Spring In Northern Michigan

This weekend we have a wonderful concoction of wintery mix going on. We had about 8 inches of snow Friday night - Saturday and today we've been having high winds and sleet all day. There is about an inch of ice on our road and church was cancelled as the sheriff department has called for no unnecessary travel. Debbie is in town and since there was no church Nathan and I went walking through the sleet to visit some neighbors who also attend our church. We found one home and had a nice visit with him. We figured if you can't go to church we could bring the church to people. :-)

This was out the front window yesterday. 

Nathan has a snow day tomorrow as the roads are still miserible, icy and it's sleet/rain/snow is still coming down!

Capture the Crustacean

The kids formed a new band this week. Capture the Crustacean. Here is their first song.

SNOW!

We (I) have been enjoying our April snow here. Today on the way to church there was a super light dusting that sparkled beautifully! Tuesday night into Wednesday we ended up with about a foot of snow. Thursday Nathan was home and the girls were at a birthday party so he and I went outside and had some fun with the boys in the snow.

Playing on our neighbors plow pile. 

Making snowballs!

And a snowman........

Or is it an alien?! Nathan added the icicles as antenna.  

The boys also tried some snowshoeing. 

And made some monster snowballs.

We made a massive snowball sculpture, but I didn't manage to get a picture of it, so I'll have to get that tomorrow. But we made seven or eight snowballs and piled them on top of each other and next to each other and the boys had fun climbing on it. I was helping with the packing and making the snowballs and had put the camera away and forgot to get it back out. 

Easter! Or was it April Fools Day?

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter! We had some people over from church and enjoyed lively conversation with some yummy tacos and homemade tortillas! Since Easter was also April Fools Day my girls wanted to play an April Fools Day trick on their friends. Hannah came up with the plan and we helped them execute it.....although it wasn't nearly as fun as they had hoped....maybe next time....
Anyway, Hannah had the idea to make bitter chocolate candies to give out to her friends. So we bought a bunny mold and made some 90% cocoa chocolate bunnies.

Nathan didn't want to just give people the 90% chocolate bunnies without some sort of note or something so he came up with this:

To go with the chocolate bunnies we gave semi-sweet chocolate crosses for people to enjoy. The next time Easter is on April Fools Day in 11 years I told the girls they can just do the 90% cocoa for their friends....maybe without the notes :-)

What is Atonement

The day before Easter we had a lesson on atonement at our house.

Someone decided to mess with my cheesecake and taste test a bite.......

Nathan had the brilliant idea of instead of denying them the dessert at Easter the next day, to teach the child what Biblical atonement is. In Hebrew atonement means covering. We talked about how our sins have been covered by Jesus' blood and then how this child's blemish (sin) on the cheesecake would be covered.  

And here is the cheesecake I made atonement fo. Hopefully the child learned something about grace and atonement. That is cheese cream frosting on top of the cheesecake if you're wondering and it was delicious. :-)