Easter, sleeping, puppies and swings

Wow ... over a month since my last post! Sorry! We've been busy.

Easter was a blast! Blair had egg hunts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday ... so she was a little bit "over" hunting eggs by Sunday.

And candy - boy howdy. She got more candy for Easter than she did for Halloween! I threw out all of the leftover Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day candy before we added the Easter candy to the mix, and even after throwing out half of the Easter candy, her candy stash runneth over. I was a little wary of getting to in depth on the Easter story with her this year ... how do you tell her about Jesus rising from the dead, then explain why people she knows who have died won't rise from the dead? We did talk about it, and said a special Easter prayer to thank Jesus for dying on the cross so that we can spend eternity in heaven with him, and she did OK with that. I'm thinking that she'll be able to grasp it better next year.

She has been doing a GREAT job sleeping all night in her big girl bed! I had to up the bribes from candy to "big surprises" when she slept all night in her big girl bed for three nights in a row. We then stretched it to five nights, then seven, and now we're on two weeks. I heart bribery and will continue to use it shamelessly! I am SOOO proud of her ... and I had forgotten how wonderful it felt to get a good night of sleep! When she hit seven nights of sleep in a row, she got to go to Build-A-Bear. She made a cute puppy dog, which she named Miss Syler. No idea where that name came from, but she has been known to come up with some doozies. Usually they sound like Indian names, so Miss Syler is actually pretty tame by her standards.

The big news around our house is that our beloved Daisy is MIA. She's been gone for over a week now, and I'm fairly certain that she isn't coming home. Daisy would have been 14 in a couple of weeks, and basset hounds typically live for 10-12 years. She's had a long, good life, but I miss her terribly. I got Daisy when she was 6 weeks old, so she's been with me through so much ... deaths, heartaches, weddings, births, and everything in between. Her sweet face made me smile no matter how tough my day had been, and she always loved me unconditionally. She was such a sweet girl, and so full of life and personality. Blair misses her too ... she keeps asking if Daisy has come home yet. I'm not quite sure what to say at this point.

Oh, and Blair finally got to play on her swing set! You know, the one that Santa brought? :) We had a lot of work to do on the yard before we put it up, and she was very patient. At first we kept telling her that we would put it up when the weather got warm. Of course on the first warm day, she expected us to build it. So then we explained that we had to get the yard fixed for her first. Anyway, she was overwhelmed when we got home from school yesterday and saw that Brian had put it up for her. I'm not sure whether she had more fun actually swinging and sliding on it herself, or pretending to help her Care Bears swing and slide. I could just eat her up sometimes!