Weekend Shenanigans

Happy February 1st and good riddance to a very strange January. This weekend was filled with science! From watching Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes (the kids love this show) to Magic House birthday parties, to dinner table discussions, it was all about science. The new exhibit at The Magic House was even cooler than I had expected. We hadn’t been there in a long time, so it was a real treat!  

But I must admit, the real highlight of our weekend was Friday night, when Andrew and I went out with three other couples on our street, the neighbors we have grown so close to over the past year. We all live within several feet of each other, and could not get along better. In fact, the sheer amount of laughter produced on Friday night was monumental as all eight of us packed into one car on our way out. It is special to find a group that gets along so well, even more unique when you live within a stone’s throw of each other. I think it has changed so much in our lives for the better; you have people you trust and adore close by if someone needs help with childcare, people to share your garden vegetables with when you have an excess of tomatoes or jalapeño peppers or (in our case every year) kale and cucumbers! We have in them drinking buddies, but also the serious stuff — in one case a next-door neighbor pediatrician to reassure us when Emil hit his head pretty darn hard once.

But what I’ve learned I love most of all, alongside all the companionship and laughter, is that I love being able to help. I love driving one of these neighbor children to school every morning, stopping on Mondays for donuts on the way because nobody likes Mondays, and donuts are an awesome way to forget that. I love that we are close enough that one of these friends can call at the last minute and ask for me to watch her baby for an hour when they had a childcare emergency. I love that they ask me for recipes, or about my family, or that they know embarrassing stories about me. This community, these people who weren’t here when we first moved to St. Louis, but suddenly are, and are our people, have come out of nowhere at a time we have needed them most. It just makes life incredibly comfortable and warm.

I realized it on Sunday, when we all somehow congregated unplanned on the front hill between our houses. How much we all like each other, depend on each other. How a small gathering turned into the whole group of us again, how an hour turned into three hours, with our kids all between us, then on the trampoline in the back yard. How none of us wanted it to end, so we went on like that even when the sun started to set and it grew colder. We kept leaving and returning with more items — coats and hats, blankets, etc. And then we decided to warm ourselves with a fire while the kids jumped and giggled and wore themselves out and eventually we all had to pull ourselves reluctantly away to make hastily thrown-together dinners, give the kids baths, and get back to reality. But man, was it good while it lasted. Here’s to more of those days and nights!

Thank you, universe, for an amazing community.