Yes, this does make me feel guilty but being single and having hurt myself snow boarding (never been the same since) and breaking my backside sledding at the cabin once and ending up in the ER, I am not big on taking risks of hurting myself as I usually am the only driver home and if I get hurt or break a leg, the girls don't have someone to taxi them around and I have all the maintanence and upkeep and if I am hurt, that type of thing doesn't get done.
Princess number four slipped on the driveway (you can see we have a little slope to our front yard. She hit her hip hard and the bruise is slowly showing up into a huge black bruise. It was a hard fall. We don't have insurance so I was grateful she wasn't hurt more seriously. A few tears and a good "once over" and I knew she would be OK. So, last night, Princess two and I went out and shoveled what we could but it was mostly ice. I then put out salt.
Today, the walks are clear. I hesitated letting Princess two help shoveling heavy snow with her recent surgery. We both went easy on the icy parts and it turned out OK but being single makes me take just a bit more caution on what I do knowing that if I get hurt, the girls are alone.
Believe it or not, my youngest two princesses have never made a snowman. Princess four wasn't home this day and let us know later that she was unhappy we made a snowman without her. I roped Prince number one and Princess number one into helping.
They tried starting their own snow roll and all said, the snow wasn't good for a snowman. Yes, there is an art to making a good snowman. As you can see, the snow was fine for making a snowman. With a little guidance, you can see, they took off and did well with it.
If all the snow in a roll isn't picked up, roll the snow ball back over where you just went and press down more. It will pick up all the snow and then you can move forward.
It was interesting to me that the only clean area of our yard for weeks after was where we picked up the snow for the snowman. It has been a month and today, there was a sliver of the snowman left. I should have taken a picture of it. It has been sunny many days, snowy lots of days and rained a few times and that snowman just kept being there.
Once you have the base, make sure you push some snow at the base of the ball so it doesn't roll. Even if it is on flat ground, the weight of the middle and top layer can pull it to one side if the base isn't good.
Do the same thing for the rest of the layers. no one said it can only be three balls tall. You can see how tall ours is as Prince number one is 6' 4" I think. You may not believe me, but in the top picture, Princess number five is actually standing behind the snowman and you can't see her. It was as tall as she is.
You can see Prince number one doing that and making the head secure above and Princess five is smoothing it out and adding snow to fill in the lumps in this last picture. Isn't her smile the cutest. She had so much fun making this and that was before we did the final touches I will share in the next posts. I was glad I forced everyone out to play in the snow. It was great fun. More to come....