Somebody's Watching Me

Last week I am downstairs and the door bell rings I peak upstairs and to see who it is, all I see is a pair of small legs wearing jeans in the window. I immediately think it is my neighbor across the street who also is also a SAHM. I open the door and a bugged eyed, gaunt and short man is at my door. I immediately grab Quincy for a border between me and this individual. "May I help you?" I ask. Stranger tries to poke his head in door and asks who our realtor was at the time when we purchased our house. Perplexed by this question I ask "may I ask why?". I was thinking maybe he was looking for the builder of our home, since it is well built that seems to be a question strangers on the sidewalk like to ask us. He was asking because he left his garden tractor in the garage."Holy crap!" I thought to myself "this is the old owner of our house"! I wanted to ask him a few questions but wanted this strange individual off my property stat! Directed him to ask the listing realtor about his question since we obviously don't have it! He was on his way and I took down his vehicle description and license plate number. When I was writing this information down I realised this vehicle has been in our neighborhood before. Wrote a mental not to myself to change the locks!

This is a list of why I was perplexed about his question.
1. It was a foreclosure and ANYTHING left in a foreclosure is property of the new owners. The garden tractor was probably sold in a sheriff sale to help pay off the back taxes.

2. This genius had a garden tractor and no lawn. We installed the lawn, sprinkler system and landscaping. I really don't think he was looking for his garden tractor.

3. Why would you go up to your old house and ask the new owners about personal property left in your old home? A house that he lost in foreclosure three years ago!

4. If there was some sort of a riding lawn mower in our garage do you think I would be mowing the lawn?

I was a little spooked after this visit but after evaluating his appearance Quincy and I knew we could take him!

Where Have You Been?

As the saying goes "Life is what happens when you start making plans." Well friends life did happen around here and some parts of it I could have done without. We had a snowstorm, flood, flizzard (flood and blizzard going on at the same time), sports sampler classes, preschool, general winter blues, Mark finished his policy and procedure writing for his department, parents, Grant is completely potty trained, oh and I met New Kids on the Block.

The only thing that I want to say about the flood it that I would rather just forget it ever happened. It was the worse 2 weeks of my life! Many sleepless nights worrying if the Hesco wall about a block form your house would break, sounds of black hawk helicopters became normal. Every time the phone rang you wondered if this was the call to evacuate. Our community came together and saved our city. It was quite a site one late evening seeing your neighborhood join together to sandbag and save the neighborhood. We survived and it all made us better people and better neighbors. United We Sand!

**Above are pictures that I borrowed from another blog (type in drain 27 or Rose Coulie and see the results). In these pictures you will see how close the water got to the bridge. On the other side of the bridge where we live the water was a lot closer to the houses. Also an interesting fact: Do you see the twinhomes? That is our old neighborhood. They were on the wrong side from what I have been told. Some of the twinhomes even built samll sandbag rings around their houses. I guess we moved just in time!