The Raich's Big Adventure: Ahhhh...summer

Well, summer is here--almost. It might as well be with this amazing, so not Minnesota in April, weather. We are loving it. I don't know what happened in our neighborhood, but there has just been a huge kid explosion. And quite fortunately for us, all the kids seem to be girls around Mia's age. We have always had Saya and Sofia next door, but now we also have Ellen (7) and Leah (10)--sisters who moved in across the back alley. And now our other neighbors across the back alley seem to be having their two granddaughters, Sierra (10) and McCayla (7), over to their house a lot. More than that, there seem to be quite a few boys entering the picture as well. James Leo (8), lives next door and he has a bunch of boy friends in the neighborhood who come over frequently, and there seems to be some new mixing between the boys and the girls. Last weekend there was quite a raucous game of roller hockey in the alley. Apparently the boys were doing quite a bit of cheating and the girls finally quit in protest.

Anyway, the hub of all of this kid activity seems to be our yard or the alley directly behind our house. It is something. On any given weekend we have had a small army of children in our backyard and quite a few adults as well. In fact, our neighbor just told us that her granddaughter refers to our yard as "Mia's Park". People just like to come on over and hang out in our yard. For example, this evening all the girls were out with their bikes and scooters and skates racing up and down the alley while all the adults stood around talking for hours. Jeff and I even participated in some scooter races with the kids. In addition to all of the socializing we have started quite a food swapping tradition. We all garden and share our harvest and baking. In the past two weeks we have gotten chocolate chip banana bread from Carol, a big dish of spaghetti and sauce from Jay and Lisa, had dinner at Neal and Makiko's, and fresh baked Rhubarb bars from Jay and Lisa! It is all so...communal and neighborly. Not our typical recluse style, but we will take it! We will have all winter to be shut-ins again. For now, I am happy to be the proud owner of "Mia's Park".