Coral turns 19

She opens a present from Leith..

Hugs!

India made this blanket for her.

Blowing out the matches that are substituting for candles

Eating cake with Lance

Leith has been waiting for warmer weather to learn to ride his bike. He has been discouraged in the past by the hills in the neighborhood. Last Saturday, he made a plan with Kevin to get up early and work on it all day, until "sundown"-his words. He got up early, waited for Kevin to finish his run, and then got to work. About 90 seconds later-well before sundown, he was riding as if he had always known how.

Easter weekend

The most troublesome symptom of my head injury was that my dizziness and nausea were only bearable-in spite of medication- when I was standing up. Sitting down and laying down were awful for the first few days. The bright side of this was that since I was standing up anyway, I just did most of the activities and cooking that I had planned for Easter. Because it was General Conference weekend, too, we were all home and had a really nice time listening to the sessions, eating, and celebrating Easter. I loved having all the kids home, hanging out together.
Coral and Leith made the dying of Easter eggs serious business. We did almost three dozen, using some exotic colors and techniques from Martha.
Everyone made at least a few and the results were fab:

Niall and Leith check out their Easter baskets before the girls were up.

A rare photo of the Easter bunny in action

Hunting for eggs-real ones and plenty of candy-filled plastic ones

Counting to make sure all the real eggs are accounted for....

Watching General Conference while building with Legos

Grandpa Carl joined us for Easter dinner. The boys insisted on wearing their new ties and shirts together.

Kevin turned 44 on Sunday-I made his traditional cake, but he had to serve it. Nice pose, India!

Everyone gathers around the microwave oven for that most cherished of Easter traditions, Peep Wars. Peeps are armed with toothpicks and heated, causing them to stab each other. I kept hoping that this activity was a hallucination caused by my head injury, but sadly, it was real. Perhaps it is better than actually eating Peeps, though.

Brighton April 2

Weirdly, this late in the season, we had our most bitterly cold ski day of the year. We went up the afternoon of Good Friday-after the latest big snow storm and before the next front was scheduled to come through. The snow was amazing!! After a few runs, the cold front arrived earlier than expected. The heavy snow in the trees blew down on us like a blizzard and the wind froze us on the lift. I felt like I was getting frostbitten every time I took off my glove to use the camera. We had a great time anyway!!
We took an early break to warm up!
Bundling up to go back out there

Coral and India

It is getting harder to get them to pause for photos-speed seems to be the order of things.

Check this out:

We didn't last the whole evening. Everyone was getting too cold and the wind was strong enough to stir up ground blizzards and to slow us down on the exposed hill at the top of the lift. As we made our way to the car, I slipped on the ice in the parking lot. I hit my head hard enough to give me a concussion and necessitate a trip to the ER. What a lame finish to a fun day!