My wife, the superstar

Tonight, we had a neighborhood block watch party. We have a great neighborhood, but recently there has been an increase in vandalism, theft, graffiti and drugs. So, my wife worked closely with the city's police department and several neighbors and planned a kickoff event for a block watch program.

When my wife does something, though, she really does it. When the city told her that a normal block watch program has about 10-12 homes in it, she decided to split up our entire subdivision (over 300 homes) into "zones" and get them all to the kickoff event. For the past few weeks, there has been an all-out effort to get everyone involved. Fliers went up on the mail boxes (even though that is technically against the law--these minor kinds of things don't stop my wife, frustrated mail carriers of the world notwithstanding). Cookies were baked, a really cool guy in the neighborhood made a website for it, announcements were passed out door to door the night before, block captains were appointed, etc.

She was nervous--would anyone really come? In the Arizona 100 degree May heat? Well, I counted around 150 adults and about 50 children who showed up! That was really impressive, especially when you consider that some of them probably would have rather watched the American Idol finals. It was a pretty cool thing!

And the highlight of the evening? During the middle of the safety presentation by the nice Crime Prevention Officer, I realized that our two-year-old daughter was nowhere in sight. She had been playing with one of her two-year-old friends, running around in the nearly-endless greenbelt where the meeting was being held. Last I had seen her, she was with a group of about 50 kids, running around, having fun. I grabbed my six-year-old son and we went looking for them. Turned out they had walked about a quarter of a mile down the greenbelt, toward the (gated, thank goodness) canal. Just the two of them, dressed in Disney princess dresses, holding hands, walking down the greenbelt. I don't know where they were headed, but my son and I rounded them up and brought them back to the safety presentation.

If that isn't the classic Mary and Martha scenario, I don't know what is! Too busy keeping the neighborhood safe to realize our own two year old had wandered off.