A Florida teacher's students had never seen snow — so her sister shipped her a snowman from Kentucky

Riverview, Florida — It all started when Robin Hughes, a teacher at Southshore Charter Academy near Tampa, Florida, opened a book about snow and got a frosty reception. 

"They just had this perplexed look on their face. And that's when I asked the question, 'How many of you have never seen snow before?'" Hughes told CBS News. 

Hands shot up in classroom after classroom. Some said they had only seen snow on TV and in movies. 

Hughes had tapped into a desperate yearning that she wanted to satisfy, but it hadn't snowed in central Florida in 45 years. 

But she wasn't about to let a little thing like meteorology get in her way. So she reached out to her sister in Kentucky and went full-out "Frozen." 

"She asked me if I wanted to build a snowman," Hughes' sister, Amber Estes, told CBS News. 

Estes begrudgingly agreed to ship her sister a snowman. 

"And I said, 'If he makes it to Tampa, his name is going to be Lucky,'" Estes said. 

Lucky did make it. 

"I was so excited when I opened the box," Hughes said. "I mean, I could not wait to go in the classroom with him." 

For more than a month, Lucky has been leaving the cafeteria freezer — ever so briefly — to grant these snow-deprived children their first-ever opportunity to see, feel and gush over the mini miracle. 

"First time I met Lucky, I said he's handsome like a boy," said 5-year-old Momo, who is perhaps the most smitten with the snowman. "I knew I would kiss him, I knew it." 

Only a teacher could take a pile of snow, sticks and vegetables and somehow melt your heart. 

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