Seeking God Knows What

We had our home visit on Friday night.  Since our social worker is our agency director, we don’t have to wait for anyone else’s approval. So now, despite not having it in written form yet, we are homestudy approved, though we are waiting on a couple references and our background check/fingerprint results.  As she said, “If we need your written homestudy in a hurry, I’ll get it done.” I’d love it if we needed it in a hurry but I’m also content to wait for a bit.  This is the same social worker who ended up matching us the day we were approved with her agency, although we had been waiting two years with another agency prior to that.

It turned out to be a rather comical home visit.   The church across the street from our house had vacation bible school last week with their big finale on Friday night.  This finale included a petting zoo, located in the sideyard directly across from our house, meaning the street is essentially blocked off.  Widget, upon noticing the animals across the street, snuck out the front door and, of course, I notice this JUST as our social worker is pulling around the corner and into the driveway, where Widget proceeds to stand in the middle of the driveway not moving, until I called to her to get out of the way.  Good thing our social worker knows us and that we don’t just let Widget run wild through the neighborhood!

But that isn’t the last of it.  In order to understand this next part, I have to preface with the layout and location of our house.  We are renting a small ranch on a corner lot, with the house facing a street that ends in a cul-de-sac.  Behind our house is actually a lot and a half- the half belonging to the people behind us.  The whole backyard is open with very few trees and a half-driveway located in our neighbor’s part of the yard.  I’d like to have some sort of fence protection because I feel very exposed to the cross street, which is a busier residential road but I digress. 

Anyway, we are sitting at the dining room table, which looks out over the backyard, going over paperwork, when we see not one but TWO cars driving through our backyard to our next door neighbor’s yard.  Apparently since the road in front of our house and our neighbor’s was blocked by this time with the petting zoo, and our neighbors were having some sort of gathering that evening too, they just decided to DRIVE through our yard using the half-driveway to access it.  Shortly thereafter, we notice two little kids, probably 2 and 5, fully-clothed, playing in Widget’s wading pool still full of water from our afternoon playtime.

By this time, we are cracking up, wondering if we should go outside and charge parking plus pool fees since our yard is apparently a free-for-all.