On January 3, a magnificent creature rose from the fluffy, white, majestic surface of our back deck.  His name was Lumpy The Snowman.

Using the materials we had on hand, Lumpy featured a tennis ball for a nose, sticks for his eyes, mouth and arms, and a plastic flower pot for his hat/helmet.  We finished him while the snow was still falling, and in the morning, we awoke to this perfect extra layer on top of our work that made him seem so content with temperatures that would spend much of the day in the teens with wind chills sometimes below zero.

It was that cold, and another blast of cruel, arctic frigidness that helped Lumpy live for 12 days.

His nose fell off first, four days into his doomed life.  I will admit that the one bit of photo staging I did with Lumpy was to roll the ball back over near his feet so that it could be featured in subsequent pictures.  This is also when I started thinking about his eventual demise, and began taking regular shots in order to assemble a crude time-lapse.

You’re welcome:

Oh wait, the Internet is all about doing things in GIF form now?  Fine:

So long, buddy.

[Note: The person who took the time to write an entire blog post about a snowman also made up a list of the time and temperature for each of these 20 pictures, but he is tired so they are not included in any way.  Autographed copy available upon request.]