Winter Fun and Break-Up

These first pictures were taken on March 15.  The girls love playing in the sled, I documented our neighbor's car entirely covered in snow, Sabrina likes throwing snow into the sled, and Celia hiked all over our yard and climbed our snow mountain.

Oh, and Celia found frozen dog poop and had me take her picture with it:

Fast forward to Break-up.  Not that kind of break-up.  Break-up is a term used up here for when the snow starts to melt.  Interesting things happen as break-up begins.  These pictures were taken March 22.  The South-facing snow banks get all jagged with sweet icicles and the North-facing banks become geologic structures where you can see every time the temperature got above freezing all winter (as indicated by each of the brown lines).  And there are icicles everywhere.  (I love them so much.)

Now about half of all this snow is gone and the pussy willows outside my window are just starting to bud.  I'm excited for Spring, but a bit sad we got so close to a record-breaking snowfall without actually hitting it. (Though we do live in Alaska, so we can't entirely count it out yet.)