Block Par-TAY!

This year, after months of walking with B&H by our neighbors house and wondering who lived in each one, I planned and hosted a National Night Out party for our neighbors. Now, it sounds like a bigger undertaking than it really was. The beauty of hosting a party on NNO is that the format is there. You just have to execute it!

So with a few neighbors' help, I planned the party and invited about 50 neighbors to join us at the park for root beer floats. I asked neighbors to help by pitching in a couple of bucks if they could, donating cups or straws or ice, and bringing their own lawn chairs and tables. Funny thing happened: about 10 families donated cups. And then about another 5 families brought ice. So, I'm not lying, I felt exactly like this:

Lesson learned: next year, assign people to bring stuff. Thankfully, we don't need any cups for the next 2 or 3 years!

The party was a blast! We had about 20 families from 3 different blocks attend and I felt like everyone mingled and visited with each other. I personally got to put some names with faces I'd seen on the block for a while and we met some really cute younger babies that are going to join our gang of toddlers soon! :)

Best of the night: we were lucky enough to have the St Paul Police Mounted unit, the firefighters from St Paul Fire Station #19, the St Paul K-9 unit, AND McGruff the Crime Dog all visit our party! All were big hits with kids and adults alike!

Unfortunately, I was too busy having fun to take a lot of photos, but here are a few to document the evening.

King, such a nice horsie!

Ben was a huge fan of the horse; Hannah just wanted to play with bubbles

Sittin' on a Fire Truck. Heaven!

Ben's first rootbeer float. Mmmm.

This is when I said, "Ben, want to get out of the
fire truck?" And he said, "Nooooo!"

For a fun video wrap-up of the event, watch our neighbor Nick's video! He's a video producer for the City of St Paul and created this great video of our party!

We're all already looking forward to next year!