Multizone Music with Airport Express

Currently I am in process of setting up a home theater in the lower level of my house; well in the planning stages anyway. I have an idea about using multiple airport express units to be able to have music on the deck, by the hot tub and where ever I want, I currently use an AppleTV in my main room, I will have multiple itunes clients running so I can select different music for different zones; I used to own an Express but sold it, it has issues that it may play for 1 minute or an hour, but hooked up wireless you can count on it stopping at one point or another... So my question is can you plug them in via the Ethernet port and have the data streaming wired instead of wireless? I know all the mac fanboys will say the wireless works flawless on theirs but we all know better ( yes I run 802.11.N )

If I can get the airport express' to run dependable on the wired connection doing multi zone throughout the house will be awesome, the application that I have seen running on the iPhone and iPod Touch to control the itunes will make for an awesome multi room controller, now if someone made an IR blaster so the thing could become a wifi enabled smart remote it could be the holy grail of remotes... Its a dream I know