St. Patrick's Day 2008

What a wet and rainy day! Yuck! We did enjoy a wonderful Irish breakfast at our friend's house this morning, but that was the only good thing about today. We had a great time this past Saturday at our neighborhood parade and our pre-parade party. The day started with snow and that had us all worried, but it stopped snowing and raining about 1 hr before party time. We were able to get tents to cover our deck and some heaters for the back patio and that solved all our worries. I was very nervous some people would ditch out (and they did!), but we still had around 120 people show up. I think that is pretty good for a cold, snowy day! Thank goodness they don't all come at once, but it did get pretty crowded in the house at one point. Many of those people are children and it becomes a bit of a madhouse, but a fun one and I love it! I don't love cleaning up afterward, but it is all worth it. It is weird having Easter so close to St. Pat's this year. We already took down all of our St. Patty's Day stuff yesterday and put up all of the Easter decorations.
Nothing else exciting has been happening lately. We did get two new birds to replace Oswald. Both of them are blue (Oswald was green/yellow). A named his "Oscar" and C named his "Blue." They are far less tame than Oswald was, so we really need to work with them to get them used to people. Okay that is all for now.

We have a Parakeet down!!

Oswald died last night. It was the most dramatic death I have ever witnessed--not that I have seen many deaths, but it was very movie-like. Susie and I were sitting in the living room, watching TV when all of the sudden, Oswald fell off his perch and started wheezing. It was awful sounding. We ran over to him and he was struggling to take these very painful sounding breaths. Then he raised his head up and took one long last breath and dropped his head to the floor. Susie picked him up and tried to open his beak and see what happening, but there was nothing obvious to see. It was so sad. We were very worried about the kids and what they would think when they woke up and saw that he was dead. We told both A and C separately and both had lots of questions about why it happened. They both wanted to know immediately if we could get another bird (obvious attachment disorder there!). I talk to a lady at work whose brother raises birds and she said parakeets are known for just dropping dead. Apparently they do not show signs of illness and just fall over and die. That is very disturbing. I feel awful for poor Ozzie!! We will miss him.