Our Next Door Neighbor Rocks

In our lives as homeowners, Sean and I have been pretty lucky with the people who have ended up being next door to us. Well, there was one family who was a horror story but for the most part, our neighbors have been nice people. Our current neighbor though is off the charts with her coolness. Her name is Charlotte and she is one tough customer. We’ve lived next door to her since 2004 and every time I’m around her I learn some new and interesting fact about her. She’s a traveled the world, gone into areas with dire need as a volunteer with the Red Cross, she ministered to my injuries when an object fell on my head and cracked it open in spite of the fact she dressed in “going out clothes” and she stepped in dog poop in my backyard while trying to help stop the bleeding from my planetary sized noggin. Oh my god, can you say run-on sentence?? This lady is my idol and my boys LOVE her. Not only is she cool but her husband is pretty awesome, too.

Yesterday Charlotte called us up and invited us to go play tennis to which the boys responded, “YES!!!” So, off we went to some tennis courts close-ish to our home. Now, I used to play tennis for our country club tennis team when I was a teenager. Are you impresssed? Don’t be, I wasn’t that good at it. In fact, after going out for one lesson, the coach invited me to be on the team because they were incredibly desperate. I was 14 and was getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter by 10 and 11 year olds. A humbling experience, but I digress. Charlotte has taken us out for tennis before to try and teach the boys how to play and the last time we went, Iain got very upset because he wasn’t able to play well right away. He puts a lot of pressure on himself to do something perfectly the first time so it was frustrating to him to struggle with hitting the ball over the net. Yesterday though, Charlotte was so good with them. She knew from our prior experience that Iain is sensitive and she was very gentle in her approach and it worked like a charm. She had them do a couple of exercises to give them the feel of running up to the net for the ball:

First she had them run up the center line, jump and then stop in front of the net so she could toss a ball to them. They had to immediately catch it and toss it back.

No, Iain didn’t land on his butt here even though it looks like that’s what’s going to happen. It was a really big jump.

Once they had the feel for that, she had them get their rackets and run the same exercise except this time, they had to hit the ball back to her. Look at that form! Watch out Andy Roddick!

Eventually Ryan just wanted to run around on the court because he’s a lunatic and the Tasmanian Devil and running around like crazy is what he enjoys doing.

We all had a great time and hope we can do it again soon. I love my neighbors and hope they know how highly we think of them and how special they are to us. We’re really lucky to live next door to such nice and interesting people.