Dear Kids,
          Our fire pit is finished, and we tried it out last night, burning up a few pieces of wood. It works fine! So we’re ready for the Fourth of July. We bought fireworks at Costco with John–we went in on a deluxe $100 package, with the aerials that go off one after another, when you light the fuse. So Dad and I will be hosting a hotdog and marshmallow roasting party Tuesday night, probably starting about seven, since it doesn’t get dark enough for fireworks until pretty late. Let us know if you plan to come! You can bring your own fireworks if you have them. You can come way earlier, if you like, and your kids can play on the playground. We fastened down the legs of the swingsets lots better than before, so they can’t shift around when the kids swing high. We’re ready for fun!
          What else? Ellie stayed with us from Wednesday night until yesterday, and we had a good time with her. We ate vegetarian, and we liked it. We dragged her along with us to the senior center on Thursday, and to the temple on Friday. She sewed and wrote in her various notebooks and watched "Once Upon a Time." I asked her if it wasn’t pretty boring here, and she said no, it was relaxing.
           I’m still digging up rocks in our back yard. I spray them off with the hose, and then Dad hauls them out to the side of the road, where he piles them up. People still come by to get them. One of them is our stake president, Mark Durham. He likes to chat. I told him that a ton of "Jordan cobble" (the name for our rocks) costs $100 at Staker Parsons. He wondered how many rocks were in a ton, and I told him it was about the size of the pile he was looking at. He’s an investment banker, so he’s interested in things like that. I figure we’ve given away thousands of dollars worth of rocks in the last three years. And I still have thousands more to dig. Good thing I like it so much!
           We hope to see a lot of you here Tuesday night, to try out the fire pit and shoot off fireworks. If anybody has time earlier in the day, do you want to do the "top of the world" hike? The wildflowers should be beautiful up there! Let me know!
          Lots of love, Mom