It's nearly midnight and I think it's going to be a while until I'm able to fall asleep because I'm so excited. The last of our 13 neighbors left our fire at 11 p.m. tonight. Craig and I would have been really excited if one or two people showed up but we kept having to add chairs as they continued to come! Around 6 p.m. this evening Poppy and I walked down our block and handed out packages of s'mores with a little poem attached inviting people to come to our house for a fire tonight. Some of them were left hanging on the door and others we were able to hand over and invite our neighbors personally. Some of the people we've only talked to a few times While others we knew a little better. But in the two and a half years we've lived here we've only personally invited one family over to our house and that has happened multiple times. We've always intended to invite our other neighbors over but getting the fire pit from church was the little kick and incentive we needed. Since Church paid for it, we feel an extra responsibility to be good stewards of that gift :-). Lesson learned tonight is that you really just need to invite people and they will come. We had such a wonderful time visiting around the fire learning a lot about our neighbors, laughing, and building relationships. We got to hear about how people met their spouse, the kind of families they came from etc. We learned our 11 year old neighbor wants to become a lawyer :-) He ended up coming by himself as the only one from his family and was one of the last ones to leave hanging out with a bunch of adults. We found out he was nervous about going to Middle School this year and so we were able to encourage him :-) We are definitely going to continue to do this. Now I will be laying awake in bed thinking of the next rhyme invite. I think we will roast hot dogs next time and leave a bun in bags for people and tell them to bring their bun(s) to our house for fun :-) Thank you PCC for giving us the little shove we needed to do what we wanted to do all along :-)
PS. One of our neighbors about 5 Doors Down kept telling me how she never would usually do something like this as she is such a homebody. She mentioned it several times like she was surprising herself that she came. She ended up bringing her husband and three kids so we got to know all of them. Their kids played with our cat and our tire swing as the adults got to talk. So I told my cat tonight she will have some rewards in heaven :-) okay goodnight. Forgive me if anything sounds weird or is misspelled because I spoke this into my phone.