Our snow drifts!!

Okay, we have always told the kids it is not nice to use the word 'hate.'  So, I will abstain from saying, "I HATE the snow, oops - did I just say that? I mean . . . I despise, detest, loathe, dislike, disapprove of all this SNOW!!  It's bad enough it is frigid cold and we don't want to leave the house, but to be housebound because we can't get out of our own driveway drives me NUTS!!  I am a prisoner in this house!  We are being held captive by this weather and I am so done with it!!

The snow makes for a beautiful senic portrait, especially as the sun rises and just glistens off the white canvas. However, this quantity, which is nothing compare to what they endured last winter, is very encumbrancing.  I have never liked driving in hazardous conditions on wet or snow covered roads.  I have had to take on these ridiculous drifts way too many times.  It's pretty bad when you get stuck in your own driveway.  Thank goodness we don't have to get up at four in the morning anymore to go out and deliver papers.  At least, I am not required to leave my house, BUT I want to and I can't.  Not only is our driveway not passable with my standard 'mom vehicle,' the traditional minivan, but the roads to get out of our subdevelopment (as it is called out here) are not 'mom vehicle' friendly either. 

We only got about another inch of snow last night, but the winds were ridiculous and this is what we woke up to this morning .  .  . 

This picture shows the concrete area of the driveway just outside the garage.

This picture shows the huge packed drift that is at the base of the concrete where we back out of the garage.  This area was plowed out a week ago and you would never know it now!!  This is typically the first area where I get stuck.

As you walk down the driveway, it looks fine . . . BUT . . .

As you get closer to the mouth, main entrance of the driveway, there is a HUGE drift covering our path to get out.  There is NO way either one of our vehicles, Dodge Caravan & Chevy Malibu, are getting through there!!  Jay actually went out and TRIED to shovel (you can see where he was working) a path so we could get through.  BUT there is NO WAY he could do all that, get ready for church, and be at church by 9:00 a.m. and he started a little after seven, but quickly realized by 7:35 that it wasn't happening with our tiny little shovel!! 

Jay put a call in to a congregational member whose husband has a landscaping company and he does plow work in the winter.  So, he came out with his four wheel truck (no blade) and drove through it several times to loosen it up and make enough tracks for Jay to get out.  Then Jay followed him through the subdevelopment out to the main road because he even told Jay there were some major drifts and if he got stuck he'd pull him out.  Well, Jay & the girls got out - Zack & I stayed home as we are both not feeling well.

We are so thankful for those who have assisted us in getting our driveway bladed or blown and even blading the road between our house and the main road so we could get out, but we can't always depend on someone to come to our resue.  To be able to get around out here, one has to own at least one four wheel drive vehicle - can't afford that on a pastor's income, and a snowblower - and that's not in the budget anytime soon either.  I'm not sure how we are going to get through the rest of this winter and any in the future unless a 'snow fairy' arrives and provides the basic needs to get through a winter in the frigid plains of North Dakota.

See what I mean about being beautiful.  It just is not manageable for us midwesterners!!