Ah, Labradors...you gotta love them

I think that we would all agree that one of the main reasons we all look forward to weekends is because we get to actually catch up on some much needed sleep. Yeah…that’s what I thought heading into this weekend. But, alas…

It all started at 4:30 AM on Saturday morning – Chili woke me up by meowing consistently (and quite loudly, I might add). As this is somewhat typical of his behavior, I really didn’t think anything of it (other than, “I can’t believe you just woke me up and if you wake Avery up, I’ll kill you…”), so I proceeded to throw a pair of socks at him (note – this was just a scare tactic and it didn’t hurt him…) and attempted to go back to bed. Well, this continued and wouldn’t stop. So, finally I decided that I should go down to check on him. As it turns out, somehow, the mudroom door had been closed over night, which just so happens to be where his litter pan is. AND – Leinie was stuck inside. So, I open the door, let Leinie out, let Chili in and go back to bed, only to be awoken again by Chili’s consistent meowing. So, I go back downstairs to find out that, while stuck in the mudroom, Leinie had eaten all of Chili’s food (mind you, this is a self feeder thing, so it was a SIGNIFICANT amount of food). Ugh. So, needless to say, Leinie wasn’t feeling so hot the next day and, as you can imagine, had a few more trips outside to go to the bathroom than normal. So, you would think that Leinie would learn? But, nope…not Labradors! They will pretty much do anything that they enjoy to do until it kills them - including eating more than one dog's stomach could possibly hold.

Saturday night – 3:30 AM. I hear Leinie pacing and panting downstairs (which, again, is pretty typical of him), but I all of a sudden realize that I had left Chili’s food out. So, I decide that I should probably go downstairs to check things out. And, sure enough….Leinie had eaten ¾ of the cat’s food (which, mind you, was FULL, due to the incident the night before). I will spare you the rest of the details and will just say that the rest of the night until approximately 5:30 am was spent a) taking Leinie outside for a walk twice, b) cleaning up Leinie’s poop in the mudroom, c) cleaning up Leinie’s puke in the living room, and d) trying to find a spot for Chili’s food where he could get at it, but not spill it and where Leinie could not reach it. Ok, I guess that was still a lot of detail, but whatever...And, then…it was time to get up and get Avery ready for church with Grandmy and Grandpy…

Avery decided to wake up at 6:15 on Easter Sunday, so I brought her back to our room and put her in our bed, hoping that she would go back to sleep for a bit. And, she actually did! Unfortunately, I had to wake her up an hour later to get ready to go to church with Grandmy and Grandpy, but she as soon as she heard that she was going to put on her party dress to go to church with them, she was all for waking up to get ready. Apparently, she liked church until everyone stood up to sing. At that point, she decided that it was too many people making too much noise in too small of a place, so she was brought to the “quiet” room in the back where she proceeded to put stickers all over the stain glass window in the room. From the sounds of it, they are still there – leave it to Avery to make her mark wherever she goes. For the rest of the day, all that I heard was “No singing in Church. Avery sad…”

When Grandmy and Grandpy brought her back, she noticed all of the Easter eggs that the Easter Bunny had hidden as well as her basket (which, I'm including a picture of because I think that the Easter Bunny put together a great looking basket) .

She loved finding the eggs and especially loved eating the “Lemon-m’s” inside of them. It was a lot of fun watching her actually get excited about the basket and the eggs and hearing her say, “The Easter Bunny is coming!” the entire day before.

After the egg hunt at our house, we changed her into yet another party dress (this one was a bit more casual in case she got it dirty) and went over to our friends’ house to have another hunt with their son, Asher, who is the same age as Avery and to have lunch. Avery was a bit tired, but had a good time playing with Asher and eating more m&m’s….probably too many m&m’s, but whatever..it was a holiday.

THEN…after her nap, we went to Grandmy and Grandpy’s for Easter dinner. Avery had a good time and got another Easter Basket from Grandmy and Grandpy and yet another present from Uncle Ra Ra (Uncle Randal) and Auntie Kristen. She also ended up eating an entire (no, I’m not exaggerating) bowl of hummus pre-dinner, so didn’t really partake too much in the actual Easter dinner part of the evening. And, yes – I thought about the effects of this as she was eating the hummus, but figured hummus was good for her, so I let her go for it…she did have some ham and then a green bean, a bite of pineapple bread pudding, and a sweet potato all of which were followed up with the comment, “Avery no like…” Lovely.

I’m getting larger and larger by the minute and it is becoming increasingly more difficult to chase after Avery (and, to hold her for that matter) as I get further into this pregnancy. But, we’re managing. We are implementing a new “every other night” rule in our house starting tonight where Dadda will put her down every other night (as opposed to Mama every night). I figure, we have to start this now because, I will not be able to do this every night once the baby is born. I’ll let you know how it goes…