Dear Friends,

Huge ice chunks fell off our roof at the office and at my home with the storm this weekend. There was a spectacular thunder snow event with snow, thunder and wide spread lightning on Saturday. It was an amazing celestial show that looked like giant flashbulbs going off. The warmer temperatures brought a little rain and that caused the built up ice and snow to slide off my roof at home in thunderous crashes that rivaled the thunder, and shook the house. Hammerhead wanted to go outside for this action but we kept him safe inside. The ice broke the railing to the stairs leading up to my porch and it was a lot of shoveling to clear the deck.

When I got to work on Monday, I noticed we also had some ice sliding off of the roof that looked like big icebergs sticking out of the big snow banks. Unfortunately, when I got inside, it turned out we had sprung a few leaks and there was a pool of water surrounding Hapy’s desk for his first day back from vacation. We got the mess cleaned up, and got most of the snow and ice off of the roof. I know our longer term solution here is better insulation for the roof so not as much ice is created.

We have yet another new addition to the Small Dog family as one of the Kibbles & Bytes team, Kali, gave birth to her son, Griffin Blake Hilke on Feb 7 which just happens to be my birthday, too. Congratulations from the Kibbles & Bytes community to Kali and Chris and a warm welcome to Griffin! You will see some new authors on the Kibbles & Bytes team as Kali gets to know her son while on maternity leave.

Ed Shepard is also leaving the Small Dog team to pursue other interests, so it will be Ben and I with help from the newbie, Jan and some of the other Small Dog team handling the Kibbles & Bytes duties.