The Jolliff Family

Last week I had the opportunity to attend and observe the Samaritan Passover sacrifice on Mt. Gerizim.   The Samaritans live in the northern part of Israel and have been living in the Mt. Gerizim area for over 2000 years.  Samaritans are very similar to the Jewish and hold to many of the same teachings. Samaritans believe that the high holy place for sacrifice is on Mt. Gerizim while the Jews believe it would have been in a temple in Jerusalem.  There are only around 750 Samaritans living today.  They believe they must marry another Samaritan and so their population is shrinking.  It was not until recently that they have allowed some of their men to take outside wives who are willing to uphold their believes.  Samaritans speaks Ancient Hebrew and Arabic but also do their liturgical chants in Aramaic. When we arrived at the village on Mt. Gerizim, each family was preparing to head to the main area in which the sacrifice would take place.  This ...

The space is getting tighter for these two in the bottom drawer but they don't seem to mind!

I made Hap our first batch of homemade ice cream for the season tonight. Because I also made this little accident on the car today! Hopefully the ice cream will be a little something to ease the pain!  Andrew said "whoa, daddy is NOT going to be happy about this" and he is probably right.

This girl just makes us smile and LOVES bath time.

Over the past week, 5 out of 7 from our family have been hit with the stomach bug.  Thankfully, it has been a pretty quick recovery but it has taken a toll.  Sam and Andrew had an outing today and Jacob had a play date, which was really nice.  Another nice thing is we ran out of cold water this morning, I think because of extra toilet flushing and laundry, but then it came this afternoon.  Isn't God so good in the timing of that?!  Because of this, everyone had a big bath and we enjoyed a quiet night of coloring, reading, listening to music, and heading to bed early. Here is to hoping the sickness leaves our family and spares the other two!

These two keep me busy in the morning and are so happy playing!  Abigail LOVES to have her head covered with her blanket.  Many times during the day she is walking around, playing with toys, or riding her train with her blanket on her head. Abram likes the piano bench! And he LOVES his sister.  He is a good giver of hugs and his sister is the usual recipient! So sweet.

The boys dug and built a bunker last weekend and have enjoyed playing in it this week.  The weather has been perfect for outside play.  They worked diligently on it and did it, almost, by themselves. Since I took the pictures they added grass on top of the wood in order to camouflage it a bit!  Sam says he is going to join the US Army when he turned 18, so this is good practice. ;)

We had so much fun with my mom is town last week, I didn't take many pictures... just enjoyed! I took a blogging break but now I hope to be back.  Enjoy the pictures from the rest of the week last week. On Saturday, the boys did Easter eggs with my mom.  They turned out BEAUTIFUL!!  Instead of dipping them, the egg is placed in a baggie with paint and rolled around giving a marbled look when finished.  The boys enjoyed. On Easter Sunday, we attended the service at the Garden Tomb.  It is always so encouraging to worship in English and with believers from around the world.  The kids did so great during the service and knew many of the songs. Yesua Qam!! In the afternoon, we enjoyed a delicious lunch and an egg hunt.  It was chilly outside but still fun for the kiddos.  Aunt Kris made big eggs for everyone to find. Even the babies had a big egg!! My be...