COOPERSVILLE, Mich — Nearly a foot of snow in just 48 hours might be enough to bum some people out. But not the Fedewa family in Coopersville.
Joe Fedewa and his family spend part of their weekend building a giant snowman in the front yard of their home, on Randall Street near East Street.
The below freezing behemoth stands at 14 feet 6 inches tall and it caught the eyes of the administrator in a Coopersville neighborhood group.
"Whoever built the GIANT SNOWMAN on Randall, I just wanted to say THAT'S AWESOME!!!!!!! You made me smile," the administrator said in a post.
Soon after, Joe's wife Lindsay came forward as one of the producers of the packed snow. She revealed that the family had put five hours of work into the snowman. Joe revealed how they pulled it off. The bottom portion is actually built with a trash can.
"We took plywood and formed up around it and then just started shoveling and it took us two hours to shovel all the snow for the bottom," he said.
"Then after that we moved the forms up to the next one and then took five gallon buckets and my stepson was on the ladder and he kept dumping it in. Then the last two levels we just started filling a five gallon bucket with extra snow and started stacking it up there."
The neighbors really got a kick out of watching the Fedewas hard at work in their own personal North Pole, and people passing by love it too.
"There's been a lot of people stopping their cars and taking pictures," said Lindsay.
Frosty is decked out in flair. His snow was originally painted bright colors with the help of spray bottles and food coloring, but some of that color has faded since Sunday. His eyes, mouth and buttons are made from cardboard and they're secured with dowel rods. Instead of the traditional carrot nose, the Fedewas opted to equip him with the handle from a garden tool.
The whole thing makes their daughter Makenna look on in wonder at the sizable snowman, four times her height, although it's not the first time she's been able to enjoy something like this.
"Probably three years ago I did one in the backyard that was like ten feet tall," Joe said. "It had stairs going up to a slide and she could slide down it. All made out of snow."
"It was pretty cool," Lindsay said, "But we were like why did we do it in the backyard so no one else can enjoy it, so we decided to it in the front yard this year."
It won't be the last snowman for the Fedewas either.
"There's one in Jenison that my stepson talks about that's 18 feet tall, so next year I want to try to do 18," Joe said.
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