Christmas snow

I have never seen so much snow on the west coast as we had this year. I took some photos to chronicle the record. Although it's nice to have a white Christmas, I don't really expect it at home, since we RARELY have any snow over the holidays. In fact, in some ways, it made it seem less like Christmas because it wasn't normal!It sure looked nice when the sun finally popped out, however it made a mess of the roads and sidewalks. Navigation was especially difficult in Gibsons, where you must traverse hills of all sorts to get anywhere.My mom and I were pretty proud that we only managed to get stuck once over the three days of bad driving conditions. We were stuck on the first day, trying to head up to the mall. Our little cul-de-sac doesn't ever get plowed, so we had to push our way through the snow and make it up the small slope at the top of the street. We didn't have enough momentum the first two tries to get up the slope, since we had no traction once we were on the slope. Eventually, on the third try, with me pushing from behind, we achieved enough speed to make it to the top and onto the main street. I just had to run after the car and hop in once we made it.We did a lot of snow shoveling while I was there. I usually get a break from that when I go home, but not this time! Since we kept on it, it wasn't ever too much work at once. Also, the snow was very light for the first few days, since it was so cold, but later in the week it rained on the snow and made it very heavy. Since we had cleared our snow throughout the week, we only had a small layer of heavy snow by the end, rather than several feet like some of our neighbours.The main problem with snow around the Vancouver area is that there aren't enough snow plows to keep the roads in good condition, and people do not clear their sidewalks of snow. Thus, walking around is near impossible unless you trek through deep snow. The other option is to walk on the road itself, which can be darn dangerous, especially with cars driving on icy conditions at times. This meant we were fairly housebound on Christmas and Boxing day, since going for a walk was slightly dangerous. We went for a small jaunt at one point, but gave up after not too long because we felt unsafe on the roads.Luckily, the snow didn't have much effect on my flight to Vancouver, although we were delayed 30 minutes so that passengers from connecting flights could get on our plane. However, the toughest part about my travel through snow was dragging my suitcase through downtown Vancouver to catch the bus to the ferry. As I mentioned, no one clears their sidewalks of snow. The snow was several inches deep at places - deeper than the wheels on my suitcase were tall. So, I ended up plowing my suitcase along the sidewalk, gathering up a goodly amount of snow in front of the suitcase as I went. This added at least 5lbs of drag as I pulled, resulting in a puffing and sweating Kim by the time I reached the bus stop.The above shot is our side yard. Below is looking down our little street.This is the front of the house:And looking up the street, over our huge snow pile from our driveway.I tried to demonstrate how high the snow bank beside our driveway was.To finish up this post, let's change topics and look at pictures of my mom's cat, Muffin. She likes to climb into boxes. At first, she tried to climb into this little thing:Nope, too big! Can't fit! Then, along came a bigger box:That's a little better!Look, it's a Muffin-in-the-box!