So Much Snow!!!

Living in New Hampshire, we are used to some snow, but lately it seems that it never ends and we keep getting storm after storm. We have a very steep driveway, which basically gets unusable till it has been shoveled. Shoveling it is not an issue when we have a normal amount of snow, but gets pretty intense when we have 2 feet, which we had a few times in the last few weeks. Much more than usual! Since we are from the Netherlands, where it seldom snows, it still is a source of amazement for us. We have set up this web page to show our Dutch friends how much snow we get around here!

Sander, digging a path on our driveway, to reach his car	Our driveway, looking down from the house. You can see Sander's car at the bottom, with lots of snow on it.

Those pictures are taken during the storm of March 6, 2001. Or actually it was more a blizzard than a storm.... It was supposed to miss us, and stay South of us, but as you can see, it obviously didn't :-) As my kids would say 'It's not fair!!!' :-) Talking about the kids, they did have lots of fun outside, since they are too young to be responsible for getting the driveway dug out. I am soooo looking forward to having a few strong teenagers to help us with that :-)

Kate, playing on our covered porch. The rest of the snow was too deep for her.	Jane	Kate

As you can see, the girls stayed mostly on the covered porch, where we had some snow, but not that much. Cees and Tim were playing in the backyard, first on the deck, where the snow was much deeper than on the front porch.

Tara, front porch	Cees and Tim, on the deck behind our house...

Here a picture of a sidewalk snow plow, since we don't have those in the Netherlands. This is a kind of mini snow plow, usually with a snow blower attached too, which will drive around and clean all the sidewalks. In the foreground of this picture, you can see Sander's car again, he had cleaned a part of it.

It will be a loooong time before we will see our spring bulbs in the back yard I think! The snow is deep!

We are 5 days past the snow storm of the pictures now, and had another 10 inches or so of snow dumped on top of that snow.... We spent most of those 5 days shoveling any available moment and we finally got the driveway mostly free of snow again today! I really feel like we are finished with winter now, we have had enough snow that we have earned it to be spring tomorrow! Instead, the forecast is more snow....

Shoveling the snow was really hard. The snow is wet, heavy and deep, so you can't shovel it, but have to dig it instead. Then you have to throw it next to the driveway, but the snow banks are now higher than that we are, so that takes quite some effort! Well, I guess we can count it as a workout instead of going to the fitness club. Hmmm, I wonder how many calories are burned by the shoveling? Might be a good excuse to eat some more chocolate...

Now some older snow pics, just for the fun of it. The first one is from about a month ago, when we had freezing rain and snow, and Sander's car ended partly next to the driveway... He spent half a day trying to get it out by himself, and then called the AAA. It took them a few hours to get a tow truck here. Even then it still took some time to get the car unstuck... But at least they were successful in the end.

At least this is not likely to happen anymore this winter, since the snow banks are so high now. No way that the car can get next to the driveway now! Snow banks are almost higher than the car!

Cees and Tim made a snow pig!	Close up of snow pig

And no, I have no idea why they made a snow pig instead of a snow man, but I thought it was a neat idea :-)