The Halbrooks Compound Expands (!)

The rumors are true.  While I was away in England, my family launched another campaign against the "good fences make good neighbors" types, and insodoing, increased the Halbrooks boundaries by 46%.  Hailed as our greatest territorial gain in some 30 years, I have attached a diagram to help explain the situation to the uninitiated:

(If that illustration does not explain the entire situation to you at first glance, you may want to have some words with Rand McNally, who labeled this drawing "the achievement of a lifetime").

Now, with one eye on the diagram (so wonderfully drawn by the artistic mastermind that lives in the basement), and one eye on this here text, follow me as I explound.  If you only have one eye, I apologize.  You are simply out of luck.

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It was a cool, dim-lit April afternoon when it all started.  Higgins was frolicking in the backyard with imaginary sheep, Ma was knittin a new rug for the old chimney, Daddy Buck was talking to all of his relatives at the same time from inside Aunt Dee's car somewhere on 280 (via Skype), and Jenkins was raiding the local grocer for a bag of swedish fish.  But where was Pa?  As the old saying goes, "Pa does the fishin' where the wombat does the wishin'"  

And on this day, the saying was true.

With a can of his favorite carbonated fermented milk soft drink (melon flavoured) and a single vertebrae of a Camarasaurus, the neighbors were no match for his fury.  He paced the perimeter, slid through the loose gate, and waltzed into their living room with a maniacal set of facial features.  In less than 24 hours, the neighbors had all but fled the civilized world, and the house - well, the house was Ours.

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No.  Sadly, that's not how it really happened.  But as the diagram clearly demonstrates, we *did* purchase the house behind ours, and we *did* knock down the fence in between our yards, and we *are* moving in this very weekend.  Only the gray area on the map is unconquered.  When we do take it over (which will only take a matter of time, if things continue as they have), it will become grazing land for all the sheep I ever wanted.  

That way, Higgins will no longer have to frolic among imaginary friends.