Jim and I have been taking a walk together every day.

It’s awesome.

We leave the children with some chores to do and a reward if they get them done by the time we return, and then we disappear.

For at least 45 minutes.

We walk, we talk, we sweat. Good stuff. We actually have been doing quite a bit of big picture thinking and planning. It’s important stuff we don’t get to do when we’re working in the trenches of our life.

About a week ago, I somehow injured my foot. Total bummer. So instead of walking up the big hill, we turned right and followed the road that ran parallel to the creek (so it was nice and flat and better for injured feet).

As we walked, we passed a couple out walking their dogs. We smiled, said hello and continued walking. On the way back, we passed them again and they stopped and asked us if we lived on their street.

We told them, “No, we live on Opossum Trot. The first house in with all the children.”

Do you know what they said?

“Oh! You’re the soap people. We use your soap all the time.”

How cool is that? We’re becoming known in our neighborhood.

Now, this may not seem like a very exciting thing to you. But you have to understand that about 2 years ago, good friends of ours were talking to another neighbor. This guy asked Brian (our friend), “Hey, what’s up with those people on Opossum Trot?”

For some reason Brian decided to pretend he didn’t know us and asked, “I don’t know, what do you mean?”

The guy starts saying that nobody knows anything about us. Some people think we must be Mormons because we’ve got so many kids. Others are convinced we’re Amish. Others can’t figure out what we’re hiding in that big white thing on the front lawn, maybe we’re making drugs. (The big white thing was our chicken tractor that we moved around so the chickens would have fresh grass).

But this was the best one…

Are you ready for it?

Other neighbors are convinced we’re in the witness protection program. It seems there was a helicopter that landed in our backyard, several people got out and ran into our house. Then several people ran back out to the helicopter and it took off. Yep, gotta be witness protection.

Brian’s response?

He said, “It’s even stranger than that. He (meaning Jim) is a garbage man with a Master’s Degree.”

Too funny.

In his defense, there had been a helicopter that landed about a mile away from us and a short time later took off. Maybe they are the ones in the witness protection program.

But anyway, you can see how being known as the “Soap People” was a huge improvement.

And if any of my neighbors are reading this – we love our neighborhood!