First Snowman

Andy, Sam, and I made our first snowman of the season last week.


We started closer to the front door, and were initially just mounding shovelfuls and handfuls of snow upon each other, leaving ourselves with a big mound of snow. Then we started carving around it to make it appear ballish in shape. But still, it looked like a ballish mound; not at all what I was going for. Not at all like Frosty! And how would we get the second "ball" on top of the first with all this mounding business? It just wasn't looking right.

Our neighbor came home from work and set us straight on the correct technique. Start with a ball and keep rolling it around in the snow and as it rolls it collects snow and gets bigger and bigger. It seems so simple now that I know! And these balls get heavy - it took all three of us to hoist the second ball on top of the first.

Isn't he looking handsome? Much thanks to the Connellys, our friends and neighbors back in Lake Jackson, who gave us the snowman 'kit' as a going away present!

Andy and Sam also found a good use for all the ice that built up on our driveway. Kind of a winter slip n' slide. (No we didn't sprinkle the salt like we should have, and yes, we have some now and have duly sprinkled.)









Unfortunately I lost our mailbox key, and traced it to the day that we made the snowman. After walking back and forth twice to Andy's bus stop searching the ground, and looking all over the house, I was convinced it was buried in the snow in the front. So after stomping all over the snow and looking with no luck, I thought there was a good chance it got rolled up into the snowman.

So, two days after we made the snowman, I was out there with the equivalent of a machete on the end of a stick (for chipping ice off your driveway when you don't put the salt down), chopping the poor snowman down, looking for the key. This didn't seem too odd to me until I first put the blade into his head. Then it seemed REALLY bizarre, and I suddenly realized that nobody tears down their snowmen. They let them peacefully melt away. And here I was stabbing it to death, all in the name of receiving mail again. I could just imagine all the neighbors that I still haven't properly introduced myself to, looking out their windows and wondering what kind of sicko they were living near. I went inside to put a cute hat on to make myself look friendlier as I finished chopping down the last half of his body. I was glad that our neighbors on either side of us left to go run errands so that I could at least explain myself to them. And I still didn't find the key, so off to the main post office I go tomorrow to arrange for some new ones. We'll have to make another Frosty soon to make amends.