White Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope it was everything you hoped for. We enjoyed a quiet day indoors as we were under a blizzard warning. The buzz began on Christmas Eve. We got about 3 or 4 inches of new snow during the day. The wind was predicted to pick up in the afternoon, and therein lies the obstacle. I'm sure I've said it before. The wind makes the winters almost unbearable. Scott decided to snow blow early on, hoping to lessen the work load later. By Christmas morning the drifting had begun. Scott's work the day before didn't seem to help. He was at it again...

I was ever so helpful as I snapped photos! While we were out there I decided to capture a before shot of the fire hydrant across the street.

See the skinny red and white post attached to the hydrant? That's a marker so it can be found by emergency crews when the snow eventually covers the hydrant. It usually takes three or four hefty snow falls before that happens.

The rest of our Christmas day was spent huddled on the couch watching movies and playing games on my new iPod Touch. All the while the wind howled outside. When we let Alley out one last time before bed we found the blowing snow works its way into any crevasse, no matter how small.

Yes, that is a snow drift between our back door and the storm door. No joke! And today we woke to incredible drifts. More snow had fallen too, we're guessing about another 4 to 6 inches. Scott bundled up again, and this time he was outside for a while....

The snow was actually about 1/2 an inch taller than the snow blower itself! The drifting made our fence practically useless. Alley could have walked up the drift and hopped right over the fence...if she wasn't so scared of the snow blower.

And remember that fire hydrant with the marker attached to it?

Guess it's only gonna take one more snow fall to cover it this year! Or maybe even just one more good pass from the plows! Speaking of snow plows...here's what a typical one looks like in North Dakota, though they do come much bigger than this...

And this is why we need tractors and combine-sized machines to plow our roads...

With snow banks taller than my SUV you may not see us for a while. We'll be digging ourselves out of hibernation! Merry Christmas from our Winter Wonderland!