Our next door neighbor's daughter had a liver transplant last week. She is doing well, but had to have another procedure yesterday. They are hoping to be able to bring her home this week; no one wants their child in the hospital over Thanksgiving.
Bella was always the one out in the yard with her dad putting up Christmas decorations (or rather, she was the one directing Tom) the week of Thanksgiving when she and her brothers were out of school. Knowing this, Mark, the neighbor across the street came over Sunday night and asked Tom if he'd like to have his "light guy" come help put up lights so the house will be all festive when Bella comes home.
Fast forward to yesterday morning...
I had gone back to sleep after Elianna's first morning feeding and woke to the engine of a large vehicle outside the house. Monday being trash day, I didn't think much about it... until I realized that the motor wasn't going away, and there seemed to be a lot of voices outside. More voices and for much longer than the few seconds it takes to pick up the trash. I got up and peeked through the blinds. There were two fire trucks parked on our street - one in front of our house, and one in front of the neighbors'.
I jumped up and hurried downstairs (quietly, because of the sleeping baby). I was thinking, "Oh, no - not an emergency next door. That's the last thing they need while their daughter's in the hospital" Jason was just coming back in from taking Athena out and he told me what was going on.
It turns out Mark's "light guy" is a firefighter and he brought about 20 fellow firefighters with him to help deck the halls. They were out there most of the morning (much to the delight of Bella's 2 younger brothers). While you can now probably see the neighbor's house from space now, it's so nice to see people do something so nice for a family they don't know ( at least beyond "I know a guy who knows a guy whose kid had surgery").