Like A Good Neighbor. ...

After nap yesterday, the girls and I walked down to the school at the end of the block and played on the jungle gym for a bit.  As we were walking home we stopped in our neighbors yard because she has this little bird bath with some ceramic ducks in it.  The girls love playing in this thing and trying to gently pick up the ducks, so we're kind of like regulars in her front yard.  She's always been really nice about it, even encouraging the girls to play with her decor (insisting I not bother trying to stop them).  So yesterday, as I was trying to pry them away so we could go get dinner, the neighbor comes running out of her house and in her fantastic British accent exclaimed "Don't go just yet, I have something for the girls!"  She opens up her car and comes down the drive way, giving the girls two little ducky toys, made out of the same kind of bean bag material as a hacky sack (if you survived the 90's you know what I"m talking about).  Needless to say we didn't part from said ducks until bed time, the girls loved them.  It's not that these were extravagant gifts or even ones that the girls will remember in 3 weeks; it's the simple fact that this woman who was out and about in her own life took the moment to think of the girls as she passed these toys in her travels.  I haven't been part of a neighborhood - that classic Norman Rockwell type of one - since my parents divorced.  I've lived next to a lot of different people, but never connected with them the way my family did when we were kids.  It really meant a lot to me, that moment.  It meant more to me then to the girls. ... and it reminded me what a good choice this move was.  There were 1000 positives that have come from it. ... this made a 1001.