Escape Artists and Easter

The only real work accomplished this week was to change the oil on the cars (they were WAY overdue), cut the grass, and plant some potatoes in the garden. Part of the reason all the work was done outside was because of the houseguest we had for the week.


This week, we watched our friend’s dog while they were on vacation. We always thought it was challenging to work on the house with Tucker around…but with another dog underfoot, it’s downright impossible! Ginger is a cute, sweet dog but we did have one big problem…


…her actions on the night of The Great Escape!

Chris let the dogs out into the back yard on Thursday evening to do their business before bed. Our entire backyard is fenced so they are able to run around on their own. They were outside for about 10 minutes before Chris went to check to see if they were ready to come back in. He turned on the back porch light and couldn’t see them. They also didn’t come when he called. So he put on some shoes and walked out into the yard only to find that they had pushed their way through one of the gates (we think they jumped up on the gate and the latch rotated allowing the gate to open).

So not only did we lose our dog, but we lost someone else’s dog too! Let’s just say that there was quite a bit of panic in the house. We both were running around, trying to find car keys, flashlights, and shoes. We drove around for a good 40 minutes trying to find them.

Chris found Ginger first (after about a half hour) and she was actually headed in the direction of the house. However, when he tried to call her to get her in the car, she would run in the opposite direction. This happened multiple times before he was able to corner her near the pond (apparently she got thirsty with all the running around).

I found Tucker after another 10 – 15 minutes. He was trotting along the sidewalk toward the main road. Fortunately, as soon as he heard me call his name, he came right over to the car and hopped in. They were both a little tired when they were back home.


We were just so thankful that we found them so quickly. While looking for them, I kept having flashbacks of a lost dog incident from years ago – it was my aunt and uncle’s dog that slipped out of her collar and we couldn’t find her for over a month. That was an incredibly stressful time!

So after all the dog drama died down, we went to visit family for Easter. We went to Chris’ parents on Saturday where we got to visit with his family, hide Easter eggs for the kids, and had a delicious dinner. We headed to my parent’s on Saturday night. We went to Easter mass, got to hide more Easter eggs, and had a very filling Easter lunch.

After lunch, the kids were able to go search on the “Easter Hunt” (according to Braden). The kids ranged in age from 12 to 2. It was a lot of fun to see them running around the yard and getting so excited when they found anything.




We got home at a decent hour on Sunday and just got ready for the week. Hopefully everyone had a nice Easter too!