This by the Door...

...can only mean one thing:  Jason is here.

And who is Jason?  Why, he's the little five-year-old son of our next-door neighbors.  Yes, the Old Order Mennonite ones.  He was born a month before Shav; and within the last year or two, he and Tobin have become particularly close, and Shav usually--but not always--tags along on their adventures, too.

Out of respect for the Old Order beliefs, I never rarely take pictures of Jason (well, OK, I snapped a couple photos of him on Easter, but it was from far away, and you can hardly tell it's him in that trio of little boys ;-) -- those photos are pretty far down in that Easter post, just after the ones of Jeff and the boys burning brush in our garden).  But a couple days ago, when I spotted his boots with its traditional Old Order hat perched on top by our front door, I decided that would be a good way to commemorate these years when either Jason or my boys cross the lane (Buggy Boulevard, my dad calls it) virtually every day to visit each other and have all sorts of fun together.

Josiah confessed to me the other day that he wonders what kind of effect Tobin and Shav will have on Jason as they grow up, and he hopes the Fisher boys won't pull Jason away from the Old Order church but fears they might.  In return, I confessed to him that I had had those exact thoughts when he and David were the little Fisher boys who often played with Jason's big sisters!

So far, neither they nor us have converted to the other's style of worship; but during the nearly 10 years we've lived beside each other, our respect for and appreciation of each other has only continued to grow.  May it ever be so!

And may there be many more times when that cute little hat, worn by that cute little blonde-headed boy, appears at my front door!