Connections in Our Community
Hello again!
Recently I asked in our Instagram story (@_buildingournest) what you guys wanted to see me post about. One of the responses was our connections in our local community. As you likely know, Andrew and I live in the Brainerd Lakes Area here in Minnesota—and we love it! We initially moved into the area when I got a job as a prosecutor in a neighboring county about 5 years ago. Last summer I switched jobs and now drive a lot further to get to work. But we aren’t moving because we love our house, our neighborhood, and our community.
I’m connected with our local church, which is walking distance if the weather is nice. I’ve been registered with our church community since we moved and love the parish. I’ve participated in a few different activities since joining, but stopped with the pandemic for health reasons. I’ve been going to mass in person again though and am loving it.
I’m also on the board of our neighborhood association. We meet monthly as a neighborhood to learn catch up, hear from a speaker, and discuss what we want to be up to as a neighborhood. We are currently working on getting involved in cleaning up our neighborhood parks and streets in an event I’m planning called Spring Into Action! We will help out the park staff by picking up trash, trimming trees and shrubs, mulching, and planting flowers. We’ve asked the local park board to invite us for input when they do the master plan for our neighborhood parks in order to ensure we are working together to create the best parks we can have.
Andrew is on our city charter commission. This commission doesn’t meet frequently but they have been going through and updating our city charter.
Andrew has also joined the city park board! He is loving the involvement he can have in our broader community through park board. They have been busy lately creating master plans for the parks in our city in workshops between park board meetings.
We have both worked in the planning committee for the Brainerd Lakes Area Walk to End Alzheimer’s, but are taking a year off to focus on other things (like the neighborhood association and park board). We love volunteering for this event and raising money for a great cause.
Of course we also have connections in our neighbors and friends in the area, but those are less 'official’ things to share. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about some of our local area community connections in this post! Feel free to send us an email or contact us by this website if you want me to share about anything or you have any questions for us!
~ Natalie
