A white Christmas and then some...

We've had a white Christmas, of course, since the 29th of October. That's when our snow started falling, and even though we've had several Chinooks and temps in the mid-forties, it's never completely melted. I love this! When the first warm winds blew through, I worried that the pretty snow-covered vista out my window would melt to brown and ugly. Not so. Instead, we enjoyed driving on dry pavement, as only the roads showed their bare surface again. And lo and behold, after four or five days, the lovely snow returned. We've reached a total of 60 inches so far, still about 20 inches above average. A fairly continual snowfall since Thursday afternoon guaranteed us a fresh white Christmas. It's especially lovely at twilight, as the half light gives it delightful blue highlights. Can you tell I don't mind the snow? There are four months to go, though, so I reserve the right to change my mind. Hazel seems to love it too. We usually only go out to play when other kids are out, so that's maybe once a week. Here she is sitting in the "bowl." What's the bowl, you ask?
This is the bowl. I think it looks like mashed potatoes, waiting for gravy. The kids climb all over it and play in the middle. I hear the city hauls it away at least once during the winter, mostly because it keeps widening every time they plow and the street keeps shrinking.

Here it is in the daytime, but I think it's more visible at night.

They actually closed schools one day, because everything iced up, and Hazel enjoyed building this snowman with some of the older girls. They came back to accessorize him after lunch. She likes to help me clear the porch with her snow shovel - she's mostly in charge of the railings.

She poked a hole so that "animals could get through," and I shot the UPS truck on the street up the hill.

Hazel's also responsible for making sure Santa and his trees maintain a sprinkle of fresh snow.

I wanted to show you the height of the snow on this side of our driveway, which is over my head. That makes it just a little difficult to throw snow over the top, with the snow blower or otherwise, and there's a teeny strip of grass between us and the neighbor on the other side, which maxed out its snow storage capacity long ago. Something we didn't think of when house shopping. Ce la vie. Hazel "shoveled" herself out into our front yard to play.

Now I'll just share some more views of the snow around our house.

This is the sunrise, at 10:15. That's about as much sun as the trees see, as the sun travels a very low arc above the southern edge of the sky. We do get some sun through the upstairs windows, when it pops through between the houses behind us.

We marked dead trees to be taken out, and the windstorm beat us to it and snapped two of those marked. Fortunately, the tops just landed on the ground. See the trunk in the middle? The rest of it is buried in the snow behind.

It's mostly very dry, light snow, so it stays on the trees until the wind blows.

Our back deck railing, several inches short of the current snow height.

And this is funny because I thought Eric had gone walking outside, but it was icicles dripping off the roof.