Just playing catch up...

Things have been a little crazy since getting home from Australia. We have FINALLY gotten our sleeping patterns back on track and are very thankful for that. The weekend was spent catching up on some yard work. James paid a neighbor boy to mow the lawn, but there was a power outage while we were gone and the sprinkler box didn't have a back up battery in it. You know what that means.....dead grass over the whole lawn when we got back. We are fortunate because our sprinkler water is hooked up to our irrigation line. That means that we can water our lawn for about $150 / year. That is of course unless you come back from vacation and have large dead spots all over and a leak in your sprinkler line. We had to hook the hose up to the house and water the lawn off of city water, which means that next months bill is going to be really ugly. The subdivision that we live in is very different from that in Pocatello. Back in Poky, we were the youngest couple on the street. Not only were we the youngest couple, but because we had bought the house I grew up in, all of my neighbors had been my neighbors for about 20 years. Many of them picked me up from school when I was sick, babysat us when needed or just helped mom with the 5 brats that she was putting up with. While the street was busy with cars...(with ISU and AMI traffic) there wasn't much else that happened unless one of us Rudd kids were chasing a basketball that had bounced off of the backboard out into the road. In our subdivision in Meridian, there are kids riding their bikes, ATV's, or scooters down the road all day long. Times have changed a little more now though as the 10 year old girls walk in their usual packs but talk on their cell phones to their "boyfriends", giggling all the way. We have many neighbors that are in their 30's and 40's (yes we now have to be classified in that group, ugh). For Halloween, James and I took the fire pit out into the driveway and handed out candy from there. It was a great way to meet the neighbors while keeping warm and avoid running to the door every 4 minutes. The neighbors in both cities have been great and always willing to help. Back to the point of my dead lawn. We have a neighbor that used to work for Core Barton Homes (the builder that was used when abc's Extreme Home Makeover came to the Boise area). I don't personally like his homes as they all look the same and have about 4 feet in between houses with little to no yard. Albert, however gained a lot of experience working for him and came to help us with our sprinklers. Thank heaven for nice neighbors!!!