Just more than an hour until the chaos of March Madness begins. Like last year, I got everyone in the family to fill out a bracket, except for Jake. Annika and Abby both comprehend the idea that higher seeds are supposedly the better teams, so their brackets are more or less sensible (Annika pretty much filled out her own). I couldn't come up with a way to get Jake to pick winners without it just pretty much being the same as flipping a coin. So, here are the family's Final Fours:
Abby: Butler over Michigan State, Notre Dame over Kentucky; Butler over ND in the final (she had Butler winning last year too)
Annika: Kansas over Butler, Villanova over Kentucky; Kansas over Villanova (the girls both have a thing for Butler)
Lisa: Syracuse over Ohio State, Kentucky over Baylor; Syracuse over Kentucky
Me: Kansas over Syracuse, West Virginia over Baylor; West Virginia over Kansas
As much as I'm a sports fan, I don't pay much attention to the regular season of college basketball - I'm aware of what's going on and generally know who's good this year and how the Michigan teams are doing, but I don't make a point of watching games on TV and thus don't have much to base my picks on other than the musings of sports radio personalities. I wasn't even sure if Notre Dame was in the tournament until a few days after the bracket came out. I had considered picking Kansas or Syracuse to win the tournament, but I chose West Virginia so the whole family had different winners. All of our brackets are entered on ESPN.com, so we'll see who does better (and then I filled out a bunch more just for fun). I'm actually hoping for Kansas vs. Kansas State and Duke vs. Kentucky in the Final Four, which sounds cool and could happen (as opposed to a Michigan State-Notre Dame final). Let the games begin!
On Tuesday we had the joy of celebrating Jake's 3rd birthday. Since he's quite fascinated with all things boy, which includes cars, trucks, trains, and transportation in general, we threw him a construction-themed family birthday party. Above is his birthday cake.
Jake started off the day on Tuesday refusing to acknowledge that he was three. He just wanted to be two. By the end of the day he had changed his mind. A big part of the change was the fact that there was a 3 on his cake.
Showing off their construction hats which they each decorated. Jake's was a bit big and kept falling off!
Enjoying some of his gifts - a book from Great Grandma and a ND basketball from Grandma and Grandpa Dekker!
Eating cake! He had two pieces and wanted more! No early bed time for him!
