I’m not sure which story about Pappy I should tell—there’s a lot of good ones. I remember sitting on pappy’s lap and taking a ride on his tractor. I was way younger, maybe 2 or 3. It was a warm and sunny day and it was either spring or summer. We went through the fields. I had a smile on my face and I was wearing kitty sunglasses.

I liked it when pappy would tease me and pinch me. It was playful and fun. Pappy made me feel happy. He would sit in his recliner chair and I remember he was wearing a hat and a yellow shirt with stripes and jeans. Pappy liked to be funny. He liked to make me laugh.

He also liked to give me string cheese for a snack. We ate salad and soup for dinner together. He made me a sandwich one day that was really good. One day I walked out on the porch and he helped me with one of those popsicles that you have to push up. He wanted to help me so I didn’t get all sticky.

I love pappy and I will miss him very much.

-Chloe (6)

At some point, my father, Todd Owens, became very interested in jumping up and down as we entered a household for family celebration.

I believe the first time Dad began this tradition, it was going to his parents' house for Easter dinner. Ben, Jess, and I were all relatively young... I may have been in my early teens, which meant Ben was a little shrimpy kid at just 2-3 years old. We got out of the car and Dad suggest that we all "hop" to the door and continue to hop until Grammy (Jane) came to the door to invite us inside.  We tried not to laugh as we were doing this but frankly, we looked completely ridiculous and were trying our best to keep a straight face for our unsuspecting host.

You can just imagine the look on Grammy's face as she opened the door to find all of us jumping around her porch. Puzzled, then laughing, she invited our little rabbit family inside.  And thus, a tradition was made.

While this Bunny Hop tradition began on Easter, it was repeated on demand for other holidays. I'm fairly certain I had to Bunny Hop onto a porch for several Christmas celebrations and a Mother's Day, maybe even for New Years morning. Sometimes we had to have fake ears (aka our pointer fingers sticking up at the sides of our heads) and sometimes we just let our hands dangle in front of our bodies so they bounced when we hopped. And frequently, Dad wasn't satisfied with just one person seeing the Hop... we had to hop around through the house until all the guests could see that we were nuts.

Long live the Bunny Hop on this Easter Sunday!  I'm still ready to jump around with the best of them. 

I met Todd in 1984 at Phase One in Sunbury, PA and he quickly became my mentor, along with some other great people there. I was new to the area and his friendship was very important to me at that time.