Yard Party

To celebrate the 4th, we had some neighbors over to our backyard for grilling this evening. We are enjoying the sense of community and like-minded, interesting people in our new neighborhood. Although not particularly designed for holding parties, the yard was a pretty comfortable and fun place to hang out. Here's our little party in progress:

Ian now has what seems like a true social life (in which he interacts with other kids as people rather than objects). He had a friend at the party -- Madeline. She lives across the street, and we've recently started trading babysitting with her parents (i.e. every other week we watch both kids so the other couple can go out alone). Although arguing over stuff is a non-trivial part of their relationship right now, they seem to enjoy each other, and Ian gets very excited when Madeline arrives at his house. Here she is, covered in chocolately glory (Ian and Madeline dug into the smores materials, piecemeal, before the adults were at the smores stage of the night):

They discuss things like graham crackers and eventually come to resolution:



Our other guests were our next door neighbors, with whom we've worked closely as we both work on restoring our yards to beauty and dealing with the challenges of our old twin houses.

One friend dubbed us "nearists" after observing how much emphasis we've put on living within walking distance of the places we want to go. It's great that we can be near the interesting things downtown, and also have a sense of community right on our block. And it's nice that we can have friends that provide friends for Ian, too. Yay for neighbors. Yay for freedom.