Calvin the Snowman

One thing you probably didn't know about Carson: his family LOVES comics. His parents have books of Dilbert, Foxtrot, Calvin and Hobbes and other fun comics. They are one of my favorite things to look through when I'm over at their house. 

I say this because in the comic Calvin and Hobbes, the main character, Calvin, builds all kinds of crazy snowmen. Here are several examples (I searched "Calvin and Hobbes snowmen" to find these):

So when Carson thinks of snowmen, he thinks of Calvin. 

This leads us to the evening of the day it snowed. It was 9pm and Carson had just gotten off work. I was brushing my teeth, when I thought of something I wanted to do. "Hey Carson, want to build a snowman?" I asked. He was a little surprised but we pulled our boots on over our sweatpants and braved the outdoors.

Our snowman started off rather small, but he grew within a matter of moments. Doesn't our house look so cozy in the snow?

We wanted our snowman to face the street, so our neighbors could look on him with envy (people actually slowed down to watch us build him), but for the sake of this picture (and really only for that reason), we made him face the house. Then we turned him around.

We christened him Calvin, in honor of the comics Carson loved so much. He has raisin eyes, a carrot nose, and pretzel stick arms. He's a little homely but we love him! (well, loved. That's the thing about snowmen)

He later got stick arms (a tree across the street fell down from the snowstorm) and the pretzel sticks became hair.

And this is him the next afternoon.

While I took those pictures, I found some fun snow things in the backyard - like cat prints.

And fall leaves mixed in with the snow.

Oh, and for a walk down memory lane, here's the first snowman we ever made, and the only ever snowman before this one. His name was Earl and we made him on January 1, 2010 when we were engaged: