October 17, 2007

  • We had a nice day on Sunday.  On Sunday afternoon, our neighborhood had a block party--for the whole neighborhood.  It was the first one ever in the neighborhood's 16 year existance-and they had it directly in front of our house.  They closed off the street, and assigned food by first letter of last name...  We happen to have a guy who is a competitive barbecue competitor who lives in the neighborhood (who know?  I guess I do, now!) who made brisket, chicken and pork on this huge barbecue/smoker thing that was on wheels attached to the back of his truck.  He also made hot dogs for the kids.  There was a moon bounce and a fire truck with a demonstration for the kids, and Ron and I brought out some prizes that we had in the basement from a past Vacation Bible School and handed them out so that the kids would have something to take home.  Everybody just walked up from their house with chairs on their back and food and started mingling.  I discovered (well, honestly, I already knew it) that I am bad at mingling, but fortunately, others are really good at it, so while I was shy about walking up to people, they were nice about walking up to me.  And so many people commented about things that we had done to our house, and to our gardens.  We are now much more aware about how keenly people are watching, and know that we have to pay more attention to the front of our house :)   One lady wanted to walk up closer to see our flowers closer, so we gave her a tour.  People want us to come and give them gardening advice....if they only knew the level of trial and error that we have applied to our garden...we don't really know what we are doing, we just pretend we do!  It was nice, though...made us feel great!  Ron found lots of fellow astronomy buffs who live in the neighborhood, including an astrophysisist.who works at NASA, so he was in his element!  I found two delightful older Indian ladies-one from up the street, and one from down the street- who were original owners in the neighborhood, and were sharing recipes with me and telling me stories about the neighborhood when it was first built.  They were very sweet.  It's an interesting neighborhood....And it was a fun day....and the weather was perfect.  The funny thing is that it was supposed to go from 2-4, and people were still coming with food at 4:30. 


    The only bad thing was that Ron got stung by a bee and he is very allergic, so now he has a catcher's mitt for a hand and is on prednisone and benadryl.....poor thing.  He is probably the only one who got stung that day.....All he was doing was standing there...


    Hope everyone is having a good week


    peace....


     

Comments (4)

  • That sounds like lots of fun. I'm not good at mingling either, or at planning events, but I do like to talk to people. Especially old people--they're the most interesting! Wish I could get a tour of your gardens. My sister is an amazing gardener, too.

    I'm sorry about Ron's hand. The bees have a conspiracy, I know it.

  • i'm not good at mingling either...i think that's why i like blogging so much ...hmmm,

    sounds like fun though---our town would never do that. i say "town" because our little town probably has as many people as your block! ha!

  • Sounds like you had fun.  My sister had block parties when she lived in Streamwood and as you say, they baricade both ends of the street and you meet people on your street you've never met. They didn't assign dishes but rather a hugh potluck and my sis said there was a great variety. I'm kind of an extrovert so I enjoy mingling. That barbeque sounded yummy.

  • I can't wait until we have a block party. We are waiting until the last house on our street is sold then we'll have one. Glad you had a great time. Sorry about the bee, he was a bit pesky here, so I sent him away and he must have found Ron's hand. :(

    Where is your beautiful fall layout? I miss the orange!  

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