Month: May 2006

It has come to my attention that someone has been stealing pictures of my kids off of my website and claiming them as their own children. Why in the world would you do this? Do you not have a life of your own? Is your own life so pathetic that you have to pretend to be someone else? I really do feel sorry for you that you have nothing better to do than steal other peoples pictures and pretend they are you own. You really do need to get a life of your own.

As a result, I will no longer make my pictures accessible to anyone. All new pictures will be placed on Flickr and only accessible if I know exactly who you are. I will not add you to my list unless you are a trusted friend. Those of you that are my friends will already know my email address. If you aren’t, you won’t. If you email me, I’ll send you an invite so that you can get access to the pictures.

I regret that this action has become necesary, but I will not tolerate people trying to pass off my kids as their own.

Our neighbor across the street took pictures of the cops in our front yard. You can see where the trampled the seedlings in the pics.

Brandy and Tammy came by this morning to pick up clothes for Tammy. Mark had tossed some of her clothes on the front porch, but she left those clothes there. They said Joey (the teenage son) had been with Brandy and wasn’t in the house while all the cops were staking out the neighborhood. They think he needs to go to the hospital to go get check out, but he won’t go and the cops won’t make him go without there having been a crime committed. I told Tammy that I’m praying for them and I hope it will all get worked out soon.

It is a good thing we cleaned up our house this weekend, since the police commandeered it and forced us to evacuate last night. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. It all started when I was packing orders in the bonus room. Aidan and Riley were up there playing when Riley said, “Look mommy, I see a police lady and a police car”. That got my immediate attention and I went over to the window to check it out. Sure enough there was a police lady, two policemen and several police cars parked up the street. It is rare to see one, let alone three police cars in our neighborhood, especially two days in a row. Okay, I guess I should go back and start this from the beginning.

I was coming home from shopping on Saturday, turned onto my street and saw two police cars parked up the street from my house. I pulled into my driveway and saw my neighbor Melissa outside with her kids talking to Dan. My kids were also all outside by her house playing. She lives two doors down the street from me, so I got out of my car and headed over to her house and said, “What’s up with the cops” as I passed the house between our two houses. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the best place to say that since it turned out the police were at our next door neighbors house.

Melissa and Dan filled me in on the situation. There had been yelling at our neighbors house and someone, probably Tammy – the lady that lives at that house, had called the police. All the kids had seen the police arrive and were all watching to see what was going to happen next. It all ended peacefully, no one was arrested and the cops left. Mark (Tammy’s husband) came out and Melissa asked if everything was okay. He said everything was fine, went back in the house and then came out and drove away in his truck. This isn’t just any truck, mind you. It’s a huge white truck that I refer to as “Big Bertha”. This thing is loud! I can always hear it from my house when he arrives or leaves.

So, that was the end of it. Or so we thought. Then last night as we were finishing up with dinner, Dan went out front and Aidan and Riley went out too. That’s when we started to hear more screaming. This time, Brandy (who is Tammy and Mark’s grown daughter) was over there with her boyfriend. Aidan and Riley were right over there trying to figure out what was happening. Dan made them come in and we went upstairs to look out and see what was going on.

Brandy was crying and her and Landen (the boyfriend) got in her car and drove off. Before leaving, she asked Melissa to give her a call if anything else happened. Everyone went inside and we though the situation was resolved. It wasn’t.

That’s when I started packing orders and soon after Riley commented on the police activity outside. Tammy must have called the police and I saw her standing in her driveway talking to three police officers. It wasn’t long after that that they moved from her driveway to between my house and my other next door neighbors house.

I counted a total of five police officers outside my house. I got a good view from Aidan’s room and was able to hear them fairly well from his window. From my eavesdropping, I was able to find out that Mark has recently started taking some sort of antidepressant medication and it had apparently caused him to go off the deep end. That in and of itself wasn’t the polices concern. Their concern was that he has a lot of guns and ammunition. And, Tammy said he had been up all night cleaning these guns and she was terrified of what he might do.

During all this, Dan tried to put out the trash cans and was told by the police to get back in the house. The same thing happened to several other curious neighbors. The police didn’t want anyone out of their homes. Around this time, Melissa called. She said she saw six more police officers down the other street that she can see from her house and we can’t see. One of whom was running down the street with a big shotgun. We told her what we knew and she hung up to call Brandy.

Brandy arrived and little while later and Tammy and several police officers went further up the street to meet her. Unfortunately for me, that meant I could no longer listen in on what Tammy was talking about with the police. Turns out it didn’t make a lot of difference, since it was soon after that that we got a call from the police telling us we had to evacuate and to go out the backyard side gate.

Riley and Jared were both asleep and all the other kids were in their pajamas about to be asleep. It must have been around 8 pm by this time. We gathered them up, grabbed some blankets and headed downstairs thinking we were going to go outside and down the street to wait this out for a while. We got downstairs and find a police officer waiting for us and he is telling us this could last an hour or all night so be prepared to be gone till morning. He also asked us if we had the numbers of any of our other neighbors. One of whom called right about that time and we gave the phone to the police officer to tell her about the evacuation.

I happened to have a list of a bunch of our neighbors phone numbers and addresses from my baby shower list. I printed that off and gave it to the officer. Then I ran around the house grabbing blanket, animals, jammies, clothes and shoes for all the kids. Somewhere during all this Dan’s parents happened to call and we told them we were being evacuated and were headed over there. Melissa also called and we told her we would be at Dan’s parent’s house. We were finally ready to leave around 8:30 and the officer told us to leave the house unlocked because they may need it for the operation.

We got all the kids in the car, trough the garage – pre the officers instructions, and backed out of the driveway. We saw four police officers standing in the floor bed at the front of our house. Kayli was very concerned about her seedlings that she had planted there a few weeks ago and been watering daily.

We finally made it over to Dan’s parent’s house, by which time Falyn was screaming because she was hungry and I hadn’t been able to feed her at 8:00 when she normally would have nursed. I feed her while Dan got all the kids out of the car and I filled the in-laws in on the whole store.

About the time we get all the kids settled in the phone rings. It was Melissa telling us it was all over and we could go home. We called the police station to verify it was okay for us to go home and they said it was. I’m not sure of exactly what happened, but apparently they called Mark and he surrender to them. They ended up leaving him at the house and Tammy went with Brandy. Since “no crime was committed”, no arrest was made. Pretty anti-climatic ending, huh?

I’m really glad that it turned out that way and no one got hurt. Mark is normally a really nice guy and I’d hate for something to have happened to him. This morning around 6:30, I heard Big Bertha peel out and drive off down the street. Right now no on is home next door and I’m left here feeling like I’m waiting for the next shoe to drop. One thing I am a bit concerned about it where their teenage son is. I hope that he is over at his sister’s place.

Before you ask, yes I’ll give you an update if anything else happens. I’m hoping that Mark goes to the doctor and gets an adjustment to his medicine and that will put an end to all the police action on our block.

Oh ya, Kayli’s seedlings did get trampled. I’m hoping they will spring back up, but only time will tell. The weeds, however, have all sprung back nicely.