My guys have been here for various lengths of time since last Friday, and it's been fun to have them all together. Playing cards, talking, eating together, and catching up on all their lives is the food that a mother lives on when so many miles separate us. My soldier son swings between encouraged and discouraged about what he sees in Iraq, but he enjoys his assignment and getting to know the people he is protecting. I'm glad to know that not much of the extreme violence in the country is active in his part. I've been busy making their favorite meals and and keeping the dishwasher going.

I sure appreciate all the friendliness and gratitude people express to my soldier son and even to me when they find out he is serving. Whatever your view of what is going on in the Middle East, I hope that all of you will reach out to every soldier you see and encourage them in some way. It means so much!

It's been snowing for 12 hours...that's 12 hours of snow on top of 3 feet of snow we aleady have outside our door! It's up to our windowsills now, and the forecast is for 10 more days of snow. Michael's tractor & snowblower took one look and refused to move. He had to dig it out just to get it back into the shop! So we are royally snowed in! We hope that the gentleman whose name was recommended to us will be able to get here with his plow and rescue us later this afternoon. Michael estimates that he'll have to snowblow twice a day after we're plowed out just to keep up. Not that I wouldn't love an excuse not to go to work and stay warm & cozy in our office here at home and write. Hmmm...10 days of snow, hot cocoa, and writing Young Master Darcy. Sounds pretty good! 

So, you may wonder, what about power? Well, we did have an outage this morning, but we were back up in 2 hours. Not so for many in Spokane, from the news report. We did have to go out and clear the satellite dishes, 1 for internet and 1 for TV. After all, Mansfield Park is on tonight and that can NOT be missed!

So, until next time when we've dug out from what is now about 4 feet of snow, thus endeth the blog...

Pamela