Happy Easter!

Well, it's come and gone....Easter Day at the Arthur's! It turned out to be a pretty good day! As low key as it could possibly be with 11 kids ranging in age from 2 weeks to 7 years running around like crazy - well the 2 week old wasn't running around but the others were! Okay! Then there's the extra "kid" , Randy, we won't say his age though it is WELL OVER 7! Every time I heard screamin' I'd look outside and there was Randy chasing one of the kids then throwing them over his shoulder once they were caught. The funniest thing to look out the window and see was Randy and Caleb runnin' to the back twenty chasing after the inflatable "bunny in car" that the wind sent sailing. It's actually still inflated as they are running after it.....pretty funny watching the inflated bunny in a hot pink blow up car hovering over the grass as if it has "put the pedal to the metal" until suddenly it starts to lose some of its air and the wind sends it tumbling...."wreck, big wreck"!!



I love having a house full of family and friends! Mimi and Jake even showed up with Jason and Linda and the newest of the Reichle clan....little Paige....two weeks old and SO sweet! She pretty much slept the whole time....not sure how anyone could sleep through all the screamin' but she did! Berkleigh even asked if she could open her eyes!! (I think it was Berkleigh?) Little Paige is just beautiful and has a FULL head of black hair! I never even got to hold her! I was too busy hanging out on the floor with my nephew Gavin. He's the most content child I've ever seen....he's the one in the previous posted pics with the little lamb ears on! He was hanging out on the floor with my other nephew (Matt's brother's son) Brandon aka "Brandon the Brut" he's as big as Gavin is small and they are completely different - not a thing in common other than they pee in a diaper!



So, after hamburgers and cake the kids headed down to the ropin' arena for the first annual Arthur calf scramble! That's what I said "Calf Scramble" - Randy (the big kid) always helps with the calf scramble at the Houston Rodeo and Caleb dearly wanted to participate while we were there last week. Leave it up to Randy and Caleb to put their heads together and - Viola! a calf scramble you shall have. Randy even made numbers for the kids to wear just like at the rodeo - they were really cute! I' would like to take a minute to thank the Arthur Cattle Company for providing the livestock for this event and please note - no animal or child was injured during this event. I'm not even sure that any of the kids got close enough to even touch one of the calves let alone hurt one of them or vice versa! It's a long way to the other end of the arena and that's exactly where those calves headed as soon as they saw all the heathen children runnin' for 'em! RUN - RUN for your LIVES!!!!



They wrapped that up and Randy grabbed every egg he could find and started chunking them around the front yard...all the kids grabbed a basket and headed out to hunt eggs! This was about the 97th Easter Egg hunt my kids had been on! Now that they've tied Spring Break into the Easter Holiday EVERYONE does an Easter Egg Hunt! We've got enough candy to fill Willy Wonka's fFactory and we've got more erasers(?) than we'll ever need.....I guess I'm going to have to start a holiday box for erasers...we've got Valentine's Day erasers, Halloween erasers, Christmas erasers, St. Patrick's Day erasers, 4th of July erasers, birthday erasers and now Easter erasers! I'll have to make sure I use the correct eraser for the correct holiday. Can you see me erasing something at Halloween with an Easter egg? As if?!



Needless to say after we wrapped up our first Easter at home we were all dead! We cleaned up, ate a little something and took a bath....oh the bath! Funny how things happen. As I'm cleaning up Berkleigh is whining - as she often does - so I sit her on the counter next to the sink. I'm busy putting stuff away and each time I look over she's got another piece of clothing removed. Before you know it she's more or less naked sitting on the side of the sink playing in the water.....so I just go with it! My back hurts too bad to bend over the bathtub anyways so I'll just do it here! It's actually pretty nice bathing them in the sink - I don't have to bend over and I have the little sprayer hose that I can rinse them with....bath.....DONE!



Matt and Berkleigh CRASHED as soon as they crawled into bed for some night time t.v. - Caleb and I started playing his DS -- the girls showed him all kinds of new things so I was trying to help him figure it all out....and suddenly we're down for the count as well.



Until next year!