Do you want to build a snowman?

The first snowfall of the season turned out to be perfect, and I mean absolutely perfect for building snowmen.  It wasn't cold, the snow was just wet enough to pack together without any stress, and there was a lot of it.  Even though we "should" have been in the basement tiling a bathroom, we decided to go outside and play instead.  It was too perfect of an opportunity to waste.  I pulled out all of our snow gear and realized Cambrie and Kelton didn't have boots.  Surprisingly we weren't missing anything else so the kids made do with what they had-Cambrie's school boots, and Kelton's boots from last year that are at least a size too small.  I had pants...but they didn't come close to closing and so they kept falling down, but I guess that's not too bad.  

The kids' first attempt before I suited up to join them.

Kelton wanted to be a helper but each time the snow fell out of his hands before he made it to us.

Because the snow was so perfect our bottom ball of our snowman grew really big really quickly.  No problem right?  Well, the problem came as soon as we tried making his belly ball in proportion to his bottom.  It was too big for me to lift, my stomach kept getting in the way.  We tried and failed to get that belly up for 15 minutes, but shrinking the balls just wasn't an option.  Finally I had a crazy idea to use Cambrie as my leverage.  She crawled down on her hands and knees and I rolled the ball up onto her back.  From there she rose up a bit and I was able to finish rolling the ball onto our snowman.  She thought it was hysterical and she claimed it didn't even squish her.  I don't know about that, it was heavy!  But either way we were able to get that belly up there.  The head wasn't nearly as bad and that went up without a hitch.  

The kids with our snowman pieces waiting to be assembled.

While the girls and I were working on the snowman, Kelton learned that he could eat snow.  He thought it was pretty much the coolest thing ever and sat there very contentedly munching on snow while we worked.  

Finally it was time for the buttons, face and arms.  When our snowman was finished he was almost taller than me!  I think the last time I built a snowman that big was when Jeremy and I built one on Old Main Hill at USU.   The girls named their snowman Oliver, a spin-off of Olaf, and he lasted for a grand total of 20 minutes before he tipped over.  Apparently I didn't do a very good job of making sure he was centered with those heavy pieces.  We put him back together again but he wasn't as tall.  Luckily we snapped the picture of him in his glory.  We were sure spoiled that day.