Ode to The Neighbors

Over the last few weeks since I've started blogging I've been talking about all the exciting plans we have for moving into the new house. One thing I have overlooked is the one (and maybe only) downside to moving out of the duplex, but it is a big downside! We love our neighbors!! I am going to be so sad to leave them behind when we move. In our old house back in Virginia we only knew one set of neighbors, they were retirement age, and we could never remember their names. When we came here we weren't looking to make friends with anyone on the street, it just happened that way. We first began talking because our dogs always wanted to play together and liked to sniff at each other between the fence boards in the backyard. Eventually we let them run around together in the front yard and we started chatting. After a while this became an almost nightly ritual that I looked forward to. And then after couple of months of chatting in the front yard, I guess they liked us enough to invite us out with them. It happened to be George's birthday, and I won't share too many details on here, but Andrew jokingly threatened to punch George in the face, and they all wondered if he was half serious. I guess that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

It's been almost a year now and we've shared a lot of fun times. We have barbecued together on many occasions, stayed up late playing video games, hiked with the dogs on the greenbelt, celebrated all of our birthdays' together, gone to concerts, and drank many a cold beverage in the front yard. They have turned out to be some of our best friends in Austin! I'm glad we'll be just a few minutes away still, but I will miss the ease and casual feeling of having friends right next door.

I have to share one of my favorite stories regarding the neighbors. One evening Jaime sent me a text message to see if the we wanted to come outside with the dogs. She meant to send the text to my cell phone but accidentally sent it to the house phone. Andrew and I were sitting on the couch watching tv when the house phone rang once and then the answering machine immediately picked up. It began recording in a robot sounding voice, "Can Beamer and Macy come out to play?" We just about died laughing. When we opened the front door to go outside Jaime had no idea why we were laughing so hard until we told her. None of us had any idea that you could text a land line and it would actually speak the words!

Fast forward a month or so to my birthday. Jaime decided to be cute and send a text message birthday wish to the house phone for me to hear when I got home from work. She wrote out the words to the birthday song by the Beatles, and where the music would play she typed "na na na na." For whatever reason, when Sprint translated this text message into audio, "na" became "North America." Listen here and get ready to laugh. Besides the obvious hilariousness of it, at the end, instead of pronouncing her name "jay-me" it chose to pronounce it like the Hispanic male's name. This event has been one of our favorite jokes ever since. After this, I will never be able to separate birthdays and North America.

So here are some pictures of us with "the neighbors" (I use it as a collective term for all four of them) from my birthday party and on the way to see Ghostland Observatory.












































We have had some fun times. Jaime, George, Mel, Iggy,
Marika, Richard and Lucy, we will miss you guys, but there is no excuse for not coming over to visit!







And just as a glimpse of what is to come, our new neighbor are the "crazy people on the street with the ugly house." That's right, they are the ones with the neon blue house with teal trim. You won't have any trouble finding us! We're right next door!