer Valley with Bevan on Mondays and Fridays. What a deal! Donna wants everybody to know, however, that she expects the cabin parties to keep going on. If we let her know in time, she and Bevan can escape somewhere overnight, and leave the cabin to us. (Tom does the same thing too, of course.) So there’s no stoppin’ the fun!
      Nora and her kids are here to look at Halloween costumes. I’ve gotta go!
      Love, Mom