Dear Kids,
         Tyler’s baby blessing will be a week from today (September 1) at Tom’s church (the first one past the elementary school, past Smiths, as you go east on 500 North).  Sacrament meeting starts at noon. There will be food afterwards at Tom’s house, and you can contact Kim for an assignment.  I’m really looking forward to it!  The baby blessings are getting fewer and farther between, and unless somebody is planning to surprise us, the next one will be Paul and Stefanie’s baby in the spring.
         Things are sure quiet in our neighborhood, since school started this week.  I can hardly believe summer’s over already.  I know most of you parents are glad to have your kids settled back into school, except for Sharon’s kids, who don’t go back until after Labor Day.  (Of course they didn’t get out until the middle of June.)  I always liked having you kids settled into a routine again, and I always tried to organize my life better when I had more breathing room.
         Our kitties are obsessed with rolling in the dirt.  When I let them into the house, they’re so dirty they don’t even hold their tails up straight, but drag them along behind.  Then they spend hours grooming themselves.  Then they want to go back outside and roll in the dirt again.  I was wondering how they can lick up that much dirt, without it hurting them, and Dad said maybe they need it in their diets.  Maybe it cleans them out.  Come to think of it, they don’t sell Kitty Miralax, (would they call it Kittylax?) so maybe Dad’s right.
         I was just thinking about all my medical troubles, which started out two years ago.  First it was my skin cancers, and then I was barely recovered from those surgeries when they found the colon cancer.  I wasn’t even completely recovered from that when I got the shingles. And now along with the shingles pain, I have the pain in my right leg, probably from my hip.  I have an appointment with an orthopedic doctor in two weeks, and maybe he’ll be able to help clear it up.  But I’m thinking Job was very wise when he said “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.”  (Job 5:7)  But then I have plenty of blessings too, the best of which are you kids and kids-in-law and your kids, too.  I have way more blessings than troubles!
         So life is good! Lots of love, Mom