Dear Kids,
      I spent a couple of hours at Nora’s house today, helping her hang pictures and shelves on the walls. They painted just before Stuart was born, and there’s new carpet (like mine, or I guess mine is like theirs. You know, the brown shag from the seventies.) Anyway, we had fun hanging things up, and eating cookie dough. James has a new way of making chocolate chip cookies: you make the dough into balls, but instead of cooking them, you freeze them in a plastic bag. We ate so many that I had to make another batch. I think I’ll make all my cookies this way now.
      Donna was here for a couple of days, taking her licensing test. She said it was really hard. She won’t know if she passed for several weeks, because they have to evaluate the scores and then grade on a curve. I guess they make up a new test every year, (why else would it cost $700?) so they don’t know if the questions were too hard or too easy. Donna says they were too hard. But her boss paid for the test, so she won’t mind taking it again if she needs to.
      Last Sunday afternoon Boyd Ackerson came by! I know, he hasn’t been to our house since 1993, but he’s on a road trip to South Dakota (Little House on the Prairie Country) and it was great to visit with him. He’s an investment accountant and lives in a nice house that he owns in Washington. I asked him if he wanted to come back to Utah in the winter and go snowboarding with us, and he said maybe we could pull his leg and get him to do it. So we set a date: February 2nd. Groundhog Day. We’re going to get Jesse to come, too.
      Ward news: We received a wedding invitation for David Higham. Yep, David, the younger one. Not Daniel, the older one. Who would’ve thought? He’s getting married October 5th in the Salt Lake Temple. Sharon, didn’t you used to babysit those boys?
      Other ward news: Jana McGettigan is starting to have her hair grow back again. She lifted up her wig and showed me a little fringe of curly pixie hair along her forehead. She said she needs to wait until she has more hair on top, so she can do something with it, before she goes out in public without her wig.
      Sunday night, the 23rd, at 6:30, there’s a birthday party for Grandpa Allen at the Tregaskis home. Nancy is serving ice cream and cake. She said any of you kids are welcome to come, if you want to. You probably don’t need to bring Grandpa any presents, since they’ve had to give away so much of their stuff. But I’m sure he would love to see any of you.
      Hope you’re all doin’ great and lovin’ it! Mom