Dear Kids,
         The party for Blake’s baby blessing started last night, here at our house, with the arrival of Paul’s family from North Salt Lake, and Vanessa’s family from Pocatello. We had fun out on the playground, while the sun set. Our rubber bark is doing great. There was a furious windstorm three or four days ago, the strongest one we’ve ever had here. (It was like a hurricane--the trees bent almost double in one direction, then about half an hour of calm, and then the wind came from the other direction, just as hard.) Bottom line: our rubber bark didn’t blow away--not a piece of it. Our pergolas were shaking back and forth, and our trees nearly snapped, but the bark stayed put.
          Oh, yes, back to the baby blessing: 9 am, Tom’s church, just east of Smiths and JR Smith elementary, on 5th north. The after party is at noon, at Tom’s house. We’re looking forward to seeing all of you who will be coming, and we’ll miss those of you who can’t be there.
          Here’s some big news: Paul landed a new job, and it’s something he’ll really enjoy–transportation. He’ll be working for Forsgren Engineering, and their office is right in downtown Salt Lake. He starts tomorrow morning. Go, Paul! He actually had two job offers at the same time, and they were both so good that he and Stefanie had to talk over the pros and cons of each one, and lay out all the details. I’m sure they’ve made the best decision!
            Remember the good old days, when smoke detectors went off with a nice beeping that annoyed the heck out of you, but that was all? We didn’t realize we had the new kind until Wednesday night. We were sound asleep when a voice started shrieking "Fire! Fire! Get out! Get out!" The alarm itself was shrieking, too. It was all over our house, since all seven smoke detectors were going off. (They’re interconnected.) We raced around the house looking for a fire, which we didn’t find. The alarms finally stopped, but I called 911 for the fire department anyway, since you hear stories of people who went back to bed and were burned up by a real fire. The nice fire department guys showed up about half an hour later. (Summit County, after all.) They went through the house and checked out everything, even testing for carbon monixide. Nothing. We finally went back to bed, but we didn’t sleep, because adrenalin was racing through us. We never found anything wrong with the smoke detectors, not even low batteries. I hope that never happens to us again.
          Otherwise, everything is great here. I love you all! Mom