“You may have the wrong house,” jokes Donna German. She doesn’t see is as the kind of place that’s typically profiled in home features. “I just see the paint chips.”

The objective truth is that Mark and Donna’s lovely home and lively household provide an atmosphere that anyone would want to spend time in.

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Though their work keeps them busy – Mark travels as district manager of a pharmaceutical company, and Donna occasionally jets to South America as a vice president and treasurer for Hunt Oil Company – theirs is a family-centered life.

And they love their neighborhood.

“It’s interesting because it’s such a community,” says Donna. “There’s not a neighbor on the block that I wouldn’t give a key to.”

When asked if she really means that, she laughs, but only because it’s so true.

They’ve lived here since son Blake, now 16 and a sophomore at Lake Highlands High School, was 7 months old. And almost every family on their block has been there as long as they have.

“We weren’t looking for a house at the time we bought it,” she says. They’d been living four blocks away. “One day my husband came home and said, ‘That house on the cul-de-sac you’ve always liked has come on the market.’”

The neighborhood was only a couple of years old then, and now the kids on the block are growing up together.

“Children have always played on the cul-de-sac, with the moms out on their lawn chairs,” Donna remembers. “There aren’t so many younger kids now.”

When reminded that someday there will be a new wave of children playing there – the grandchildren – Donna smiles and says, “I don’t know if I’m ready for that!”

Her other two children – daughter Briana, 18, a freshman at The University of Texas at Austin, and son, Tyler, 10, who attends fifth grade at Merriman Park Elementary – would probably agree.

Before coming to Lake Highlands, the Germans lived in a small house in Lakewood. Like many other young families, they came here because they wanted more space, Richardson schools and a reasonable commute to downtown.

A family-friendly selling point of the Lake Highlands home was the huge yard – perfect for the pool they would install – and the quarters – “very unusual for around here,” – above the detached garage. The nanny they employed for five years lived there; now the kids like to hang out there.

Even the installation of the pool was a community event.

“It was kind of a neighborhood project,” Donna says.

The contractor discovered during his excavation that their yard had been used as a depository for construction debris from other houses. They thought he’d never hit solid ground, but he finally did – with a little trickle of water running through it.

“The neighbors would come and laugh,” Donna recalls. “We’d joke that we’d found Kingsley Creek!”

Entrenched as the Germans are, they’ve gradually updated their house with the rich colors they love. It’s a casual, lived-in and a very inviting home.

With two sons at home, she describes the environment as “all-boy,” but the dramatic crimson walls of the master bedroom and the sophisticated sage greens of the living room offset the informality typical of a home with active offspring.

When looking for design help, she – what else? – asked the neighbors. Designer Jane Clark, who did the living room, is a neighbor. Kathi McCabe of KBM Designs also lives nearby, and she created the striking dried flower arrangement for Donna’s dining room table, among others. Now Donna needs some interior painting, and Blake’s sophomore English teacher happens to be a painter.

“He’s just a fabulous English teacher,” Donna says, confident he’ll be an equally fine craftsman. “We have good resources in this neighborhood. We call our neighbors and ask, ‘Who did you use that was good?’”

Though she doesn’t seem harried, she apologizes for being disorganized on this particular day; Tyler broke his hand the day before in a soccer game, and they spent hours in the emergency room. A neighborhood boy stops by to play, and he’s reminded of Tyler’s injury.

Many people today don’t even know their neighbors, but it’s reasonable to assume that in this case, everyone on the block will soon know about Tyler’s broken hand – and react as if he were one of their own.