Snapshots: So Much Snow

First we had a brief little blizzard on Monday afternoon that only dropped a couple of inches. Enough for a very pretty sunrise while I was on my way back from dropping off the eldest kid at his church confirmation class.

Sparkly.

The big storm started Wednesday night. The wind was howling all night, which meant some impressive sculpted drifts. I woke up to this on Thursday morning.

The autumn window decorations my sister brought us seem out of place in this scene.

It kept snowing and snowing, for two days. Because we knew this storm was coming, our school was online Thursday and Friday*. One boy's teacher told them they could build a snowman for extra credit.

Done.

The snow finally stopped around 2 p.m. on Friday. It's hard to say exactly how much we got, because of all the drifting, but at least a foot. It was heavy, wet snow, too. All of our vehicles were snowed in in the driveway. There was a funeral scheduled at church on Saturday morning, for which I was supposed to be taking care of the church, so I started digging out the Honda.

I shoveled for half an hour or so before calling on my crew to take over.

Many hands make light work, right?

Well, maybe not light exactly, but lighter.

A. came out at the end to finish shoveling out to the road. It hadn't been plowed, but a couple of trucks had been down it already, so there were some tracks to follow. 

Tracks in the morning light. You'd better not try this in a low-clearance vehicle, however. That ridge in the middle was at least a foot high.

And if you want to go the other way out of our gate, too bad.

Saturday morning featured a lovely sunrise as the sun rose in a clear sky over the snowy pastures.

Wintery.

Also frozen water troughs that needed to be broken out.

I used a shovel (and wore A.'s boots).

The sheep will eat snow, but they wanted their hay.

A. actually drove me to the pavement on the main road--only about a quarter mile--which was completely cleared, just to make sure I didn't get stuck. Then he walked home and I brought one of the boys with me to church for the funeral. He was altar server, and also helped me shovel out the church.

Thankfully, the village plow guy had mostly plowed the front of the church clear, so we just had to do a little shoveling in the front. Then I shoveled a path from the sacristy around to the front door of the church, so our priest could process down the aisle.

I made it only one shovel-width, so they had to be careful not to go off the path.

Despite the wintery weather, it is still autumn.

Pumpkin and apricot leaves in the snow.

There you have it! My (extra-snowy) life, snapshotted.

* We don't typically have school on Fridays, but we had to make up for Election Day, which the state of New Mexico this year required be a day off for every school in the state.