The Snow is Here For Real Now!!

This morning, Jeff and I had to shovel about a foot or more of snow out of our driveway so that Julie and I could leave for work. We only had about 7" - 8" of snow last night, but all of the snow in the neighborhood seems to blow and drift in our driveway. Two nights ago, Julie got the car stuck in our driveway pulling in when it had drifted fairly deep during the day. We had to shovel the car out. We are going to buy a snow blower, hopefully this weekend. I feel kind of like Tim "the toolman" Taylor as I'm looking for and at snow blowers. I want one that has enough power to blow the snow out of our driveway, has multiple forward and reverse gears, and a deep enough auger to catch and throw all of our drifts out in one pass. Even more importantly, it has to have all-terrain tires so I can drive it out around our propane tank and not get stuck in the drifts.

Jeff has aquired a new hobby. He collects icicles. You read that right. I'm not talking about little 12" - 18" icicles, I'm talking about 5' 0" to 7' 0" icciles. He has been taking them off of old houses that have pour insulation, (thus the heat from the house rises to the roof, melts the snow against immediatly against the roof, which runs down the roof, under the snow and re-freezes as it pours over the roof eaves,) and then planting them in our side yard. We have an icicles "forrest" second to none right now. I will try to get a picture of the "forrest" this weekend and post it next week. The picture at the right is the first icicle to go into the forrest, he has since added much larger ones.

The Wood River Valley, where Julie and I work, has become incredibly beautiful. As the sun rises each morning while we drive into the valley, I am struck by how gorgeous the mountains are. This morning as we were coming in, there was a slight cloud cover, with an opening in the clouds allowing the sunlight to hit the north wall of the Warm Springs Valley. Julie took the picture at the right as we were coming into work.

We don't have the internet at home yet, so our blog updates will be a little slower and less often than in the past. Hopefully we remedy that this coming week.