Sprinkler Day

One aspect of our shelter-in-place experience was that, for the most part, we had great weather.  We navigated almost that entire period of being at home by spending hours upon hours playing in our driveway.   The kids enthusiastically greeted every single vehicle and pedestrian who walked by and "seeing" other people made all of us feel more content with our stay-at-home orders. 

As days turned into weeks, we had countless opportunities to exchange pleasantries and small talk with the neighbors who walked by.  As a result, we developed a few new relationships with some of the people in our neighborhood.  We call them our "COVID friends" because we may never have met or gotten to know them without our extended time in the driveway.

Since so many precautions are still in place here, the majority of families with young kids continue to have a parent at home with their kids most of the time.  We decided as a family to take advantage of the hot weather and invite some neighbors over once a week for sprinkler day. 

Jonah and Nicole playing out front together

We plan a day, invite neighbors and then open our backyard up for the kids to run through the sprinkler during the steamy afternoon heat.  We've chosen different pockets of neighbors in each week, in hopes of eventually introducing them all to each other.   Regardless of who comes, it has been an absolute blast.  Jonah is always the first one to be soaking wet and grinning from ear to ear and often, Nicole is too busy talking to her friends to run through the sprinkler at all.

We have loved being able to turn our sprinkler on and enjoy the sunshine and our neighbors at the same time.  Sometimes I find myself wishing that our public pools would open, but then I remind myself that if the pools were open, we wouldn't have a need for sprinkler day.  And, I'm pretty sure sprinkler day is already shaping up to be one of our favorite memories of the year.

I hope all is well!
Love,
Erica