Life at the Little House on the Ditch: This chick gets around!

Peter and I headed south to Portland this past weekend.

Getting out of here was a bit of a challenge. The temperature: 19 degrees. The weather, horrendous, south, all the way to Chehalis (that's about 200 miles) was being hit by a winter storm that had trees falling across the roads, snow piling in drifts over the highway and water swamping towns and houses.
To complicate matters even more, we have a chicken that is happily sitting on eggs and would be at risk out in the weather, all alone.

We did the only thing we COULD do.. we packed Salt, the chicken, and her 4 chicks-in-the-making into the car and took her with us. Seriously, we took Salt on a road trip. Fortunately, despite the storm raging around us, the trip was quite uneventful and Salt was a great traveler. Our friends in Portland that we stayed with were quite surprised by the extra house guest but were really good sports. She's really no trouble. Salt enjoyed having her meals on their outside deck.

We are about 3 days away from chicks. I'm just on pins and needles.

While in Portland Peter went off to his seminar and I hung out with our hosts. I've known these lovely people since 1990. We met in a prenatal aerobics class when we were expecting our first childen. We both had boys. We became fast friends. Then a few years later we both had girls. Then a few years later they had a boy and I got a dog.

I was the first to the hospital when their third child was born on a blustery Thanksgiving day. Since I wasn't having three children I informed my friend that she had to share this baby with me. He became "my George." When I got to the hospital he was all swaddled and adorable. I looked at his footprints on his birth certificate and said to his father, "oh.. it's a shame they didn't get all of his toes in the footprint." He looked at me and very seriously informed me that his child was born with only 4 toes on each foot. I was quite saddened by this. I never mentioned it again but often wondered how this happened, what ramifications would missing toes have and if he had other health issues. My friends never spoke of it either.

7 months later the kids were playing in a wading pool and my George was barefoot. And he had all of his toes! I exclaimed "He has all his toes!!" My George's mother looked at me like I had lost my mind. Because, of course, she had no idea that her husband had ever played that practical joke on me and in fact, he had forgotten it as well. We laugh about it to this day.

I was very lucky to be able to attend one of My George's basketball games Saturday. Here he is getting ready to throw a free throw.