Dear Kids,

Book club is at 5:00 this afternoon, here at our house, like always.  We’re reading My Side of the Mountain.  If you haven’t totally finished it, that’s OK.  Lots of you have been really busy this past month.  I’m planning that we’ll still have book club in December, even though things are likely to get busier still.  Have you all noticed how dark it gets, and how early?  What better reason than those long dark evenings for your families to read together!

A week from today will be our family Thanksgiving dinner at John’s house, at 4 pm.  Sharon says you all have your food assignments.  Last year I swore it was my last year for making pies, but I’m feeling a lot better this year, and I’m up for it.  I’m sure anybody could bake my pumpkin pies if they used my recipe, but I still feel like it’s my responsibility.  Anyway, back to our family dinner–I’m looking forward to seeing so many of you.  What a family we have! I was just overwhelmed by the sight of such a gang when we had our big picture taken at the family reunion.  It’s such an impressive picture that I will be sending out Christmas cards for the first time in at least ten years.  I have to show you off to my brothers and sisters. I’ll also be sending them to each of you kids, so you can put up my card with all your others and let your friends and visitors see.

As I’ve written before, on Thanksgiving day we’ll be having a barbecue-type meal at the cabin for everyone who wants to be there.  I’m going to pay Tom to make brisket for everybody.  Donna is in charge, so if you want a food assignment, contact her.  I figure we’ll be eating about 1 pm.

The contractor we hired to work on our bunkhouse and cabin still hasn’t started the project, and now there’s snow on the ground.  When it was snowing on Tuesday, Dad got a text from him that said they would give the snow one day to melt, and then start on Thursday.  Needless to say, they didn’t show up.  And of course the snow didn’t melt in one day.  We had made a $10,000 down payment, and since the contractor was willing to give us a 10% discount for cash (real cash, not a check or venmo) we met him at the bank.   It was fun to see their machine count out one hundred hundred-dollar bills.  You can probably figure why he wanted his money under-the-table like that.  I don’t care.  I just want to see the work done.  People are still building all over the valley, so there’s a chance it will happen.

So much going on!  I love you all!  Mom