Oh, these are the people in your neighborhood

This past Saturday was our neighborhood picnic, organized by a woman named Cathy who lives down the street. She always plans the events in the 'hood, which I appreciate. As soon as she told me that she had set the date of August 13, I had marked it on my calendar. But, when the day came, it began to POUR! The heavens had let loose and it was really coming down. I wasn't sure if she was still planning on having it or not, so we decided to wait and see if the rain let up. But, it continued to soak the ground and everything in between. We saw our next-door neighbors get in their minivan and head that direction - but I know they are close friends with the organizers, so I thought they may just get together. We continued to wait. We saw some more folks heading down, and we decided eventually to give it a go.

I cut up watermelon & cantaloupe and added other fruit like grapes & blueberries for a fruit salad to take as our side dish to share. We decided to grill our own meat at home rather than taking it along because, as Shawn put it to me, "we have a lot of kids to be worrying about cooking and what they're doing." It struck me that from two kids to three kids and we are now in the "a lot" number, but it felt so true. We ate our sandwich and headed that way. An hour late, we were one of the last families to arrive.

The kids saw other kids playing out in the rain and eventually warmed up to the idea - they jumped in puddles, splished and splashed out in the driveway as the parents sat in a circle with our outdoor chairs in their two-car garage. They also had a beach tent up in front of the garage for overflow, which was nice. Shawn ended up hanging out there talking to our neighbor Paul and other neighbors Mike & Greg also joined in on the 'guy' section. At the end of the night, we took pictures of some of the people who were hanging out. Here are the guys that were left (many families like the Breeder's and Anderson's had already said farewell, along with Paul and Bernie, etc). IF I'm not mistaken, from left to right as you're looking at the picture it's Shawn, Caleb, Chip (in red), Joe (in front of him with his hands out), Greg and Mike.

We had already taken pictures of some of the women. Here I am with Susan and Shannon (in order of appearance in the photo below), who both live across the street. Shannon's daughter was in Emma's kindergarten class last year and her son Peyton will be in Joshua's grade at school as well.

Susan had her daughter Allison two months before Ryan, and she also had Dr. Conslato do her c-section. Allison weighs 12 lbs 6 oz (if I'm remembering correctly) at four months and Ryan already weighs 13 lbs 9 oz at two months. Here we are below with our babies.

Some of the other women are below. They joked that we were the 30s crowd picture, and they are in the 40s club. Cathy the organizer and host is on the left, Karen our sweet next door neighbor is in the middle, and Betsy is on the right.

The kids had a great time and were so well-behaved the entire night. They had a great time playing in the water. When the bigger kids went across the street to get their bikes, Caleb followed right into the street, but Joshua stayed on the sidewalk even though he was desperate to go along. We caught Caleb and told him he was NOT allowed to play on the road or cross the street without an adult. But, they had fun anyway. They even learned some new expressions and dances from the neighbor kiddos! ;-)

Ryan was also a gem. He didn't fuss while Daddy was walking him around, and eventually I took him back to our house to feed him and came back to the party with him in his PJs. While I was out, Daddy asked me to grab him a couple beers out of the fridge to bring along down. I didn't have enough hands to carry everything, so I put the bottles in the baby carrier with him. People laughed when I came back with the baby looking like this.

When it got dark, the rain had stopped. They brought out their fire pit and let the kids do sparklers and roast marshmallows for s'mores. The kids thought this was great fun! They were soaked through to their underwear, but we had brought old towels for them, so they cozied up in their little chairs with their towels wrapped around them to watch at first and then eventually joined in.

At the end of the night, they started playing ball with their friends and our neighbor Mike joined right in in helping them play, which we thought was nice. I also had a great time catching up with the neighbors and hearing all of their stories. Shawn & I exchanged guy and gal stories when we got home. I joked that it's not gossip if they're telling you their own stories! We also learned the names of more of the neighbors on our street. It was a fun evening and a late night for the boys, who still woke up at the crack of dawn the next morning. :)

I've said this a million times, but it's still true. While our house needed a ton of work when we moved in (and still needs quite a bit with all we've done to it already!), I am glad we live where we do. I truly enjoy our development and the very sweet neighbors who live here.