SNOW DAY

Snow day will mean something else when Jared starts school, but for now, it means that we went out to play in the snow!
We don't have quite enough equipment. Zach has no gloves or boots, but he had fun anyway. Jared has rain boots to keep his feet dry.
We went out in the back yard to build a snowman, thinking that since it's on the north side, the snowman would last for a long time. But it also meant that the dry powdery snow hadn't melted even a little bit, so it wouldn't pack.
We had to go out to the sunny front yard to find packable snow. Jared made the head, and I got stuck making the rest. Zach just puttered around.
We used our dark landscaping rock as "coal" for eyes and a nose, but the sun warmed them up, which melted the snow around them, which made them fall out. So we have a faceless snowman now. Maybe I'll dig out those old sunglasses instead?
Building the snowman was okay, but the best part of our day was building a snow dam. The weather was quite a bit too warm, so the gutters were gushing runoff. Jared dumped snow in the gutter to dam it up, but things really started getting interesting when we used the snow shovel to build it bigger. We had a huge puddle in front of our driveway. Then we used the shovel to lift the dam and suddenly release the water. It flooded the neighbor's gutter on its way to the storm drain, where Zach said it was a waterfall. We floated pieces of ice down our flood and completely cleared our driveway and sidewalk of ice and snow, and it's never been quite so fun!
But Zach mostly waded through the icy puddle, so he got rather chilled. He said he got some "dog bite" on him (meaning frostbite). Some hot chocolate fixed everything, though.