Won't you be my neighbor!!!!

.....Thank you, Mr. Rogers for that song!

I thought I'd update my faithful followers on my endeavor to make friends with our new neighbors.

When we first moved into our house our great friend's Troy and Tirzah made a plate full of warm cookies for us. The plate has this cute little design and a phrase that basically talks about passing the plate through your neighborhood. It's cute and I wish I would have taken a picture of it before I passed it on.

I woke up yesterday and baked a batch of brownies and wrote a little welcome card and prepared them on that cute little plate. At around 11am I took the kids next door with our plate of goodies and rang the door bell. The windows were open so I could hear the kid(s) yelling, "MAMA!!!" but no one ever came to the door. I went home and waited until about 4pm and tried again. This time a young woman (maybe like 19?? or she just looks really young) and a little girl in nothing but a diaper and necklace answered the door. I said, "Hi! I'm your next door neighbor and I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood by giving you this plate of brownies." She looked at me and said in a thick accent, "How much?" I replied with, "No, no it's free! I just wanted to give them to you." She then went on to say something in Spanish, all I caught was "su plato". I tried again telling her I didn't want the plate back and she told me she doesn't speak English...

My Spanish is terrible!! I can understand quite a bit but can't speak it worth beans! ;) Needless to say, it was very awkward! I felt really silly as I walked the 23 steps back to my front door wondering if I had just made a complete fool of myself and hoping that she understood what I was trying to say.

Then........ as I was walking back from visiting another neighbor later that evening my new next door neighbor was sitting on her front step and she made eye contact and waved with a big smile on her face. I think I made a good first impression!! I may not have been able to verbally communicate with her, but I think she felt welcomed into our neighborhood.

I now need to go practice my Spanish!!! My goal is to find out her name, how many kids she has and their names and ages. Anyone know what the Spanish word for brownies is?? She asked me if they were 'pastels' which I know is the word for cake... but wasn't sure if it could also be the word for brownie...?

I don't know all the details about my new neighbors, but I do know they look like a young married couple with at least one kid the same age as mine!!!!! God is SOO good to provide exactly what I asked Him for!

P.s. I learned a trick when I was a student at CFNI. To keep your brownies from getting over cooked on the edges put some tin foil around them when the edges have finished cooking and then continuing baking the brownies until the middle is done.