November 1

So, after an interesting Halloween......wow. On, Thursday night, I worked late and Ty wanted to go to a haunted house with 2 carloads of his teenage male friends. Scary, huh? He stopped by and got some money from me and I proceeded to tell him to drive extra careful and be home early, all the usual mom stuff. After all, he has only had his license back less than a week. Around 10:30 that night, as I lay awake worrying, I decided to call him to be sure he made it back to town safely. They were on their way. Then I get a call from Brian around 11:30 as he is on his way to work. Apparently, he heard it on his scanner that someone was following 2 carloads of boys with their "hands" hanging out the window. He tried to call Ty, but he didn't answer, so I called him twice. Luckily, he calls me back, because he knew that I and/or Brian would be calling him. Meanwhile, I had been praying constantly, waiting to hear from him and worrying that he would lose his license until he turns 18. He states that they had passed a car, that apparently did not like it and that person(s) proceeded to follow them closely with their bright lights on. The boys apparently were getting angered by this and threw one of their POP cans out at them. Well, the person decided they needed to call this in and reported that they were following a car load of boys who were throwing BEER cans out the window. The boys were in luck though, because they were familiar with the deputy on duty and he followed them to the house they were staying at and they told their story and he said everything was ok. Good, I am thinking that maybe my prayers were answered. So, that is the beginning to my story.

Next day after getting home from work, I decide to connect with the kids and get an itinerary for the evening. Ty is planning on spooking kids at a haunted house put on by another high school student. This sounds like fun, but I encourage him to let someone else drive for a change. I don't need anymore worried nights and really don't want him to have anymore temptations to get into trouble. As I am on the phone, I am looking out the window and notice that someone has driven through our yard, making some deep ruts that I can see from the house. So, of course, I question him about this, thinking he may know something about it. He says no, and I think nothing of it.

The weather turns out to be beautiful and I got off work a little early, so Brian and I decide to take the motorcycle out for a little spin to enjoy the weather before trick-or-treating. We head out of town going past the portion of the yard that has been driven through and realize that whoever went through the yard had slid going up it, nearly missing the utility pole in the yard and that some front end damage and alot of grass has to be stuck in or around the tires. We decide that we will do some more investigating when we get back. There are some college boys that live just down the street behind us, so we decide to go by there and check out their cars. Only one is home and that is clean. As we head back down the street to go home, we see that our neighbor lady is out sweeping her porch and we get another view of the yard. We realize that whoever went up the ditch had to be going quite fast and has not only dug in the yard, but has ramped it landing about 10 feet further in the yard, then swerving into the neighboring yard and narrowly missing their house and just inches from taking out their deck. In fact, some of our sod was laying on their sidewalk. Now we are really curious and the neighbor guy gets home about this time and he isn't too happy about the fact that someone narrowly missed hitting his house. He works at a car repair shop and inspects the damage to our yard and figures that whoever did it must have some front end damage.

We take Hallie to the town Halloween party and she hooks up with a friend to go trick-or-treating so we decide to do some investigating, still not so sure that it wasn't one of Ty's friends who thought they were being funny. We checked all their cars and don't see any sign of damage or grass. After, I finally hear back again from Ty, he comes to the same conclusion that we have that it has to be the college kids next door. He also informs us that they like to have parties at a house in the country down the road from us.

Well, today we had big plans to rake up leaves and also to burn the pile of branches and twigs that have accumulated in the back yard. Had a big bonfire. While we were out there, Brian did some more looking around and sees that whoever did the damage must have actually fallen asleep because they started out across the street at another neighbor, went off the road there, swerved and just missed our mailbox across the street and then entered the ditch in our yard. Scary, huh? Hopefully, we or the sheriff's department can figure out who did it. (we did notify them)

So, anyway, we got the yardwork done, peeled potatoes for tomorrow's Norwegian meatball dinner at church, and are now just being lazy. The weather is turning cold and we are watching Iowa get beat by Illinois. KJ has gone to help Kal babysit their little cousins. Ty and his friend Schori are here waiting for me to get off the computer so they can get back to Xbox. Brian is sleeping and his girls went to a wedding with their mother. Oh, and I did make a big pot of chili and some beer bread to go with it. YUM-O. I think I will go back to reading my book and curling up by the spaceheater.