Beautiful Birthday Girls!!
Is there anything cuter than a 2-yr-old eating birthday cake? We were at Leia Taylor's house, and this is her little girl, whose name is also Natalie. 
Man, that cake was GOOD. I had like 3 pieces. MMmmmmm.
Frosting on your nose. That's how you know the cake was amazing!!
Look how big our feathered friends have gotten!! They are going to be full-grown in less than 2 weeks. Their wings are starting to develop and soon they will be able to fly. They are sweet little things and I hate to see them go, I really do. Plus heaven knows what Jesse will bring home next, when Baby starts feeling sad and wishing she had a pet again. I don't want to pull down the driveway and see an Alpaca tied to a tree.
Isn't he pretty? Despite his being a colossal pain in the heiny *most* of the time, I do love the dog. Except when he wakes me up by barfing in a corner of my bedroom, barks at the UPS driver so adamantly that he moves the entire rug, desk, and my laptop, tears through the office and catches my laptop cord, pulling it off the desk, walks through the house with an entire sofa cushion in his mouth, pulls the railing off the deck because his leader caught on it while he was after a bunny, poops on the driveway because the grass was just a little high for his taste (hey, who likes to be tickled while they poop?), insists on using the sink as his own personal drinking fountain while I'm trying to brush my teeth, and leaves what can only be described as "egg white slime" by the gallon on my kitchen floor when he drinks from his water bowl.
It was about 137 degrees out and it had just rained a few hours earlier. Ew.
I think the pony rides were the highlight of the evening, for sure. The girls could not stop smiling. Jesse was awesome trying to distract the guy running the ride with conversation so the girls could ride for a few extra minutes. 
The actual rodeo was under a pavilion and it was very dark under there - I couldn't get my camera to get a very good shot of the shows, but there were cowboys riding bulls (for a second at least, until they got thrown to kingdom come,) cowboys roping and hog-tying calves, and all the usual goofy rodeo clowns telling jokes that weren't funny between shows. The shot below is of the 'kid rodeo.' They got ALL the kids out in the pen (like 150 of them), and then tied a flag to two little cows tails. Then it was, "On your mark, get set, GO!" and all 150 kids chased the cows all over the rodeo pen trying to get the flags off their tails. It was pretty funny. If you look carefully at this picture, you can see kids falling all over each other chasing one of the cows.
Daddy and Rooney watching the bull rides, or at least Daddy is watching the bull rides, and Rooney is engrossed in an ice cream sandwich.
The same people who brought the ponies brought a camel! We skipped the camel ride though. Maybe next year.
The girls did the giant slides over and over. I was so proud of Miss Madeline, who climbed all the way to the top of this 20 foot slide all by herself.
You know you are in the South when this is what you see by the sign at the slide entrance that says, "Please take off your shoes."
Sometime during the night both girls ended up in bed with me. I became aware of the occasional [frequent] knee, elbow, or foot in my back, and when I got up, I saw why. There they were, sleeping like a pile of puppies, with Rooney sideways and all snuggled up with Baby, who didn't appear to mind [be conscious.] Hence my sore back.
The proud parents have been behaving strangely the last day or two - they stayed much closer to the nest than normal and we were able to get very close to them without them taking off. I wondered a couple of times if they were going to launch into the air and start pecking me to protect their nest. Maybe they are just feeling a little perkier now that they don't have 4 infants waking them up at night for feedings? Who knows. But I got some good pictures.
Okay Dad, how's THAT for a freakin' close up? This is actually one of the babies, just starting to explore her ability to jump ship. I snapped this one yesterday, and had hoped that I might be present to witness the little bugger's first attempt at flight today. But, alas, all 4 babies followed Mom and Dad into the wild blue yonder before I got up this morning. *Sigh.*
We have been going to a local elementary school park in the evenings so that I can walk and the girls can play. It is less than 5 minutes from the house and always deserted. Sometimes Jesse comes with us and I am hoping we can bring Biggie Smalls along one of these days so he can walk with me way over in the grass behind the parking lot.
The slides were like those Eye-of-the-Storm balls - the instant they touched them their hair would stand straight up.
My battery was dying, so this was the last picture I could get! Phooey.
And finally, it never ceases to amaze me how a 140 lb. dog can curl himself into a 12 inch ball like a centipede. He's such a sofa rat.
