Dear Kids,
          It snows, and it blows away. And it snows again. And blows away again. This is shaping up like last year. But it’s OK. We won’t have to shovel much. And if we want to play in the snow, the cabin is only 5 minutes away.
          Things are shaping up nicely for Thanksgiving. Dad and I bought our turkey at Winco last Wednesday, where it was 57 cents a pound, if you spend $50 on other groceries. That’s easy these days. Let’s see . . . a 10-pound chub of hamburger for $30. Three bricks of cheese, $20 more. You’re there. I bought lard for the pie crusts, and pumpkin, and bread for the stuffing. It’s all pretty easy, after so many years of doing Thanksgiving.
          John is getting ready to lay some tile in his basement, so Dad and I went there on Friday to take our wet saw and dish out advice. We were astounded that all the rooms are sheetrocked. I think it happened in just a couple of days, because John hired people to do it. How’s that? You can hire people? We’ve been following Tom’s basement project for several months now, and we admired his great sheetrocking job, and I was all excited to do our own basement. I still am, but maybe we’re getting too old to hoist up sheetrock. It’s been more than 30 years since I did any of that.
          Three weeks till the Messiah. I’ve been trying to learn the "Amen" chorus, since we didn’t do it last year. It’s impossible. Handel should have quit while he was ahead.
          I’m doing sharing time in Primary today, the one about forgiveness where you tie a bag of rocks to somebody’s ankle and have them walk around like that. It’s supposed to represent carrying grudges. Luckily we have plenty of rocks, and I gathered up some outside yesterday morning before it started snowing. I have two small bags, so I can use two kids for that. It makes me wonder why any of us carry around our bags of rocks. Maybe I’ll try to drop some of mine, now that we’re celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas.
          I love you all! Mom