LOVE THY NEIGHBOR-----PART 2

In Oklahoma weather terms our reception into this new neighborhood was a typical warm front followed by a blustery cold front which was followed by a storm that popped out of no where!!

Since we moved in back in February we had not spent to much time out front with the boys. Two days into our living here we got a knock on the door from the "gate keeper" welcoming us to the neighborhood, he brought with him the quarterly newspaper that he writes for the neighborhood and a copy of the HOA covenants. We asked him about the "extra parking" in our cull de sac and if it would be a problem for our daughter Annie to park there so we didn't have to shuffle cars when we wanted to go somewhere and he told us that there are a "few" people that might want to complain about it since it was suppose to be for guest parking only but to not let that bother us. The gate keeper also went on to say that the rules are for no on street parking but that his house was so far away from the guest parking that he was never going to make any of his guest park in it and have to walk all the way back to his house then he laughed and made a comment about some people are just to much of a "stuff shirt" person but he was glad to have us in the neighborhood and stop in at his house anytime if we needed anything.

John and I chuckled about some of the rules and couldn't wait till we looked over the HOA packet just to see what all was in it. That of course is when it became clear just how much this neighborhood DIDN'T want kids in it as they had rules like:

No kids toys or things in the front yard, No swing sets, play gyms, playhouses above 6 feet in the back yard allowed,( when was the last time you saw a swing set under 6 feet tall-lol!!) no trampolines, no basketball goals allowed, no above ground pools--any in ground pool had to be approved by the architectual committee
No obnoxious noise that would be deemed as disruptive to the neighborhood and the neighborhood gets to determine what is obnoxious!(this of course means the "neighborhood can say that children playing loudly is obnoxious and disruptive")

So we laughed about it and went about our life letting Annie park in the guest parking and making sure she parked in our driveway whenever any neighbor was having a party or friends over--which NEVER HAPPENED DURING THE FIRST TWO MONTHS WE WERE HERE and no complaints by anyone.

The neighbor to the right of us would smile and wave when we saw him out but we never saw his wife, we walked the boys to the pond one night and met another neighbor across the street and they smiled and loved meeting the boys so we felt like we had been given a warm welcome considering this was a non child neighborhood. Of course the weather was always hot then cold then rainy so the boys didn't play out front and we didn't have much contact with the neighbors during the early spring until mid to late April when a clear "cold front was about to be unleashed on us!"

It started shortly after the weather got good enough for us to play outside. There was a house that always had an older man sitting outside talking to one of the neighbors next door to me and they would wave when I left and I waved and smiled back all the time but that stopped suddenly after I let the boys ride their bikes outside in the cul de sac and he noticed them. Once when taking the boys for a walk around the pond we stopped to watch the dogs playing in the back yard of people that live in the "green house" as their back yard backs to the trail that goes around the pond and the lady of the house came out and shot us a dirty look and took her dogs in. I didn't think anything of it because I figured she got tired of people standing out her back yard looking at her house---which made me think way in the world would you buy a house that backs to a trail if you didn't want anyone looking at your yard and we continued our walk. The next day I noticed they had an American flag flying on their flag pole and didn't think anything of it either.

I finally saw the neighbors wife to the right of us one day while out with the boys and smiled real big at her and waved but she just looked angry at me and turned around and went back into her house so I shrugged it off thinking maybe her hubby is the friendly one of the family. Little did I know that the cold front would only get colder the more we played in the driveway. I had play dates over and one little boy loved to ride his bike so his parents would bring his bike so the boys could ride around and be safe since this little one lived in the country and didn't have a contained area to ride and again I never thought twice about it after all I was always out there with them and if I thought they were being to loud I made them be quite or we went into the back yard to play.
Near the end of April we got our first call from the HOA president telling us we couldn't be parking in the "guest parking" and John explained that we weren't leaving a dead car in the parking just allowing our daughter to park there when it was open so we could all get out easily and the man informed us the we should clean out our garage so that we could pull our cars in and have room for Annies car on the driveway--that made us laugh because the gate keeper had told us that at one time someone in the neighborhood had petitioned the HOA to add in the rules that ALL CARS BE PARKED IN THE GARAGE and not in peoples driveways---he said some things about that which I won't post because I"m a family friendly blog--lol!! But it was funny that we got a call just as we started to let our boys play outside, and even funnier because from the day we moved in the ONLY time we ever saw anyone have someone over and use the guest parking was one car on Easter Sunday and two cars on Mothers day---the guest parking is a four car slot so Annies car never prevented anyone from parking in it. We made Annie park in the drive way for about 3 nights then seeing that NO ONE WAS USING THE GUEST PARKING we let her go back to parking there.

Little did we know the storm was about to hit.........