What a great day!! This is splurge weekend. So pizza for supper last night, ate half of my portion and saved half for cold pizza from breakfast today - YEAH!! Great way to start the day - then church which is always excellent, love the messages, love the music, love the people - then picked up my mom from the nursing home, and some nurse I've never seen before was getting her all wound up as we were going out the door (remember, nursie-poo, she CAN'T live in your reality, and trying to make her, gets her UPSET!), but a few minutes with our dogs and cat, and my mom was in a better mood. Then Pete grilled us a FABULOUS supper, with some of our lovely produce from Horrock's - portabello caps, zucchini, and yellow squash brushed with olive oil and seasoned with garlic salt - eggplant slices serenaded in olive oil and balsamic - plus burgers...my mom was ECSTATIC over supper, couldn't stop saying how delicious it was (she's been a veggie lover her whole life anyway), and she really went crazy for the portabello caps especially. After that, a small chocolate cone at the Custard Cup and she was happier than I've seen her in months! Really made me feel great :). Add the lovely breeze sunny mild day, and that Pete doesn't have to work tonight, and it is about as perfect a summer day as I can even imagine!

I haven't talked about my precious parrots in quite a while (and never since I moved to Weebly), so it's about time!

These are my "poi boys" - poicephalus parrots Maxwell (red-bellied) and Elliot (Meyer's). I bought Elliot in 1999, he was a year old at the time. I was looking at Meyer's and brown headed parrots at the time, and learned about Elliot via the internet. We drove to where he was, with Sherri in a small town here in Michigan who was rehoming him, and he came home with us that day. He is extremely bonded to me, and will attack my husband - who has never been anything but nice to him! - any chance he gets. But with me he is gentle and sweet and very cuddly and lovable. He also lets my daughter handle him. I am so crazy about Elliot, I'm a fool in love with him! There's nothing I wouldn't do for my special boy  Elliot!

Elliot also won us a prize from radio station WBGL, the station I always listen to! See if you can spot him in this video (hint: he's at the 32-second mark):

Once I had Elliot I really REALLY wanted a red-bellied parrot. In fact it became an obsession almost. Everything I'd heard about them from their owners, everything I read, led me to believe the right one would be a great addition to our family. Then I met Mary up in Maine in a poicephalus group on the internet and fell in love with Max from afar - just from all she wrote about him - further strengthening my resolve to have one some day. That one day came when Mary had to give up her beloved Max, and entrusted him to me. I will never forget her for that! He is everything I expected from a RBP and more! He's silly, talkative, cuddly, funny, playful, incredibly intelligent, and highly interactive.

I love my poi boys to pieces!