When good neighbors do odd things.

There are many things I do not fancy about living here. But I do love our neighbors! We live on a corner, so our only real neighbors are to the left of us. Lovely, God fearing couple are John and Sue (not their real names). Have a great son, we'll call him Danny - just graduating from high school. We all get along well. Their son Danny has taken on an "older brother" role with our oldest son Jack who will be 9 this August. As I was saying, we all get along well. They come over for dinner and board games at our house. We go over to theirs. We chat over fences. We pray together in tough times. Just really, great people. Of all of the times we have thought of moving to another house - it is always the neighbors, and not wanting to move from them, that was the swing vote against.

Tonight left me scratching my head a bit. Maybe it is that we live so far north that it doesn't even begin to get dark until after 9:30pm. Maybe it is that they haven't had small children for a long time. But, after chatting with John and Sue for about 20 minutes this evening, AND mentioning I had to get in and put the littles to bed because they were sooooo tired (at 7:15pm)...John starts up his lawn mower and proceeds to make all kinds of racket at 8:45pm! I don't know what possessed him to do that. I had gotten Pippa and Izzy to bed. I was in the basement doing laundry. You know. Putting wet clothes in the dryer. Starting a new load in the washer. Sorting dirty clothes into the proper hampers. Folding clean clothes. You get the idea. Jack comes down stairs and asks if the babies are in bed and sleeping because, "Mr. John is out in the yard with his lawn mower." Now way, I though. But sure enough - yes. I was a bit irritated to say the least. Especially since he was mowing his lawn until after 9:30pm. I don't want to be one of those dragon lady neighbors. But I also don't think it is ok to be mowing the lawn well after my little ones have been down for the night. I try and respect them by not doing our yard work early in the morning - and keeping the kids inside until a respectable hour in the mornings on weekends and in the summer (they are teachers and are home during the summers). At any rate - I am going to have to have a little chat, in love of course. Do you think bringing some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies will soften their hearts to my words? Or maybe oatmeal-chocolate chips. Oh I am such a wimp when it comes to any kind of confrontation. Even thought it won't really be a "confrontation". I have such a hard time with this type of thing in general....