It's been a crazy week...

[WatterBoy]

We headed up to our cabin the last weekend in April to open things up for another year. We knew the lake was still iced over and they had snow up there, but we weren't expecting 18" in the driveway and on the sidewalk, steps and deck. It was almost 70 degrees when we got there on Friday afternoon, so for the first time in my life I got to shovel snow while wearing shorts.



When we closed up last fall, we never dreamed it would be our last trip up there with our dog, Lucky, who died this past November. But we adopted another rescue dog at the end of December, so our now 11-month old girl, Cassie, made her first trip to the cabin with us.



As seen from our living room window, there was no open water on our shoreline as of Saturday morning...



But by Sunday morning, the first hints of ice-out starting were visible...



Even though she didn't get to run around in the yard at all, Cassie was still tuckered out on Saturday night from checking out all the new surroundings inside the cabin.



When we got back home from the lake on Sunday afternoon, it was 80 degrees here and the grass was actually starting to finally green up a bit. Then Wednesday and Thursday happened. We got about 2-3 inches of wet snow on Wednesday night (May 1), so I took advantage of that and built my first ever May snowman.



Even though there was a forecast of 6-9 inches overnight, I figured we probably already had about all we were going to get...but boy was I WRONG! We ended up with 15.5" of HEAVY, WET snow when all was said and done. Here is what it looked like when we left for work on Thursday morning.



Sadly, here is what it looked like when we arrived home from work that afternoon. Our "monster maple" lost several branches and a couple of good-sized limbs due to the weight of all the snow on them.



Here's hoping this week is a little bit more "normal."