Snowman!

We had a good bit of heavy, wet snow last night (maybe 4 inches?) and it was finally just the right consistency to make a snowman. I never really appreciated all the different types of snow that there could possibly be. I figured that if there was enough snow on the ground, you had all that you needed to make snowballs, snowmen, what have you. Not true! Nearly every time it snows here, we test it in our hands to see how well it sticks together. Aside from one other time this winter (actually, the first snow we had here), the snow has always been very powdery and dry. It barely sticks together enough for a small snowball, and you certainly can't create a snowman by rolling up a large ball of snow on the ground. I've been a little disappointed that we've had all this snow on the ground this winter, but we couldn't really do anything with it.

Finally, we hit the snow jackpot last night. The temperatures have been balmy (i.e. low 30s, and it really does feel nice outside compared to 15 degrees!), so there is a lot more "free" water in the snow, which makes it a lot stickier. It was SO cool to start off with a small ball of snow, roll it all around the ground, and watch it get bigger and bigger as it collected more snow. It also sounded really cool -- that wet scrunchy snow sound.

I think I was actually more excited than the boys about our snowman. They helped roll the big snowballs a little and they helped accessorize, but mainly they were interested in sneaking bites of snow off the ground.

Anyway, I'm pretty proud of our guy! I'd love to make a whole snow family to join him -- if I do, I'll be sure to post more pictures!

No, it's not your imagination - that snowman is winking at you :).

It was still snowing while we were outside, and I like how the snowflakes were captured "in action" in this photo.

This is a tree across the street from our apartment. It's one of the places that the snow plow pushes all the snow -- the height of the snow pile is impressive!

Here's another large snow pile near our house.

I took this photo a week or two ago because the snow was starting to creep up on this fire hydrant. I'll have to see how it looks now after the additional snow we've had. I have yet to see entire fire hydrants covered, with just the pole sticking out. I don't think we've had a really heavy snow winter here. Also, now I understand how big snow piles get, and if a hydrant happened to get covered by a snow pile, that pole would definitely come in handy!