Birthday Bash!

Another thing we did while the Hall family was here was have a birthday party! We waited to have Ruston's celebration until the Halls were here, and Danelle also celebrated her 5th birthday. She requested a cake with a rainbow, and with the limited supplies I had at the house, I think Dayna did well. :)

Danelle also stressed the NEED for hats. "You have to have a hat for the birthday party!"
Ruston wasn't too fond of his hat, and quickly took it off. Then we took off the rest of his clothing in order to prepare him for his cake.
He was hesitant at first, and wanted to use a SPOON...
Danelle with her cake; I think she was proud of it.

...but once I stuck his hand in it, it was all downhill from there!



Ruston went to town while everyone else ate their cake from Danelle's cake. I think he was finally getting full/tired here...

If I would have been thinking, I would have worn a short sleeve shirt, which would have been much easier to pick him up with! He thought he was pretty cool for being so sticky.

He quickly took a bath, and then it was time for presents!



Ruston and Danelle both had a fair amount of presents, and enjoyed what they got. Ruston quickly went to focusing on his toys... this one from Ben and Kelli.
Lastly, I would say it was a successful day and weekend... for Ruston and Taco both. :)

More Tight Spaces...

As stated in a previous post, Ruston loves his tight spaces. Here are a few more examples. He has decided that it's best for him to squeeze himself in Great Papa's rocking chair like this:

Usually he's able to get out... except sometimes he gets stuck and asks for help:
So he's also decided that the ice cream tub is fun to stand/sit in. I think this one is about to retire though...

Even Tiki is enjoying his small spaces, sitting and cuddling into the basket that Ruston also likes to sit in.

Birthdays and Turkeys

Last weekend was by birthday... #26.  Man, I feel like I'm getting old!  Haha...  We left Ruston with a church friend of ours for a couple of hours on Friday night, and Jason and I went to see Shutter Island.  It's definitely an unordinary movie, but nonetheless, I enjoyed it, and it messed with my head a bit.  Jason works with crazies while doing his security stuff at the hospital, so he would have preferred to see a different movie, but it was my birthday, so I got to pick. :)  Next time I'll let him choose.  Either way, it was the first time we left Ruston with anyone that wasn't family (besides the nursery at church), and he didn't do too bad.  When we got back to Lesa's, she said "does he fight sleep?"  After we said, YES, she said "I can tell".  She had JUST gotten him to sleep before we got there, which was sometime around 10 or 1030, I think.  She loves seeing Ruston though, so I'm sure she'd do it again to get her baby fix... her daughter is in college and she has no grandchildren yet, so she gets the baby fix by watching others' kids.  That was a MUCH needed evening for Jason and I together, and we enjoyed it.  I'm sure we'll do more of those in the future.

Last weekend was also the NWTF (National Wild Turkey Federation) convention at Opryland.  It's a yearly thing where people from all over the country (and really continent) come to gather and talk turkey... and hunting in general.  All the big wigs of hunting are there, so it's a pretty big deal.  We're lucky that it's in Nashville every year or we definitely wouldn't go to it, but we went on Friday and Saturday, and managed to get in free both days by having people give us their passes... they were on their way out, and we were on our way in, and they asked us if we wanted their passes; we weren't going to say no!  So that was $12 a piece each day that we saved ($48 total).  Gotta love nice Nashville people!  Below are some turkey pictures, not from the convention, but from the previous week.  Jason and I spotted them on the way up to Mammer and Papa Wayne's house.  That's a lot of turkeys!

This was Ruston's attire for the convention.  He had a great time and did really well amidst all the people and turkey noises.  He got a lot of attention though too.

Saturday night a bunch of the members of tnturkey.com got together at a restaurant near Opryland to chat and hang out.  Even though we were supposed to have the entire back room to ourselves, the new management there ended up double booking the room, so we shared it with some birthday party of a man who was turning 80 years old.  Neither parties were very happy, but we made the best of it.  I think there were about 50 of us turkey people there... a rowdy bunch at that!



By the end of the night, Ruston was passed out!
It's always a good time getting together with the tnturkey bunch and listening to hunting stories, even if most of them are making fun of Jason. :)  We look forward to it next year already.