04 September 2017

Five Minute Friday ~ Neighbor{hoods} and Community

I've spent the majority of my Labor Day Weekend out wandering around several different neighborhoods...  My sore and tired back and legs attest to that fact every time I try to move! My littlest littler would agree, as she was hoofin' it along right beside me - at least most of the time! We were busy helping friends distribute door hanger advertisements, and for their participation, our kids earn a little bit of cash they'll use to help finance basketball participation this school year.

Showing off her blue "raspberry" tongue - from the Slurpy she earned because of her great attitude, even though this weekend consisted of a LOT of hard work and effort.

Then, the one day in our long weekend when I wasn't supervising M&M's child labor efforts, hubby and I decided to go exploring in our new neighborhood. Please note the elevation change: down 53 m, up 70 m - one way. We had to do the reverse returning home, over a round trip distance of just shy of km.


We jokingly (?) wondered if we'd stumbled through a secret wardrobe and tripped into Narnia...

We live in a beautiful neighborhood that is part of a truly lovely city. We even mentioned it as we were walking: sometimes we feel the need to pinch ourselves to make sure we aren't dreaming. 

Just down the road and around the corner, an easy walk from chez nous (i.e. our house) is a hair stylist who has her salon in the basement of her home. Tori has a new hair cut (one of the ladies in the school office told her she was "just a tiny bit of a rebel" with her new do)  that requires regular maintenance and so we stopped in the other day to see if it was something they could do. We made appointments for both Tori and me. I had mine the other day and the gal did a fabulous job - at least she did what I asked. She cut it so that I could make it look like the photo AND so that it also still looks passable even on those days (actually most days) I don't have time to style it. I know that for a fact because after I supervised M&M the other day, we went swimming in the pool for a few minutes and then went out to see a super cool performance. I did NOTHING to my hair, literally. Like I ran my fingers through it, finger parted and didn't touch it again. The result?


In all my walking time the past three days, however, I've been thinking: We can land in wonderful neighborhoods and thank God for placing us there. However, the ball is then in our court. He leaves it up to us to start building community - finding things we have in common with our neighbors and using those commonalities to nurture relationships. 

And we are getting some of those opportunities: the hairdresser, our neighborly neighbor who came over late one night to let us know that our pool was overflowing (and apologized profusely for disturbing me late in the evening, but he and his wife had been so impressed with our little girls and their willingness to do do semi-polar plunges just because they loved the pool), the lady who walks her dog down our street and her dog looks a lot like our Monty, the kids who are playing at the park at the end of our street, others who frequent the "leave a book, take a book" mini-library just on the other side of the golf course, our neighbor who has gardens to die for and I wonder if he'd be willing to give us a few tips for next summer...

But it takes a little courage, a little gumption and a willingness to be more extroverted than I am normally, to listen to the Spirit and to know when to try and open my mouth to start those initial conversations.

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