“Can we do a lemonade stand today? Pleaaaase?” Adi and Rose begged in unison for the third straight day.

“Ok,” I replied reluctantly, not able to push it off any further. I began rambling all the prep steps that needed to happen before the selling of lemonade…

Less than an hour later, the girls were at their posts in the front yard armed with signs, ice, and everything else they needed to serve our neighborhood.

It didn’t take long for the first customer to stop by. I watched from a distance as Adi and Rose fumbled awkwardly, clearly a little nervous about all the social interactions that come with sales.

At one point, Arnauld and I swapped places. He stayed outside to keep an eye from a distance while I went back inside to juggle laundry and sneak in a workout. I’d peek through the window between tasks, curious about which neighbors were stopping by. There was a steady stream. Even from afar, I could see the girls growing more confident with each new interaction.

Around two o’clock, the girls came inside, looking tired and crying hunger. They plopped various supplies on the kitchen counter, including the pink pencil box they had used to collect money. “We made $105 dollars!” Adi exclaimed proudly.

I’m sure my eyes widened in surprise.

And then I remembered a conversation we’d had with our next-door neighbors just a few days earlier. We had just gotten back from a short trip, and they greeted us warmly.

“We missed you,” they said. “You know, where we come from, there’s a saying: You don’t buy a house. You buy your neighbors.”

Standing at the kitchen counter, watching our girls divvy up dollar bills and coins, I thought of that phrase again.

That Sunday afternoon, as neighbor after neighbor made time to support our girls’ lemonade stand, it was clear: when we moved to this neighborhood nearly four years ago, we didn’t just buy a house, we bought into a community.

And we got some pretty great neighbors.