Barnyard to backyard

We were supposed to go mini-golfing...or "Mindy-golfing", as it were. Mother Nature had other ideas, as she turned the entire course into a giant water hazard. So we settled for plan "B" as in "Barnyard".
Ten years ago you would have had to pay me to see a movie like "Barnyard"--or rather, pay me to be seen coming out of the theatre. Then again, ten years ago, they didn't make movies like "Barnyard"...

I think it started with "Monsters, Inc". Many people credit "Toy Story" as the first kids' movie to be palatable for mature audiences. Both it and its sequel were okay, in my view, but still a trifle infantile. "Monsters, Inc" was childlike without being childish and it managed to retain flashes of adult humour here and there. I went in dreading it and came out a fan.
Since then we've seen both Shreks (the second one was a work of art!); Finding Nemo (brilliant); The Incredibles (which moved too quickly for my adult eyes but was nevertheless a blast); The Polar Express (a Yuletide classic in our house, right up there with A Christmas Story); and now Barnyard.
We were the oldest people in the theatre unencumbered by kids. Check that: we were the only childless people in there. I still had the disquieting impression everybody was staring at us, but that was almost certainly my imagination. Besides, there were four of us...it wasn't like I'd gone in there alone, clad in a trenchcoat.
Barnyard was a pretty good movie...for all ages. The kids loved it. At one point, my eye tore away from the screen and found a little girl about seven dancing a spirited jig in the aisle as the animals cavorted overhead. Cute.
I chuckled throughout and guffawed several times. As many movies aimed at the yowwens are wont to do, this one trumpeted its Life Lesson ("A strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others") a few too many times, but hey, it's a lesson too many adults have forgotten. Barnyard is worth seeing. We had a great time.
On Sunday, Eva's brother Jim and his girlfriend Ally came over for another session of Extreme Makeover: Breadner Home Edition. We have a new fence now, extending all the way down the right-hand side of our property to just past our side door. This means I can now open the side door and let the dog(s) out without having to go out there myself to open a gate. Plus, it opens up the yard.
I even got to join in on the actual work--well beyond my usual capacity of standing there like a lump. I pounded several posts in using a--you guessed it! post-pounder, and I also wrestled a bunch of large concrete blocks out of the ground, where they had been resting for three decades and no discernable reason. Each one of these things weighed on the order of seventy or eighty pounds, maybe more. At any rate, I felt like I had made some sort of contribution to the effort, however minor. In a few weeks Jim will be back, accompanied by Eva's dad this time, to install new flooring in our kitchen and also a new front and side door.
Busy weekend. But fun.