Happy Birthday Parker! - May 19, 2013

Sunday - May 19, 2013
Parker is 9 years old!  It is so crazy how fast my little ones are growing!  This year will be the first in about 5 years that we are not doing Birthday party with friends.  The kids don't love it, but they are okay with it.  We just live in a place that makes doing a friend Birthday party difficult.  Alissa, Brinley, and I woke up really early to decorate the house for Parker's special day.  We normally wait until he falls asleep, then stay up late decorating.  We did it different this year because I had just gotten home from a retreat and I was tired - Weird, huh?

 So, we woke up really early and decorated the house.  We made the whole day feel like a party by letting him open gifts all day long.  He opened a gift when he woke up, then again an hour or two later, then another one after church, and so on like that.  He loved it!  He was so funny when he blew out the candles on his cake.  It took him a few tries.  It was funny because he was blowing so hard, but I think he just wasn't aiming right and was missing the candle.  He is such a funny boy.  It is just so hard to believe that he is 9 years old already.  Here are some pictures of out fun.



I'm going to take a minute to vent about life in these townhouses:

Before Roger came to pick me up from the retreat, I talked to him on the phone and he told me all the happenings from while I was gone.  The landlord came and was mad because the neighbors called and told her that our kids pushed over two of the trees on the property.  They told her that they came over to use my phone to call and tell her about it, because their phone wasn't working. She said that she has been trying to call and talk to me about it, but I've been avoiding her calls.  She claimed that one time when she called, the kids answered and said that I was in the bathroom.  The time after that, she called and she could hear talking in the background and then someone hung up the phone. ---- All of that is pure craziness!  The neighbor kids pushed over the trees.  Parker admitted that he was outside and joined in when one of the trees got pushed over, but he had nothing to do with the other and the girls didn't participate at all. No neighbor ever came to use my phone.  And I have no record of the landlord calling me at all.  I have no memory of it and my phone history has no memory of it.  We don't get a good signal in our house, but when someone calls it shows up on the phone.  We almost always have to go outside and talk or we lose our signal.  It's just crazy! That's all!  I don't know if the landlord called the number that we gave her or the number that the neighbors told her was mine and the phone that they called from.  I wasn't here to defend myself, but Roger kept telling her that he knew I wouldn't avoid her calls.  She didn't believe him and kept saying, "I'm not that scary.  I don't know why she would avoid my calls."  Anyway, since they had no way to prove that our kids knocked the trees down, they can't charge us.  So, that's good.  Now that we know the type of neighbors that we are dealing with, we can't let the kids go out and play outside with out us there to supervise.  Being outside supervising so my kids can play is exhausting.  I've stopped the neighbor kids from knocking down a third tree and I've saved them all from being run over a few times.  They all seem to know nothing about safety around cars.  They have no rules and nobody watches them ever.  One day, I decided that I was too tired to go out and (against my better judgment) I let them go out with out me for a little while.  When Roger went out to check on them, Parker's friend had a lighter that he was playing with.  We took it away and decided that it really isn't safe for the kids to be out with these friends.  They all have no rules and get into so much trouble!  Then when something gets broken, they blame it on our kids.  The kids have always been able to go outside and play with friends.  This is going to be a rough year for them since they can't do that here.  I feel bad, but it's the only way.  We have been keeping busy though.  I take the kids to the park a lot and let them play with friends from school or old neighborhoods we have lived in.  On the days Roger doesn't work, we go out adventuring (Hiking, camping, exploring places we haven't been before). That stuff has been a lot of fun.