Here's to new friends.

Hey there everyone,

I've been really busy this week, and I'm sad to say that blogging has been on the back burner. Wahh wahh. Moving on.

Recently there has been a funny relationship developing around here. A while back I posted about a gun-toting child creeping outside my living room window. Yep. That happened. Here she is for those of you who missed out:

Around 2 weeks ago, said gun-toting child ran up to Thomas while he was outside playing with Jack. She introduced herself--her name is Lucy--and asked "what our cat's name is because she's seen her in the window and she's pretty." Thomas answered that her name is Charlotte, and she's a really nice cat. Lucy explained that she "has a cat and her friend came over and said that her cat is the prettiest cat she's ever seen." Obviously, Lucy is pretty cool.

That same day, she asked Thomas if she could throw the ball for Jack. Not wanting to be a jerk, he obliged. Not wanting to come off as a 'Chester-the-molester', he insisted that they stand at the bottom of the drive-way within view of her house.

Yesterday around 1:30, Thomas was pulling onto our street when he noticed Lucy riding her bike. He tried to disguise himself to avoid having to talk to her, but she noticed it was him and peddled furiously to catch up and meet him at the house. He was on the phone with his dad at the time, so he didn't get out of the car immediately. After a few seconds, he looked to his left and saw Lucy staring at him from outside the window. Kind of like this:

(Ok so it probably wasn't like that because the above little girl is actually a crazed killer. But it was weird. And I just Googled "creepy little girl staring" to find that picture. You're welcome).

Thomas had the 'out' of being on the phone, so he proceeded to sit in the car talking for 25 minutes while Lucy climbed trees, jumped around, and tried to get his attention--all to no avail. Finally, she wandered away to do whatever unsupervised children typically do. Thinking he was in the clear, he got out of the car. BUT NO, Lucy spotted him and headed back. At this point, she doesn't even bother to make small talk--she just snags Jack's chuck-it [a ball throwing device] and acts like she owns the place.

I would like to point out a few things I find weird about this situation (ahem, everything):

1) Lucy is 6 or 7. She plays alone all up and down the block, whenever and wherever she wants. This includes behind and beside our house (what would be our backyard) where there is broken glass and a rickety tree house. Safety first?

2) This is Atlanta. There are murders, rapists, creepers, and various unsavory characters afoot. The child is never supervised, rides her bike in front of cars, and has no rules.

3) The kid doesn't attend school. We're beginning to think that our street has some sort of homeschool co-op situation going on. I've mentioned our potentially unschooled neighbors before--now I think everyone is in on the gig.

4) Thomas is a big, hairy man. And this little girl has no fear of him whatsoever. Even more shocking, neither do her parents (who we've never met).

We think the whole thing is a bit strange, but hey, what do we know? I'm secretly relieved that she's never talked to me, because I have no idea what I'd say to a 7 year old. Thomas is always careful not to be too friendly, because...well, that dangerous in "this day and age" with all the creepers around.

On a completely different note, here is an adorable video of Jack and Charlotte snuggling last night. 

I know this was a strange and random post, but what can I say. We have a strange and random life. I hope you're all having a great week. I can't believe it's Friday already!

-T, K, J & C

P.S. Today I discovered that China Glaze is coming out with a Hunger Games line of nail polish. I squealed when I read about it. (I'm obviously a nail polish nerd). I don't typically buy China Glaze, but I'll definitely be checking this one out.

It's all good in the neighborhood.

Hey again!

We're going to try to keep up with the blog pretty regularly (especially at first, while we're both temporarily unemployed...ha), so I'll probably be updating with little random things a lot. It might be TMI for some of you, but I know others will appreciate it:]

For those of you who haven't been to Georgia, the architecture here is really different from that of Texas--and we LOVE it! There are lots of old two-story houses with big wrap around porches that are painted fun colors. Personally, my biggest aspiration in life is to live in a cute little yellow house with a huge porch, like this one (but I guess I'd settle for smaller).

We live in a part of Atlanta called Chamblee, but it's often referred to as North Atlanta. The area is quickly transitioning and the houses are a really interesting mix of huge, new "McMansions" and little old houses, like ours. We've been taking some pictures of the newly built mansions around our house to give you an idea of what we're looking at. The architecture is modeled after the older houses in the area, but on a much larger, fancier scale.

 This is the biggest house we've seen so far.

 I LOVE this house. It's right around the corner from us.

 We're noticing a red door trend in the neighborhood. I'm down.

This one is on our street.

 We saw these last two on a walk tonight. They are huge.

The final big one.

Contrasting these houses with our little house, pictured below, and our neighbor's house, is pretty funny. The people next door are a really interesting family, supposedly "old hippies" who have a ton of kids and a really weird combination of stuff around their place. They hang their clothes outside on a huge line--in this Georgia humidity, I wonder if they ever dry?--which we can see from our window (pictured below), and the husband drives around regularly with a canoe on top of his old Volvo. They also recently chopped down a tree in their yard, but they left the entire thing (cut in huge pieces) just piled up around their house. We like their house though, because it has a lot of character. It's really interesting to see the difference from house to house.

This is our house. We love the blue shutters and cute front steps.

Our view of the neighbor's clothes line. My mom thinks it looks like Swiss Family Robinson.

Tomorrow the State Farm adjuster is finally coming (I mean hello, a tree fell on our house 4 days ago!) and we should learn more about what can be done to fix the ceilings and roof. Mold was discovered in the insulation at the back of the house--no surprise since it was built in 1947 and it's so humid here--so the back two rooms have been blocked off and work has stopped until the adjuster comes. It's being called "secondary damage" since it was obviously there before the tree, so State Farm will decide what they're going to cover and hopefully reconstruction will begin soon!

I'm going to post some of the miscellaneous moving pictures we took this week, as well as some of the fun stuff we've done since we got here. There might also be some cute Jack pictures too...the best part of course!

-T, K, & J