wish I had my camera...

...to take a snapshot of the two neighbor kids, ramon and gissel, and malachi all sitting on the glider in our living room reading. what a blessing it is to have great neighbors.

ramon, a 3rd grader, and gissel, a first grader, live across the street. their entire family has been such an amazing blessing to us since we moved into our house but the relationship really began to grow when they surprised me with a baby shower about a month before malachi was born. they now invite us to all of their parties. slow but sure we are getting to know many of their friends and family members.

the kids were playing with malachi when decided to make chocolate cookies. i began to take out all the ingredients. i noticed ramon and gissel looking at me strangely. i asked them if they had ever made cookies from scratch before and neither had. when i told them they could help if they wanted, all they needed to do was wash their hands, they both ran into the bathroom to clean up! talk about flashbacks to teaching, but so much more fun with only two kids. :) they read the recipe, measured and mixed everything and ended up going home an hour later with 2 dozen cookies and very proud looks on their faces. it was a lot fun for all of us...well maybe not as much for malachi since he had to be patient and wait a little longer to take a bath and get to bed, but it was well worth it.

they played with malachi and his toys while waiting for the cookies to bake. they took out his little people noah and ark. that sparked a conversation when i asked if they knew who noah was, they didn't. when i told them who he was and what he did, ramon asked me, "did that really happen?" maybe it shouldn't have taken me more than two years of living here to begin to talk about god but we will be praying these conversations can become more frequent and trust god will be growing the small seeds we can plant.