Our Easter dinner will be on Sunday afternoon. We only have about half of the family. Our oldest son and his family are vacationing in FL. I have a very easy meal planned. The cooking will be done on the grill. We'll have ham slices and I think I can heat the twice-baked potatoes on the top shelf in the grill. I hope to bake some special bread tomorrow. For dessert we will have Strawberry shortcake and lemon bars. We will only have one little kid, but we will have a egg hunt, indoors. I think the weather is expected to be nice and warm. Yesterday was up in the 70's, which is amazing for MN, but it is already humid out there.

U betcha! Went grocery shopping today...2 hams purchased with all the trimmings and fixings for creamed potatoes, fresh corn, green beans, rolls, coleslaw, buttered rolls and my favorite....carrot cake! Our daughter and her family of three girls and that special SIL are coming from Florida (they will be here sometime Wednesday) and our son, who is not married and lives in a small town nearby will be coming for Easter Dinner on Saturday....then on Sunday I'll fix a quick bite of cereal and milk for the girls before we head out to church.....but the Easter Bunny will have been busy the night before preparing a special brunch to enjoy before they head back to Florida! Probably have a breakfast casserole in the crockpot while we're at church...fresh baked biscuits with ham (if I have any left from Saturday)muffins, fresh fruit, juice and coffee! Wanna come? It will be great!

Plans are not made yet for us - usually DS, DIL, and GS take me out to breakfast with DH. Last year we then went to our local children's park to play with GS. Then they go to her parent's house for her Mother's Day. However, this year is special because my son's birthday falls on Mother's Day. He will be turn 32 and is my one and only child. My husband and I had infertility problems and I ended up having surgery so that I could get pregnant. We tried for 7 years to have a child and lost 2 in miscarriages. I got pregnant a month after surgery to my doctor's surprise. Had a wonderful pregnancy, had him by C-section. Never used birth control again and never got pregnant again! So he is my miracle baby and whatever he wants to do Sunday, we will do! After all, I told him, I wouldn't be a Mom without him!

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!