Hello Dear Ones!

I'm so sorry for my extended absence. As if times weren't difficult enough for me these days, over Spring Break, my dearest Uncle passed away. I got to say goodbye to him before he passed, so that was a blessing, but it was such a hard week. And during a week that I'd counted on as a time of rest...I spent the week instead making multiple trips out to Cuero where he lived (about 100+ miles each way from my home) and grieving.

The week after that, I was just in a very deep funk. It was all I could do to "be normal" for the kids' sakes. Everything else in my world got put on hold.

And just when I see the sun coming out again and am feeling ready to step back onto the merry-go-round of the rest of the world again...our sewerline backs up and floods the downstairs of our home. Bathroom, hallway, foryer, family room and my office....all flooded. Fortunately, the water that backed up was water from my daughter's shower that she was taking at the time...so it was relatively clean water. But since then, I've seen the insides of those sewer pipes and nothing "clean" ever comes out of those. So I'm turning into a germophobe these days. This happened last Wednesday afternoon...and I've STILL got giant industrial fans going in the home and two giant de-humidifiers, trying to finish drying stuff out.

There's about $5000 of clean-up and repair to be done on the inside of the home...and about $3500 of plumbing work to be done outside in the front yard. Fortunately, insurance is helping, but I'm still about about $3000 out of pocket for deductable and diagnostics that insurance doesn't cover.

There's still a LOT of work left to go on all of that. As I said, we're still just trying to "dry out"...and three different plumbers can't agree on exactly where under the grass the problem is. Three different plumbers...all with the same video camera equipment and the same pipe-detecting equipment....all equally convinced that they're 100% correct on where the roots have intruded into the sewer pipe and where under the yard that is. And I've got three different spots of colored paint in the yard. Gee, I can't wait 'til they start digging.

Anyhow....please bear with me. I promise I haven't abandoned my beloved site!! And physically, we're all fine and dandy here. It's just been one hell of a month and still a lot of work ahead.

Dean is doing well in Afghanistan. He got food poisoning a couple weeks ago, but is fully recovered now. If that's the worst that ever happens to him in a war zone, I'll be perfectly content. He is set to depart Kabul on April 16th, but it could take as much as another ten days or so to actually get home. He won't be able to give me a specific arrival date until he reaches Germany and makes commercial arrangements from there. I can't begin to describe the depths of my eagerness to have him home with us again.

I'll try to be in and out today, and will return to my usual participation levels soon, I hope.

I hope all is well with my dear friends here...and I bid welcome to all our new members that I've yet to meet!