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It was comical, for sure, last Easter, when my then 5-year-old and her friends went egg hunting in a backyard that had 4 feet of snow in it. She donned some snowshoes and did her level best.

The parents who hid the eggs did worse. We fell crotch deep through the snow, and were soaked and cold watching the tiny ones gather their treasures.

Easter just isn't the same up north from my upbringing down south. Minnesota south. Where Easter was usually fairly springlike, flowers and such. Light jackets, maybe.

It wasn't always sunshine and lilies, though.

One year, our car got stuck in the mud on our gravel road on the way to church. It was frost heave season, and the wheels caught one just right and we were hung up at the curve, the swamp looming a few feet away. We got out in time to only be fashionably late for the Easter service but then looked at our Sunday-best clothes. We went home and ate ham early.

We once had a wonderful baby sheep we called Lambican. My family members today can still not recall how Lambican came to the farm. Our sheep days were over. We had just a smattering of animals on the farm then, down from a regular Noah's Ark in years past.

Not knowing exactly what to do with a single lamb with no others of its kind to rear it, we did our best to bottle feed him. The dogs did the rest. They allowed Lambican into their pack.

So it was odd for visitors to see a lamb bounding after cars, and doing all the things dogs do, including eating dog food and rubbing up on one's legs. (May have got that from the cats.)

I think the chasing cars thing is what eventually led to Lambican's disappearance. I believe the guy in the muscle car who liked to speed past our place, shrouding us in layers of dust, got super freaked out one day when this lamb appeared, lurching toward the car. So freaked out, I think, he ended up either hitting our little Lambican and hiding the evidence or outright stole him.

On Easter Sunday, we returned from church and couldn't find Lambican anywhere. I've always thought there was something biblical about it all: the sacrifice of Jesus, the sacrifice of a lamb.

Not that I know all that much about religious specifics. I'm a lax Lutheran, so we were never pressured much to get everything biblically right.

They never tell you in parenting school how to react to a 4-year-old's constant inquisitiveness. That's when Izzy asked me about the "Easter stuff."

I skipped the gory details, preferring to focus on the miracles.

"They rolled away the stone and he wasn't there."

"Well, I still don't really know who this Jesus guy is, but where did he go?"

I was flummoxed. "Into the sky."

"With diamonds?"

"Huh?"

"Jesus in the sky with diamonds."

I had forgotten that she'd been listening to the Beatles on repeat for a while.

"Yes. Yes. Exactly. Jesus in the sky ... with diamonds. Why not?"

I'm picturing our muddy lamb up there as well - with kaleidoscope eyes.

Mike is a reporter and page designer for the Pine Knot News. Email him at [email protected]