Hello, Neighbor

{how cute are those little houses from our retro Monopoly set?}

I'm pretty convinced that we have the best neighbors on the planet. There will be other houses, I'm sure. Other jobs. Other places. But we will never have this community again. Our neighbors love my kids, they look out for us, they come over for dinner and have us to their house, they loan us tools and DVDs, they drink wine with us, they laugh with us. And these great neighbors aren't all under one roof. Oh, no sir. We've got at least 4 front doors my kids can go bang on when they want to show off the new slip & slide in the front yard.

And I've been thinking about how wonderful it is to have people right here who I have never sent a single text to. I rarely email any of them. And if I have a question or someone needs sugar, we just knock on the door. Real people right in my own front yard who care about us, and us about them.

My husband was traveling for work last year and a neighbor came over to help out with dinner/bath/bed/the whole nine yards. As I'm serving dinner, I apologized for the state of my kitchen (perpetually cluttered even though it drives me mad) and she just said, "All I see is affection here." She could not have spoken words more comforting to me.

The other day, one of our Super Neighbors came over to tell me that another neighbor got some crazy deal on frozen pizzas and wanted to just give us 5 of them because she thought the boys might like them and she knows that I stay home (1 income, 4 bodies, simple math). As I'm putting the boys' shoes on to walk down the street, I apologize for the disaster that my house is (notice a theme here?). Right away, she says, "I came here to see you, not your house." See what I mean?

I've just been mulling this over and feeling very warm & fuzzy about it. Wouldn't it be nice if we treated people thoughtfully? If we all knew our neighbors? If we took care of each other a little more? Made the phone call instead of the text? Took a few of those treats you baked and give them to someone with a little handscribbled card?

Since you like hanging out here, you probably already do these things, no reminding or prompting needed. But I do like a good ramble every now and then, and this just seemed like the kind of thing I should put out there.
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