**I’m posting this for Emily because she has a sick computer, so for today the roll of Emily McKay will be played by Robyn DeHart**

Today, I feel like I’m living in a Mary Balogh novel.

No, a handsome but aloof Duke has not come to sweep me off my feet, but rather that this morning I woke up in a winter wonderland. Right after breakfast, the entire family poured out into the yard to play in the snow. We threw snow balls and went sliding down the hills at the end of the road. We made snow angels and licked snow off our gloves. (Okay, my kids did that. I was too aware of the deer footprints in the yard to actually eat the snow.)

Since I live in central Texas, most of experience with snow has been vicarious, lived through the heroines of al the Mary Balogh Christmas novels I’ve read. Inevitably, in those novellas, there’s an unexpected Christmas snow. Tromping out into the snow, the emotional barriers between the hero and heroine melt away. Their frosty tension between falls away and the couple begins to fall in love.

Playing in the snow with my kids and husband, I knew why she’s written so many scenes like that. There is something wondrous and special about the snow. It makes you feel like a child again. It’s so beautiful, it’s hard to believe it’s real. And even harder to believe that it’s supposed to be seventy in two days. But when that gorgeous, spring like weather hits, my Mary Balogh winter wonderland will fade away. I’ll have to pretend I’m in another novel. Maybe Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I heard her speak recently at a booksigning. When asked why she sets so many books in Texas she said, “Readers will believe anything if it happens in Texas.”

Even three inches of snow?