I snuck this shot in on Saturday afternoon while no one was looking; I was standing on our front porch. The reason they aren't looking at me is because they are ALL looking at Katy. Apparently they had given her a chocolate covered marshmallow and were giggling with delight as she ate it and spread it everywhere.



Katy LOVES our neighbors across the street (and they love her too). The first thing she does when I get her out of the car seat is to peer towards their porch, yell "Hi!" and wave, regardless of whether they are there or not. Since Hans is in a wheelchair (he introduced himself the other day, which was nice to have a name instead of calling him "the man across the street as we had for the past year") he spends a lot of time on the porch just watching. Hans can talk, but it's with some difficulty, so "toddler-speak" is just about at his perfect level. When he sees us coming a huge grin spreads across his face because he loves to play with Katy , make silly noises at her and try to teach her words in German.

Their son was over the other day (thus, the crowd; son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters). He speaks great English, so Ryan got a chance to sit and really talk with our neighbors (or, at least their son) for once. He let them know that I'm signed up to take German classes this fall and the word has already traveled around the entire neighborhood. I had people approaching me yesterday (I was letting Katy play with the neighbor, as usual) and asking. Of course, what they didn't understand was that I haven't started yet but they'd still merrily chatter away to me in German after I confirmed that I was, in fact, going to take classes this fall. But, it's also renewed their interest in teaching me random vocabulary words, which is fun (we discussed the fact that she was picking "bonen," or beans from her garden - excuse my German spelling)

Fun stuff. We live in a truly great neighborhood.