Dear Kids,
      John and Heather have come up with a great plan for our Ackerson family reunion on Saturday, August 1st. It starts that morning at the Kamas Fitness Center where we’ll go swimming. Then we’ll drive over to Park City and have a picnic lunch in the park, and reminisce about the glory days of our timeshare there. Maybe we can even go on a tour of our old favorite spots. There’s a great playground at that park now, too, which will be a lot of fun for the kids. Whoever wants to can go on the Alpine Slide or play miniature golf, or spend money on anything else fun. In the evening we can probably go to a fast food place for dinner, and then anybody who is still up for it can go to a movie together. If anybody wants to stay overnight at the cabin, that will be fine. Oh, the night before, Friday night, if you want to, some of us will be camping out in the back yard of the cabin. John says his kids would love that. We can pitch our tents facing the fire pit, like the people around King Benjamin’s tower. We could make smores. There are all kinds of fun possibilities. If any of you have comments or suggestions, please contact John or Heather.
      Paul is bringing his car home this afternoon so Dad can go over everything (while Paul studies for his finals.) Then, next Wednesday, Paul will leave from Logan. He’s planning to drive two days, stay a day with Sharon and Seth, drive another day and maybe stay overnight in Boston with Jane and Joe, and then drive on to Halifax. Do you realize, if he started in Salt Lake City and headed south, the same distance, he would end up in Panama?
      Speaking of road trips, Donna and Bevan are down in Moab having fun. On Monday, when they were getting ready to leave, their car was being repaired at Nate Wade Subaru. At the end of the day, when it was supposed to be finished, they went to hopefully pick it up and saw that their engine had been taken out. Hummm. So they got a loaner car, which they’re putting lots of miles on.
      Our bad cat Oreo has moved on to big game, as in seagulls. When I walked into the shop Monday morning, the whole room was full of feathers! (But no gore–not even a beak or feet.) I filled a whole bag with them. Some of them were up to 8 inches long. If there had been lots of black, I could have hoped it was a magpie, but the feathers were mostly grey and white. Oreo and Xena were both very smug about it, but I’m pretty sure Oreo was the perpetrator.
      Yesterday I went on a 42-mile bike ride: all the way north on the Jordan River Parkway, to where it ends, and then all the way south, and back to the middle, and home again. It took me four hours. The highest gear on my bike is broken, or maybe I could have gone faster, but then again, maybe I would have been totally exhausted. As it was, I made it just fine. If anybody wants more information about the Great Utah Ride on Labor Day weekend, let me know.
      Lots of love, Mom