No, Really, it's for the Neighborhood Kids

After the big storm, our snow-o-meter got to:

It compressed quickly.  Technically it was a good inch above that when we first woke up on Friday, but an hour later it had compressed an entire inch, and that's when we took the photo.

It was enough snow that the dogs were completely overwhelmed by it.  At one point Lucy accidentally stepped off the area we had packed down for them and floomp!  She disappeared up to her panicked little eyeballs.  Watching the hounds move through that much snow is hilarious.  They have to bound like bunnies, and all but their ears disappear with each bound.

That was some of the heaviest, wettest snow I've ever had the misfortune to shovel.  Thankfully, on Friday morning, the neighbor I think of as "Mr. Grouchy" snow blowed much of the driveway for us.  I guess I have to stop thinking of him as Mr. Grouchy, huh?  He never cracked a smile, never even acknowledged us with so much as a nod, just silently and frowningly blowed out the driveway.  I'm grateful, with or without pleasantries.  We would have been absurdly late for work if we had had to shovel it all, and would possibly have done permanent damage to our spines.

Come today, Sunday, my husband and I started to work through the day's to-do list - various errands, cooking, cleaning the house...  Sometime early afternoon we scrapped it all and went to go outside and play in the snow instead.

We built a snow fort.  For the neighborhood kids, of course.  Yeah.  That's it.

The snow was so sticky that it was incredibly easy to build with.  It helped that we built it in the back yard along the narrow street that runs behind our house.  With a street that narrow there's nowhere to put the snow but up, so the snow bank was very high to begin with.  The walls are maybe 4-5 feet high from the inside, and from the outside along the street they were much higher.

I'm guessing our window arch might last a day, if we're lucky, given how fast things are melting.  None of the fort would withstand much of a snowball assault.  It lacks fine details, and is quite lumpy.  But it does have a window, peep holes, and stairways.  And to a creative imagination, the tree stump inside is a lovely table.  Dang, was it fun to build rather than doing all the things we were supposed to do!

Now to thaw out my extremities, and finish some of that laundry...