Snow.... snow.... and MORE snow

We’ve had so much snow in the past two weeks--it's crazy!! Last week we got 11 inches on Monday, 6 inches on Tuesday, 4 inches on Wednesday, and 6 more inches on Friday. This week we got 14 inches on Tuesday. Thank you, God, for snowblowers.

That much snow means that we can’t keep the mailbox clear. When the snowplows come to clear the streets, the snow is pushed to the side of the street—right in front of driveways and mailboxes. It’s made even worse when you live on a cul-de-sac. The plow driver does his best to avoid our driveway and mailbox, but eventually he runs out of space to push the snow. Therefore, all the snow gets pushed in front of the center house, because that's really the only space to put the snow. You guessed it, that’s our house.

The mailman (or mail lady in our case) leaves nasty notes in the mailbox if you don’t clear a path to the box so she can drive close enough to the box to put the mail in without getting out of the truck. I really do understand her reasoning. Imagine how long it would take her to do her job if she had to get out and walk to each mailbox on every street. But, it is a bit frustrating for the home owners who are caught between the mountains of snow and the desire to receive their mail. I will also admit that I'm a nut about getting mail. My kids check their mail about once a week. That would drive me insane! Very little is more depressing to me than an empty mailbox--even if all it holds is junk mail.

So Tommy and I spent several hours in Home Depot Monday night trying to decide how to build a temporary mailbox that we could set out to receive our mail. We did this in our other house by sticking a broom handle in the snow bank and attaching an empty gallon milk jug to the end to receive the mail. However, that doesn't keep the mail very dry; and Tommy wanted something a little more substantial (must be the engineer in him). So he built this. It reminds me a bit of the robot in movie Wall-e.

Other side effects of this much snow: the opening to our driveway gets smaller and smaller as snow piles up on either side of it, the walls of snow at the back of the driveway are so high that the snow blower can’t throw the snow over the top so it falls back down into the driveway, and we tend to back into the snow wall opposite the garage because the driveway is about two feet shorter than normal due to the piled up snow. I DO love snow, I DO love snow, I DO love snow….

Actually, I really do. And, as I said earlier, it doesn't get much more beautiful than the sunny days that follow the storms. God outdoes Himself with those.