By Sydney Rehnelt, Thanks for Listening

Editor&8217;s note: Sydney Rehnelt is substituting for Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer this week.

I love wintertime! We get to celebrate Christmas, get presents and build snowmen. It&8217;s a family tradition at our house to build snowmen every winter. Our neighbors always tell us they enjoy our snowmen, too. That&8217;s part of the fun of making them.

It seems every year somebody comes to our house and pushes our snowmen down. My dad usually catches them. One year two kids came in a car and tried to knockdown our eight-foot snowman. My dad heard them outside, so he ran out to the car and brought the passenger in the house. My dad asked him if we should call his parents or the police. He chose his parents. His mom seemed very disappointed in him when she came to our house.

This year my sister and I made four snowmen. We worked on them for 2 1/2 hours when school was cut short for a snow day. Two of them were starting to tilt because they had been up for awhile. We were all surprised and happy that no one had knocked them down yet.

That changed on Feb. 14 at about 9:30 p.m. I was in bed and heard someone outside. I listened for a little while thinking someone might be messing around. I finally got up and saw a teenager running away from our house to a red car. I figured somebody was just picking him up, so I just went back to bed.

The next morning my Mom told me someone had knocked down the snowmen. My little sister was so sad she started crying. I noticed that the people who had knocked them down didn&8217;t smash the snowmen&8217;s bodies, but they put two of the heads on our front step. We were so frustrated with them but also feel sorry for them. How sad that they can&8217;t find anything better to do than destroy a snowman built by 8- and 12-year-old kids.

The next day my sister and I put the snowmen back together. This won&8217;t stop our family tradition, but if you happen to be reading this article and you&8217;re the one who knocked them over, can you please just drive by next time and enjoy them, instead of knocking them over?

Sydney Rehnelt is 12 years old and lives in Albert Lea.