We've had quite a year of snow. We're close to breaking total winter snowfall records and we haven't even hit March yet. It really is beautiful, I must admit, and the day of these pictures was one of those days that you are lucky to have even once a winter. It was absolutely gorgeous and not terribly cold the way blue sky days tend to be in the middle of winter.

With all of the snow and ice, we've had quite a few challenges with our driveway, often not making it up with our 2 wheel drive car, and almost always having guests end up park at the bottom and walk up a very steep, slippery driveway. Because of this constant stress, we've started to look at trading our Mazda in for a rebuilt small 4 wheel drive Subaru. I feel a little, while not bad, not good either, about the fact that we have chosen to live in a place that necessitates an all wheel drive vehicle. It is not as environmentally friendly as another car might be; if we lived in town, we could do much more without a vehicle at all.

But then I experience a day like this past Thursday. And yesterday. And, well, every day pretty much, and I am so happy with our choice. I know we need to make a concerted effort in other ways to live smartly and green, but I'm willing to deal with the driveway issues to live where we do.

This last picture is off our front porch from a couple days ago. There's actually even more now. I used to think it was cool when my brother and I could jump off our front porch because the snow piles weren't too far down... now we'd need to climb up!