Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

We are at our Wisconsin home for a few weeks. This weekend, the annual Birkebeiner cross-country skiing event takes place, and grandson Anders is participating in the children's event called the Barnebirkie. We'll be in town tomorrow to cheer him on, including ringing the mandatory cowbells as he skis by.

We arrived yesterday. Throughout the winter, we have watched weather reports for this region of the country, so we knew that there was lots of snow on the ground here. Our neighbor, Jerry, bless his heart, has been keeping the driveway plowed as best he could with his ATV, but there really isn't any place to push the snow anymore, so before we arrived, we had another neighbor widen the driveway and clear the parking area near the cabin with his tractor and snow blower.

It really is very pretty up here, so we thought we would share a few pictures with you. Mother Nature created this snow sculpture for us atop our hot tub.

There have been many individual snowfalls this season. You can almost see each one as a layer in the several inches of snow sitting on our roof.

The parking area looks like this. You can see the accumulation of snow around the new trees we planted. I won't point out the yellow decorations that Josey and Tighe thought should be added to the otherwise pristine snow.

The lake is very low, but at this time of year, it is all ice and snow anyway.

I was pretty concerned about the weight of all that snow on the roof, plus we also experienced a steady drip from the ceiling near one of the skylights once the cabin warmed up. (Unfortunate, since we just had them repaired and replaced two years ago.) So, I thought it best to pull the snow from the roof. We found a new gadget in town that claimed to be the best roof snow removal tool ever! Its unique feature is a long foot-wide ribbon of plastic that attaches to the part that cuts through the snow. Once a piece comes loose, the plastic provides a slippery slope insuring that the snow will quickly slide all the way off the roof. I quickly learned to avoid having it blast me off my step ladder. It was actually kind of fun.

Tighe watched, thought I wished he could operate a shovel so as to remove the falling snow from the deck. Alas, Kathie and I had to do that ourselves. Lots of exercise today! May have lost a pound or two.