July 16, 2001 Farmington, Utah

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO RICKY TOMORROW - JULY 16TH!!! Ricky - you will be 22 years old and I'm SO proud of the things you are doing at this time of your life!!! Ricky is working at Meire and Frank (ZCMI) in the shoe department. He proved himself as a part-time worker doing inventory and other minor things and they hired him as a sales associate which is very unusual because he told them he would be going back to college in the Fall - WAY TO GO RICKY!!!

Michael - thank you SO much for your wonderful card. I appreciate your taking time to write to me and I LOVE it and have it posted on my refrigerator. I know you are probably disappointed that you haven't been transferred yet but I'm not surprised. A new Mission President doesn't like to make a lot of changes this soon. Besides that you are doing a FABULOUS job or you would never have stayed there that long.

Jesse - Thank you for your e-mail letter today and I'm glad you like "coal". Coal is a little stuffed bear who is one of the mascots for the Olympics. I am SO proud of you for being on a baseball team that won 2nd place - I would love to see your trophy!!! I would also love to see you play sometime - I'll bet you are a good player. Timothy, I hope you make the "classic soccer team" if you want to - I love to watch the game soccer even if I don't understand it. Patrice - thank you for your e-mail letter. I am thrilled that you are coming in August - THEY PLAN TO BE AT MY HOME THE EVENING OF AUGUST 10TH, HAVING DRIVEN FROM DURANGO, COLORADO THAT DAY!!!! I would like to plan an evening when all my children could be at my home for a "finance meeting" - Ann & Ron, Jean & Rick, Bob & Claire, Roy & Patrice and John. I had planned to have the meeting with the attorney who made the "Trust" (Rodney Wilkinson) but I'm having second thoughts about that. The tax accountant who did my trust income tax preparation had a lot of questions to ask him and so I wrote him a letter asking him the questions. He sent back to me all the material he had from the trust and said, in effect, that my trust wouldn't have enough money to warrant any further action since the Bush Administration is going to allow heirs to inherit a lot more money than they have in the past. I don't understand a lot of those things but I do know that we have a lot of "smart" in our family and if each one of you would give your input into my situation I think it would be very good.

Emily - I miss you!!! We had such a good time together - we went to Thanksgiving Point last Monday and went through the Dinosaur Museum. It is an excellent museum for children who are interested in dinosaurs and we saw the "whale movie" that was very good. Then we went to Alpine and visited the "Peppermint Place" where they make all kinds of hard candies. I love to watch them decorate their candy canes. They have a lot more employees than I thought - they are already getting ready for the Christmas market. Tuesday morning we went to Park City - I wanted Emily to see some of the Winter Olympic Venues and we also visited the discount stores. They have added a lot more stores and of course, I always love to shop!!! The "cousins" had a sleepover at the Weinerts - either Tuesday or Wednesday night - I can't remember which - and Katie, Laura, Emily, Sarah and Mary Ann had fun making cookies and just being together. I am SO glad Katie and Emily are close in age and have fun together because I have found that I can't remember what teenagers like to do - Ha!!!

Annie - thank you for sending me the obituary of my friend, Beth Tippetts. Beth and her husband, Neff, were our friends when we lived in Laramie and he also worked for the University where Lynn was. Then Neff was asked to go to Bangkok to help build dams during the Vietnam War. We ended up together in the same ward in Orem but that was after Neff had died. Beth's son Mark and his wife were neighbors to John and they have missed him since he moved. I was surprised to learn that Beth was almost 90 years old - she didn't seem that old. I drove to Orem to her viewing on Tuesday night and visited with some of my former ward members who were also there. Beth helped with Mark and Wendys' children and I figured it out and she would have been taking care of their last two little girls when they were babies and she was the same age as I am now. She was a very special woman and as I read in her obituary that she loved parties and we gave a lot of them together in Orem.

I was SO pleasantly surprised on Friday afternoon. Margaret and I had been visiting out in front and I had just come in and was going upstairs to read the paper when I heard someone come in the front door - I thought it was Margaret. As I went downstairs, there was John coming in the door!!! I couldn't believe it but it was so wonderful to have him drop in like that. He helped me with the "Family Genealogy Computer Idea" he has and it sounds like a great idea. He was looking for his bicycle helmet and wanted to get some of his fishing equipment. He said he was going fishing and riding before going back to the "Big City". We never did find his helmet so I hope he got another one. He said he was going to work in his backyard in Orem and after he left I realized that he doesn't even have a shovel - I wish he had taken some gardening equipment that I have for him here but I didn't think of it at the time.

This has been a fun "Sports" Week for me. They have had some golf competitions and have interviewed Boyd on television several times. Boyd and his brother Daniel were considered the top players in all the games but it so happened that they both won their last competitions which put them playing against each other for the semi final games of the State Amateur Games which were yesterday. Their father, Lynn, was quoted as saying it was heartbreaking to see that happen because he knew that only one could win. It was a close game but Danny came out the winner and went into the final game today. Mary Ann came over a few minutes ago and told me that Danny had won - THAT IS REALLY GREAT!!! He won last year so he was the defending champion and he competed against an older man today - Danny is just 17. It was very heartwarming last night to watch television and see them hug each other and Boyd congratulate his younger brother - Danny was very emotional as he told how difficult it was to beat Boyd. That is a very wonderful family!!! There has been a lot of television coverage as well as newspaper coverage - they mentioned there would be many babies in the audience as the Summerhays family gathered together to cheer them on. I'm proud of you Boyd for being the kind of person you are - it has to be hard but it will all come out just fine - you just wait and see!!!

Bob, Claire, Laura, Brett, Katie, Jeannie, Rick, Ricky, Mary Ann, Sarah and Emily came over last Sunday night for cantaloupe ala mode. It was fun and cool to sit out on my back patio and just visit and I appreciated having them come. Our weather has been "the pits" for the past month and I'll have to tell you what happened to our pool. The house next to the pool had a "weed patch" so the gardeners went and pulled out all the weeds and then put that very fine bark in that area. The wind was very strong that night and blew all the bark into the pool. The maintenance man called me and he was in tears saying he had never seen such a mess. He closed the pool and both of us worked for about four hours last night and then he worked again this morning trying to get that stuff cleaned up. It had kind of an oily film all over the surface of the pool and I skimmed and skimmed until I was worn out and he vacuumed and vacuumed until he was worn out. I put two big tarps over the area and hopefully it won't happen again. We had a very violent rain storm last Monday night that broke windows and filled basements with water all over the neighborhood - one home had 6 ft. of water in their basement and they said their grand piano was floating in it. Our Bishop thanked everyone today for helping and I felt quite guilty - I didn't realize how bad it had been and I didn't even offer to help. I didn't have any damage.