"A Bulwark Never Failing"

Name that tune! If you're a hymnal buff or attend a Reformed church, you probably know it. Yes, the hymn writer is talking about God. Today, however, I will be primarily talking about our home. The phrase preceding "a bulwark" is "A mighty FORTRESS is our God." Truly, He is a mighty fortress and a bulwark never failing (can I get an amen?!?). And our house? I suppose you could say it is an allegory pointing to God....

I'll let the pictures explain- See, this is our front curb. Do you notice the wall of snow (it's not really obvious or anything :) ? Let's take a look at some of the other houses in our neighborhood.

Lots and lots of snow, but no bulwark.
Quite a lot of snow, almost a bulwark, but not quite like this: If you haven't heard, we were blasted with a pretty good snowstorm this past weekend. Epic, really :). Halfway through the day on Saturday the plows were pulled off the road, the buses sent to the garage, the airport closed (first time since the Halloween Blizzard of 1991), and the Metrodome roof collapsed. As one twitter fan commented, "proof that God really does hate the Vikings." Ha!

We were silly enough to think the storm would quickly pass, so we spent snowy Friday night at the Darling's house. Really, we should've hightailed it home while we had a chance. By Saturday morning it was pointless to try. We ended up staying until Sunday afternoon. When we finally got home, our yard was peacefully hibernating under a three foot thick blanket of snow. Sitting in the van, I was eye-level with the top of the drift. The girls and I cruised the neighborhood for an hour while Eric worked to make a path to the door.

After a quick dinner of leftovers, Eric headed back outside to continue his quest to conquer nature. When he finally came inside at 10:00 pm, I had to laugh. He had stacked the frozen blocks of snow around the perimeter of our sidewalk and the curb to create an incredible castle wall. You can imagine our little "princesses" are thrilled! We're calling the snow wall our "fortress", and although it is a little embarrassing to see all the passing cars slow to a crawl to observe the spectacle, it was a lot cheaper than an extravagant display of Christmas lights! When I asked Eric "WHY?", he gave lots of reasons. I think the real motivating factor though was the remains of a boyish fascination with Legos. Who wouldn't want to spend 6 hours in sub- zero temps building with large blocks of snow??? He slept really well last night.

This year will be a snowy one, I think it's fair to say. Our poor short-legged daughters will have a hard time playing in the white fluff, but they will have fun navigating the corridors of our fortress. Even the connecting mailman paths make for a nice meander.