Happy Easter!

Well, we had our 7th (?) annual Easter Brunch on this early Easter (March 23rd this year!).
Two families join us every year, the V's and the H's, and this year we had a new family, the G's. We had 12 kids! We have a big egg hunt in the backyard for the kids (the V's always bring almost 200 filled eggs) and this year we were able to add a new tradition-basketball! The weather turned out to be perfect and people stuck around into the early evening.
It was so fun to watch them all scurry around trying to find as many candy-filled eggs as possible, but we had to keep an eye on BBH, who was eating the chocolate eggs with the wrappers ON. Earlier that morning, the Easter Bunny had left a trail of candy from their bedrooms all the way down to the Easter baskets in the kitchen. When BBH woke up, she immediately started stuffing each and every candy she found into her mouth. When her mouth filled up, she stored the rest in her hands. We were already downstairs when she rounded the corner into the kitchen, mouth FULL of candies, both hands struggling to hold on to the wads of candy in them. The other kids were not much different...they just try to hide it a little better.

Bike Rides and Basketball

This past week was a milestone for us. After adding cement to our driveway to widen it, RWH finally installed the sports-court sized basketball hoop out front! It's awesome. It has a crank to adjust the height, and a large, plexiglass backboard. Believe it or not, this is something RWH has been dreaming about since we moved into the house 10 years ago! Our front yard was already the neighborhood hangout....kids playing 'wall ball' against our garage doors for hours since our garage doors are the only ones on the block that are beat up enough to where one can't make them any worse with wall ball. Also, we have the only boy on the block (RTH) who is willing and able to play wall ball for, oh, 8 hours at a time without tiring. So now the kids have switched to something better...and we may even paint our garage doors!

Another exciting happening is that our 4yo (almost 5!), ANH, learned how to ride a two-wheeler! The first several attempts were painful....her screaming, me (or RWH) asking her to take a little break, her pushing on! She is a persistant little bugger. She kept wanting to practice day and night until she mastered it...which didn't take that long! So now she tools around like a circus monkey....at least she keeps her helmet on!