This morning, dh took us to the place Pk calls "Old McDonalds" for breakfast. She's a huge fan of their pancakes. As you can imagine, eating anywhere other than home with two children 3 and under is often less than relaxing. This morning, everyone behaved and we had a great time.
Our next stop was the open house at the local firehall. We thought that Pk might be interested - these days, she has an interest in vehicles and transportation (although not anywhere to the degree of the boys around her). At first, she was really shy and it felt like we were wasting our time but after she saw some children getting to operate the siren, she was hooked. We left with a free barbecue lunch, timbits, a firefighters hat, a pumpkin, a toy and memories of both "driving" a firetruck and having sprayed the hose. The firefighters were really kind to the little ones and given that we have a volunteer fire service, they were generous with their time.
In the afternoon, our next-door neighbours had a street party. It was wonderful. We have lived here for 7 years and while we have gotten to know our immediate neighbours, we haven't met everyone on the street. It was exactly the kind of gathering I love. The make-up of our street is very interesting - the houses are older but with really large lots. Some homes are owned by people who have lived here for 30 years and several have been bought in the last few years and renovated (like the hosts of the party, who bought an awful house with good bones and have done a full renovation worthy of a magazine). The younger people tend to be professionals while the older residents tend to be more working class. We had everything from teachers, nurses and I.T. professionals to the bikers from down the street. I love groups in which the social distinctions that tend to exist drop and people risk relating to people who are different than they are. It's why we moved here in the first place - oddly enough, in the city, with its incredible diversity, people tended to stick so closely exclusively to "people like us". It was really fun and people were so kind to the kids - one neighbour even walked around with Baby Bean for half an hour so that I could eat hot food. I came home feeling very lucky that we live where we do.
I hope you enjoyed your day as much as I enjoyed mine.
It's so good to have those affirming moments. As the song says,
ReplyDelete"'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be."