Easter on the Lake

If you are going to have Easter on a lake, then you better be prepared to take advantage with family photos.  That is all I am going to say about that!!

Signs of Easter; Signs of Spring

 Signs of Spring have erupted in the great state of Maine.  This weekend, for one, the ice completely disappeared from the lake!  To help usher in Spring this year the boys and I took advantage of a 60 degree day to attempt dying Easter eggs.  Easter eggs have never been dyed in the Smith house and for a long time I didn't understand why we would dye eggs for Easter.  I thought that eggs were more a sign of the fresh new life that is so evident around us as the trees bud and the grass wakes up from its Winter sleep.  The new life in an egg, however, helps us to remember that Easter is when we celebrate the new life that we have in Christ. Because of His life; we have life.  That is a simply glorious reason to take time to decorate eggs, enjoy Spring, and worship God.

Elijah & Siah succeeded in dying almost a dozen eggs!  Caleb & Drew each dyed 2.

What does one do with leftover dye?  Why decorate the snow of course!

The League

League nights are of course the bread and butter of the few bowling alleys in Maine.  They are also, however, not family friendly.  As it would turn out, Andrew requested bowling with the family for his birthday celebration, and his birthday happened to fall on league night.  How incredibly annoying it is to show up to bowl with 4 excited boys to find that all of the lanes are occupied by serious bowlers.  Fortunately, the personnel were very helpful and held the only lane that wasn't reserved for the league for us to use once it was vacated.  In the meantime we enjoyed a very pleasing dinner and tried not to get too distracted by the great multitude of people around us.  

After dinner, we were able to kick off our shoes and get down to bowling.  As long as we didn't use flash photography, roll down the ramps, or distract the serious bowlers all around us we could stay all night.

First Things First

One of the first things we did when we moved into our interim home was prepare to celebrate our March birthdays.  Elijah's birthday was first, occurring the very week that we moved.  With the smaller house I was a little concerned about the boys gaining a heap of new items that we would need to move in June.  That didn't stop us from giving Eli a couple of gifts and taking him and a couple of boys from church out to play indoor mini golf and enjoy a lunch of pizza.  

Tyler was so excited to find a small guitar for Eli while we were out Christmas shopping this year.  Eli loves his new guitar, and he is doing great practicing the A and Em chords.