Neighborly Turtles

We have started to meet our neighbors now. It only took about 2 weeks, but they have started coming over. It's like a turtle. The turtle sees something drop into his vacinity and it is time to pull himself back into his shell. You might say we were startling to see move in with all those trips with the U-Haul truck and the three boys running around everywhere outside. Of course, seeing all the people helping us move in. And a dog can be quite an alarm bell ringing site. So you stay in your shell for a suitible amount of time... in this case, two weeks. Slowly, you begin to peek out and see if everything is still ok. Let's see, no dog barking incessantly: check! None of our children running through neighbors yard and screaming bloody murder constantly: check! New neighbors wave at us when they see us peeking out: check! Everything must be ok!

While Dave and Kev were working on putting the playground set back together on Friday, the neighbor behind us came out and was trying to reach through the fence to pet Shay. I talked with her (Chris) and her husband (Kim) for quite a while at which point they must have assumed I was ok people. Of course, they only did this once I said hello to their son (college age guy) who was walking their cat (yes, I did say cat) in their backyard.

On Saturday, when Dave and I were working on cleaning up and sorting our garage more, the guy to the south of us, Buster ("Once I die, there'll be no more Busters in the county"), came over and said hi to us. Very sweet older gentleman who we found out through conversation must use a cane because he was run over by a tractor when he was 3. Seeing that Buster had ventured out of his "shell", the neighbor directly across the street, Red, came over too. He was also venturing to organize his garage that day. He said it took him 15 years to get up the courage to tackle that job again.

Very friendly neighbors all around so far. I keep waving at the others I see as I drive off to go places. Eventually, I would like to get some cookies baked up and take them over to them all so we can properly introduce our family to the neighborhood. Then there will be no need to hide in their shells just because the Jensens have come to town.