Does this happen in your neighborhood?

Occasionally cows get out of the pasture and wander our streets...

This was last fall

Coming up the street

In our backyard inspecting our toys

Never a dull moment around these parts...  :)

Bad neighbors

A few weeks ago, I'm driving home from helping someone (only mentioned because that should have earned me some good karma... right?) and the thunder and lightening was warning us of a storm coming. I turn into my subdivision and the rain and serious wind start. I turn right, onto my street, and see my beautiful new tent used for my craft shows hung on my neighbor's gutter blowing crazily in the wind. OH MY GOODNESS. I park, leave the kids in the car, and try and rescue, not really the tent, but my neighbor's gutter. (We'd had the tent set up for Trevan's birthday party and John hadn't taken it down yet, and our backyard is basically a horrible wind tunnel...)

The heavy wind and rain literally take my breath away. I tried to hold down the tent just to keep it from ripping the gutter off offering silent prayers to make the wind stop. In that short amount of time I am already completely soaked.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a neighbor leave their house and shut their garage. "He saw me, and is going to come help," I thought to myself. Still standing there holding onto my stupid tent... Again, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the same neighbor driving his van, "Oh he just wanted to drive here instead of getting all wet," I thought, feeling a tad relieved.

He drove right past me.

Yes, he did.

Eventually, I was able to get the tent unhooked from the gutter and saw there was some damage, but the wind was still too heavy to leave the tent to blow into someone else's house, and the tent was too heavy and mangled to move by myself.

So, I am standing there soaked literally to the bone, in heavy rain, wind, lightening holding down a $200 piece of junk, feeling pretty helpless. I was so mad.

What made me even more mad is that two more neighbors drove past right past me!

What???

If I saw anyone standing outside in those conditions OBVIOUSLY in distress I would totally stop. ESPECIALLY if it was a neighbor.

Eventually the wind died down enough, and I had the tent down enough I thought it wouldn't blow away and I went and knocked on my GOOD neighbor's door to help me shove the tent in the garage somehow.

He and his daughter helped me, thank goodness. John got home from work right as the storm ended and right after we got the tent in the garage.

So, that night for Family Home Evening I taught Trevan about helping others.

"Do you remember this afternoon when Mommy was standing out in the rain holding down that tent? Well, some cars drove by and the people in those cars didn't even offer to help. Was that very nice of them?"

Anyway, we taught him about helping people which also turned into teaching him about stranger danger.

"If someone asks you to help them look for their dog, or wants to give you candy or a toy, even if they say they asked your mommy and she said it was alright, what do you do? Come ask me first, and I can help you look for the dog too! You always have to ask me or daddy first before you do anything or go anywhere with anybody."

That was pretty funny.

This however, was not funny:

You see where it says, "EZUP"? It should also say EZ DOWN. Ugh!

I was able to salvage the top awning and two of the side doors. That's it. So when my other one's side doors break (I had to buy another one), I'll have a $200 replacement for it! That was just the start of a really bad week that week.

I had to add in Family Home Evening that maybe the neighbors couldn't stop to help because one of them had just had surgery, or the other had to go poo so bad if he had stopped he would have pooped his pants. I did try and give them the benefit of the doubt...

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Shirley, Linda, & Me - Summer 2008

Have I told you about my great neighbors?

We moved in two years ago in March, and a few days later Chris and Linda (our immediate next door neighbors) showed up at our door with brownies. Shirley and Mark moved back into their house two houses down that August.

We have fun with our neighbors, you need neighbors like them too. We've done a progressive dinner, poker nights (I'm trying to get them to start wagering stuff like candy, cookies, or acts of service, i.e. lawn mowing, weeding, dinner - no high rollers in this group), we do girls night out, helped each other out with kids, or cups of sugar, go shopping together, we walked together last year, Linda started spinning with me, and other fun things like camping has been on the agenda for a while... Last year I had an anniversary dinner to celebrate our one year of being neighbors. "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood..." was on the front of the invitation. Rolls of toilet paper were the favors (first year gift is paper).

This is the sweetest... I came home a few days after my mom's funeral to find Chris mowing our lawn. Isn't that the nicest thing ever? Linda and Shirley also bought me some beautiful azaelas. Then, while I was in Hawaii, Shirley's son mowed our lawn! They thought John looked so tired from watching the kids for so long, and knew he hadn't had a chance to do it, so they mowed our lawn! (I told them even if they mowed it because they were embarrassed our grass was so tall, I still appreciated it!!!) They have done other random acts of kindness too! Also, because my kids are the youngest I benefit from great hand-me-down toys. My other neighbors immediately next to us occassionally weed eat around some of our house, usually always around the sand box. (John has had a weed eater for one year, and never used it, because it won't work for some reason, it may be an operator error...) They also gave us all of their old Disney movies for Trevan, and some shelves they were going to throw away to use for my business. They are so nice too. Three houses up is a couple who go to the same church as us, so it's fun to have even more friendly faces on the street. Our neighbor across the street is a painter and he helped John paint our stairwell that was too high for John to paint.

Seriously, I have the best neighbors. They aren't allowed to move, unless I do first, then they have to move where I do.

Don't you want to be our neighbor?