This week, we've been from Portageville, Missouri to Smyrna, Tennessee Sparta, Tennessee to Alma, Michigan, Saginaw, Michigan to Warren, Michigan. Montague, MI to Chicago, and are now headed from Chicago back over to Detroit. We're getting a good taste of what winter is like in the northern states. We haven't seen much grass, and we've driven through lots of snow and ice. The people who live up here must be either fully acclamated or just simply resigned to it, because they don't seem to mind it at all. They just say it's part of living in the Midwest or on the Eastern Seaboard. We can ride along all afternoon in the coziness of the warm truck, with the sun shining bright outside, then step out at a restaurant for dinner or stop at a convenience store for, well, convenience, and the wind hits us like a snow plow!

We were picking up a load in Montague (North of Grand Rapids on Lake Michigan) and a couple of guys were going over a snowbank beside the building on snowmobiles. Jim said you could drive right downtown on one because the streets were covered with ice and a layer of snow. The thermometer on the truck said it was 2 degrees below zero.

We've been really blessed to have good roads to drive on, and I've been extra blessed because our loads have worked out lately so that Jim has done almost all of the driving. He's much calmer when the roads get icy, and he's a much better driver. No, really, I'm not just sucking up so he won't make me drive - he's really a better driver, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind telling you so himself. I'm more like a relief pitcher except that they come in with the idea of saving the game. I just fill the seat now and then long enough for Jim to catch a few z's.

We talked to Jeri and Herb to congratulate them on earning the title of grandma and grandpa. Dace Denton Putnam is Candi and Derek's new baby boy, and he's a cutie. that makes us a great aunt and uncle X 2 over the past few months. I'm adding the picture of him that they sent us.

We've asked for a load to Indianapolis since we haven't checked our mail in a couple of weeks, and within the next week or two we'll ask for hometime in Texas because Doug leaves for Washington in mid-February for training, then his unit will be deployed to Iraq. We want to get down to see him before he leaves and we hope to see some of you while we're there.

I'm adding a few pictures of the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee, and some I took when were were in the Texas Hill Country around Christmas.

We love and miss you all . . .