Shoveling and Snowmen

More. Snow. Today.

Will this winter ever end?  I am ready for life to be a bit easier with no snow on the ground!   There is rain in the forecast for tomorrow (Wednesday) and Friday AND the 10-day forecast has highs above freezing for almost all ten days.  That's when I've decided that I can rejoice - when the extended forecast shows us breaking the freezing point every day.

However today's snow (what I'm hoping will be the last of the winter... wishful thinking I'm sure my Bostonian friends will tell me) gave us a new experience... shoveling snow!!  We are on the church's snow-shoveling rotation for the next two weeks, so when Nathan told me this afternoon that his alligator wanted to go play in the snow, Daddy decided to join us and walk the family to church to fulfill our obligation.

The snow lining the roadway is as tall as Sarah!

Sarah and I spent a lot of the time playing in the snow in the church's back yard but Nathan worked HARD alongside Daddy for almost the whole time it took Brian to finish the shoveling.  Though his "help" may not have always been "helpful", he was really diligent in working alongside Brian.

Meanwhile Sarah and I took advantage of the perfect snowman-building snow on the ground.  Who knew it would take us all winter to get some built??

Sarah took her job of reinforcing the snowman very seriously.  Can you see that grimace on her face as she forces another handful of snow against the snowman?

Nathan came around back for a few minutes to check on what me and Sarah were up to, but then slogged his way back to the front again... since Daddy was still hard at work, he felt like he needed to be too.  Sarah and I ended up following him.  Sarah wanted to try her hand at helping too, but since she doesn't like to put her thumb in the thumb-hole of the mitten, has difficulty grasping anything in her hands.  Which meant that she would get frustrated trying to pick-up/hold/move the shovel, so after a little bit she gave up and we went around back to play some more.  (I did help shovel a minute amount, but my main task was keeping Sarah cheerful.)

Nathan just kept working!!  I told him later on in the evening (twice) how proud I was of how hard he worked tonight.  I think its so important to encourage a strong work ethic in our kids and from what I saw tonight, Nathan is on the right track.

When Brian and Nathan finally finished their work, they joined us in the back yard for some fun.  Though this picture deceptively looks like Nathan is building a second snowman, it was my snowman and 15 seconds after I took this picture Nathan had toppled it!

Of course, Brian enjoying a bite to eat as a reward for his hard work. 

By this point, it was getting too dark for my camera, which was running out of batteries anyways.  But we did have a small snowball fight before heading home.  It was me and the kids against Brian, though our reload time was extremely long as I was responsible for making the "ammo" for all three of us.  But then Nathan got the hang of it and started pelting Brian from the other side and landed a great shot right in Brian's neck, getting snow down his jacket. 

One more thing checked off our "to-do" list while in Boston (making snowmen, that is, not shoveling snow!).