First Snow of the 2007-2008 Season!

Well I guess this isn't technically true, we did have about a 1/2 inch dusting the day before Thanksgiving, but it didn't stick around very long. This past Saturday, the Twin Cities and most of Minnesota got the first big snowfall of the year, I picked up about 5-6 inches in Bloomington and I know some other areas to the north and south of us got more, Grand Marais had the lead at about 20 inches last time I checked! I wasn't totally prepared for the first snowfall this early, last year we didn't get of first 1 inch snowfall until New Year's Eve, and that wasn't much and didn't stick around either. Either way on Saturday morning as it started to snow, I got the last of the puppy poop picked up in the back yard, got the snow blower fired up, and the shovels dusted off and ready to go. If you remember at all from last year, you know that I love shoveling snow about as much as I love splitting firewood, I don't know what it is about it, but it is peaceful and relaxes me, so I was looking forward to it again this year!

The above picture is the first Backyard Shot of the year, Bear is out checking out the new snow and wondering what happened to the ground like she does every year (sometimes I wonder if dogs forget about snow every year). The snow removal went very well (probably not as well or as fast as my friend Randy who has a snow blower installed on the front of his brand new John Deere yard tractor....no, I'm not jealous!), it only took about an hour and it would have probably been quicker but the snow blower started to have some fuel mixture issues and would loose power under load, so I had to "milk" it along to get the drive done. I will have to add tuning up the snow blower on my list of winter projects, along with getting the snowmobiles fired up! Speaking of snowmobiling, that is one of the other things I didn't get done before it snowed, and really until this snowfall I hadn't even thought about it. I don't really know what my schedule is going to be like past the second week in January (and time off is NOT an option until I am done training in March) and we usually try and go up to my friend's cabin on Martin Luther King and President's Day weekends, but I can't even commit to that. I do have a couple stretched of days off in December, but we will see how things go with work and everyone else's schedule, at the very least I need to get the sleds ready and maybe I could do some riding around here if I have time!

The other thing that I managed to get done before the snow came was hang Christmas lights on the house. This is the first year that we put up Christmas lights and I was very excited to have them up. Last year we were in Cancun over Christmas and we didn't put up lights outside or even a tree inside. This year, we wanted to make Maeve's first Christmas special so we went all out. Friday I finished training early and headed over to Home Depot and picked up the lights. We went with the white icicle style lights, we thought they would look nice with the two gable ends of the house that face the street. I picked up Dad and his extension ladder and we braved to cold and wind and got all the lights up well into the night. In fact we ended up using a flood light to light up the house so we could see what we were doing! I have always been very particular about Christmas lights, they need to look professional and clean, so to do this we installed a outlet under the eve of the house, eliminated all the plugs on the light strands (we hard wired them together, with the exception where they plug into the new outlet), and made sure the wires were all straight when we stapled them to the fascia. I know I picked up this "trait" from my Dad, because over the years his (ours, because I always helped) were perfect and we had a system to getting them up every year. I don't quite have the same system yet on my house, but I'm much closer now!

I start my first day on the street tomorrow night at 1900, so wish me luck! I also am going to try very hard to get the deer hunting post done from this year in the morning, but if I don't it will be done by the end up the week! I don't want to get in the habit of not finishing my hunting posts! :) I also want to give some credit where credit is due, congratulations to Jeff on 100% completing NaBloPoMo, he did something that I will probably never be able to due unless I am confined to my house for a month and not have the option of leaving! Way to go Jeff!