The Great Escape

I have worked all morning and yesterday evening trying to get photos uploaded with the following post. I have called Hughes.net since they did not answer my email last week. I spoke with a man from New Delhi. He eventually had me try my browsing, which worked fine. When I tried to upload a photo, I got the same error message. The tech support is sending my request to "advance support" who will call me within two business days. The moral of this story is that you get no photos with the post.

Friday night Toby and I watched "The Great Escape" which I had bought for five dollars – what a deal! We even stayed up and watched the documentary on the making of the movie including the famous motorcycle jump. Saturday morning we had our own great escape. Three of Toby’s chickens had escaped their chicken coop. Of course after watching "The Great Escape" we were reminded of the animated movie, "Chicken Run." If you have never seen it, it is lots of fun and has some very funny bits taken from "The Great Escape" – in one scene, the rooster (voice by Mel Gibson) gets thrown into the cooler where he begins bouncing a baseball. One of my favorite parts is when the farmer comes in and tells his wife, "The chickens are revolting." She agrees because she has never liked the chickens. Of course he meant that the chickens were rebelling and breaking out. My kind of humor!

It was time for the chicken round up. Herding chickens is about like herding cats – neither of which is easy. First thing was to put the dogs in the house except for Rita the cow chicken dog. She is pretty good at herding other animals and stalking birds without causing them to fly. Unfortunately, she doesn’t always push them the way you want them to go. Zoe the Great Dane just wants to chase the chickens and Ranger the Rat Terrier is no help at all. Zoe and Ranger were put in the house. Then Jesse came out to help, and let Zoe out. We had to stop the chicken round up for a few minutes while we had the Dane round up. Jesse brought her camera out and took photos. Toby told her she was not being very helpful, but she was very funny. Maybe it was Toby and I that were funny. How can things not be funny when two grown people are chasing three wild chickens? We finally got them caught and put back in the "chicken condo. Toby did some mending of the wire. Then we headed off to town to pick up the GGs and go to the annual BSA pancake breakfast.

It kind of all reminded me of the time when I was seven months pregnant with Jesse, Bo was not quite three years old, and the pigs that we were raising escaped their pen. I called Toby at work, but we lived 12 miles out of town. Toby told me to keep the pigs off the highway until he got there – yeah right! When he got there, we put Bo up on the propane tank out of the way and told him to stay. He did. He had the best seat in the house for the pig rodeo. We caught one pig in the chicken yard fairly easily. But Toby had to rope the sow and try to drag her back to her pen. You try roping a two hundred-pound hog. It was wild. Bo was so cute cheering us on from his seat on the propane tank. Ah, such was life on the farm.

Saturday night I got out my Christmas dishes along with the new Christmas place mats that Mom bought for me. We put the red candles in the green candleholders for a nice Christmas look. Toby had spent the day putting together our new grill, which the brown truck of happiness brought on Thursday. While he put the grill together (at least three times forgetting some little part each time, but getting better at it with each time) I set out some steaks. Jesse invited one of her coworkers, and we had a very fancy meal. I also baked and apple pie to finish off the evening.

After church on Sunday, Toby worked in his shop, while Jes and I went to see "Australia" at the movies. It was a long movie – sort of an epic type adventure movie. It was a bit silly in parts, but lots of fun, and that Hugh Jackman – woohoo!