Dear Kids,
          Dad and I have been busy with yard projects all week. Dad has been mowing and trimming. (Did you know a weed whacker could shoot a pebble through a basement window?) We planted four new trees, and Dad made cages for them. I’ve been digging out rocks in the strip along Hilltop Road, and raking out the dirt. I’m spreading bark over the sand in the playground, which has been a disaster anyway, since it blows away, and gets tracked into the house. (I’m making a wall around the sand digger, and leaving the sand in there, since you can’t dig bark very well.) I’ll be running out of bark pretty soon, but it’s easy to get more from Thompson Logging. They’re just down the hill. 
          Dad’s birthday (and Dallin’s) is a week from Friday. We’re planning a combined birthday party that evening at either Donna’s house or ours–I’m not sure yet. It’ll be at 6:30 pm, probably just cake and ice cream, and presents. If you want to go in on the 2-terabyte hard drive for Dad, just let me know. I’ll have more details next week.
          It’s less than five weeks until Sharon’s family comes, and our basement should be totally finished by then, even the bathroom, except that we might not have carpet. What’s with this area? In our old house, I just ordered carpet, and it came, and they installed it. Since we’ve moved here, it’s been nothing but trouble. Now our "carpet man" is putting us off, telling us each week that it’s finally being made, and he’ll have it on Monday, and it will be installed Friday. He has told us the same thing four weeks in a row. I think he’s running his business in the red, waiting for some new customer to make a deposit, so he can buy ours. I hope we won’t be out our $2,000 deposit. I hope there won’t be a big fight to get it back. What I really hope is that the carpet will be installed. He’s a nice guy, in Tom’s ward–just probably not a good businessman.
          We used to have DVD’s of the Merlin series. Did we lend them to one of you? I only liked season one, because it got violent after that, but I’d like to watch the first few episodes again.
           Love to all, Mom