block party!

My husband and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law who live downstairs, are trying to be more intentional about reaching out to our community. We believe God placed us in our neighborhood for a reason, and we are doing our best to seek out His mission for us in our town. Of course, the first step in embracing our community is to get to know our immediate neighbors. Having lived here about 3 years now, we are already friendly with some of our next door neighbors. Yet there were still several homes on our street that we didn't know much about -- who lives there? What are their names? What do they do? Do we have anything in common aside from our address? We wanted a friendly way to meet more of our neighbors and get to know them better.

We decided to host a block party! A few weeks ago, we went door to door handing out invitations:

YOU'RE INVITED TO A 

BACKYARD BARBECUE BLOCK PARTY!

Sunday, July 28 from 5:30-8:00 P.M.

Come to meet & hang out with your neighbors!

Can't come the whole time? That's totally fine!

Feel free to stop in! Bring a lawn chair if you can.

Hope to see you there!

Just by knocking on a few doors, we were able to meet some of the neighbors we didn't know. Though not everyone answered the door, we were glad to see that the people we spoke to seemed receptive to the idea of a block party. We left invitations in mail boxes for those who weren't home. 

Then it was time to prepare for the party! It was hard to judge how many people would come. I'll admit that there were moments when we wondered if it would just be the 4 of us eating a burger in the backyard! But we went to BJ's and stocked up on food in hopes that would not be the case! 

On the day of the party, we had no idea what to expect. Even the weather was up in the air! Hourly forecasts changed by the minute. We debated all day long whether or not to postpone to a rain date. But as we stood in the driveway debating what to do, our neighbors remained hopeful and expressed excitement for the party -- how could we not go for it despite gray skies? The sun peeked out at 3 PM so we began the preparations. So many people (neighbors, family, & friends) wanted to pitch in to make the barbecue a success:

• Mom baked chocolate chip cookie bars
• Grandma made fudge brownies
• Leslie lent us a party tent
• Pete carved a watermelon fruit basket
• Arlene provided a table, cooler, and pound cakes
• John & Diane made pasta salad
• Lauren & Evan brought cookies
• Dave & Marco came with wine
• While we were at church that morning, Edgar even scraped and repainted our side of his fence to make sure our backyard looked its best for the party.

We got everything set up and looking great by 5 PM and told our neighbors to head on over to beat the weather! 

But of course, as soon as all of our guests arrived (20 of us all together!), the clouds gave way. It rained ... hard. We huddled under the tent and opened the garage for protection, hoping it would be a passing shower. After about 10 minutes, the rain was coming down even harder, so we told everyone to grab something and we headed inside. Though it was a bummer to spend the rest of our party indoors, it still seemed that everyone had a great time enjoying food and getting to know one another. Our neighbors even suggested making the block party an annual event!

I went to bed so happy that night. Despite the rain and change of plans, our first block party exceeded my expectations. It was a lot of fun to bring our neighbors together and made me excited to think about other ways to reach out to and spend time with our new friends.