The snow is melting so alarmingly quickly that when you attempt to plant your feet on the ground outside you feel as if the entire world is in danger of dissolving into a puddle at your feet. AJ and I had dragged his new red sled out the mudroom door hoping to take a couple of runs down the hill, but the prospects were grim. Instead, we decided to build a snowman.

Up until now, it has been too cold for packing the snow into the dense balls required for achieving any kind of height, which is an important quality in a snowman. As we began our work, some of us had ideas of artistic innovation � he would not just be any snowman! But others of us are traditionalists � �No, Mommy, his buttons are made out of COAL� � and insisted on creating the Ursnowman (Ursneemann?). And besides, it is a known fact that those of us with visions of artistic greatness rarely exhibit the skill to carry out our projects, so it was agreed that Frosty would be our model, minus the corncob pipe and with the acceptable substitution of a carrot for the �button nose.�

AJ and I pushed and rolled and grunted and eventually assembled three lopsided balls into a tolerably vertical format. We packed the snow in around him tightly, in hopes that he might last until nightfall, at least. We gathered some charcoal from the garage, a carrot from the kitchen and sticks from the woods. My husband donated a hat and I a scarf to keep him warm. We stood back to admire the view. Well, some of us stood back. Others went in for a closer look:

We positioned our snowman so that AJ might have a good view of him from his bedroom window. Before I tucked him into bed for his nap, he ran to the window to look at him. �Night, night, snowman! See you in the morning!�

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