Who Needs Pinterest When You Have a Sam

I told Sam we were going to have a Passover celebration on the Saturday before Easter (I know, we were a day late, it was Passover "Observed" because Friday night was when Jeremy's parents were arriving). Sam pretty much planned and executed much of the special things pictured below:

He painted some wood with blood on one side and not on the other, so you could flip it around depending on how obedient the family inside was to God's command to cover the doorposts with the blood of a spotless lamb to cause the Angel of death to pass over the house and not kill the firstborn child while the Israelites were slaves in Egypt (think Prince of Egypt if you are not familiar with the story). Much to his grandmother's horror surprise, I let him make a cutout of a small child with a smile and open eyes on one side and crossed out eyes, sad face and arms folded on the flip side and we would play angel of death and look inside the house to see if the firstborn had died. It was really educational and a little morbid.


I made matzah bread from scratch which was a little stressful because all the recipes I found online said I HAD to make it in 16 minutes or less from start to finish, and I felt like generations of Jewish grandmothers were going to frown on me if I did it in 17 minutes.

(It wasn't very good, storebought is much better)

Jeremy led us in an abbreviated Seder dinner. The kids liked the parsley dipped in saltwater much better than I thought they would. I should have gotten the horseradish, too.That afternoon, Sam worked really hard to make three crosses out of chopsticks (come on, you work with whatcha got) and he let Evan find a good rock to roll over the entrance to the tomb (flower pot buried in the rocks). They put Pirate Jesus inside ("Mom, it was the only guy who sort of had no shirt and a sad face.") and Sam was so excited to see if he was still in the tomb on Easter morning.


He wasn't!

(Of course I did it while he was sleeping, and the other creatures gathered around in awe and excitement was my added touch. Sam really came up with everything else on his own!)

When I asked Sam on Saturday night how he would have felt if he had been one of Jesus' disciples and watched him die on Friday and nothing happened on Saturday, he replied with a shrug of his shoulders:

"If I had been with him and heard him teach and saw him do all those miracles, I think I would have just believed him!"

I'll close with a photo progression of Saturday, April 14th at 1 pm to Monday, April 16th at 10 am:

Instead of opening day for Evan, our family's first T-ball player, we were building a snowgirl in the backyard.

Instead of going to the gym, I got my exercise building a sledding hill in the front yard. I was so proud of it that I texted my neighbor, Brooke, to bring her girls down to sled with us

After I suggested that we were being buried alive by the heavy snowfall,
Sam appears to believe me as shown by the look on his face

Sunday morning we took the sleds out for a little pre-church spin (yes, we were late, but that's not uncommon for us, even on non-sledding mornings)

We did use sleds, this is just at the end when I let them ruin the run by sliding down like penguins

Annie supervised the proceedings from safe inside in her pajamas and sunglasses

45 hours after the snowgirl was made, 24 hours after she had still been standing at full height:

Right after I took this picture, Brooke texted me to see if she and the kids could take me up on my offer to come sledding. I had to tell her to bring their own sleds because, sadly, they would be sledding on rocks, not snow.