What a weekend! We have been working up to having a garage sale, and this past Friday and Saturday were the big days. We set up over at my brother’s house since he is in a better traffic location to pull in customers, and then we priced everything very cheaply. Almost everything was priced at a quarter a piece, and the other items were priced to sell. The best part is that almost everything we sold was stuff that we would have either given away or hauled off to the mission or dragged to the curb. Our broken lawn mower went for five dollars to a guy who wanted the parts. The flat-top stove insert that came with our kitchen cabinets went for $10 to a guy who’s been wanting one for a long time. My old stereo system with several non-working parts went for $10 to the girl across the street. We made sure to tell everyone exactly what worked and what didn’t so they knew what they were getting. But still, we were amazed at what people found valuable to them. The kids had a good learning experience. They interacted with customers, took money, made change, helped people carry things to their vehicles, and learned that part of having a garage sale is sitting around being patient and waiting for customers to show up. Even Mike and Amelia got into the spirit of things and would tell people the prices of things. Customers seemed amused at the plethora of garage-sale staff. The kids got so anxious to greet customers that they would hurry out and start talking to people almost before the folks could get all the way out of their vehicles. I finally had to tell the children to wait until the people actually got up into the sale before giving them any sales pitches.

Once the sale was over we were delighted to find that we had raised the $200 we had hoped to get. The children are saving towards the newest Nintendo game system coming out soon. We have a few more large items to advertise in the paper, so hopefully that will bring in the rest of the funds needed for the purchase of the game system.

On Sunday we recovered some from our sale, and then we eagerly geared up for a fun evening and overnight at my parents’ house. We were having a combined birthday party and camping trip. Our extended family here in town likes to get together to celebrate birthdays, so we used this excuse to recognize the birthdays of my nephews, Josiah and Nathan, and our two October girls, Laura and Amelia. Joyce and I shared the party duties. She prepared all of the food (what a great picnic buffet we had!) and I took charge of the activities. I had ordered a bunch of glow necklaces and glow bracelets online, so as the sun started to go down I started handing out the goodies. Everyone had a fun time being creative with their glowing jewelry. There were headbands, bracelets, belts, shoe decorations, earrings, braided necklaces, anklets, and even collars for the dogs present. We played several games as we all glowed, but probably the most fun was watching the children play “follow-the-leader” in the dark.

The grown-ups all wanted to sleep in their own beds that night, but the older children were eager to camp out, so we got them all tucked into their sleeping bags and tents and then we left them outside to fend for themselves.

Monday morning we all gathered again for breakfast. Nathan was up early making pancakes with Grandma. Kids enjoyed hot cocoa, and infiltrating all the morning activities was the delicious smell of wood smoke from the campfire. Mid-morning my grandmother called and asked if we’d like to get a game of “Moon” going. It’s a domino game played in the family for several generations. We were all for that idea so she came over and taught the next generation the game that we remember playing as kids. Pretty soon the adults shooed the children away and kept playing Moon fast and furiously until lunchtime.

After lunch it was time to think about returning to reality, so we started gathering up our children and our things, we hunted for missing shoes and birthday presents, we rolled up sleeping bags, folded up tents, and somehow got ourselves ready to head home.

The end is never as fun as the beginning, so there were a few grumpy faces and fussy voices. We declared “rest time” and all of us collapsed in our beds.

A rest refreshed us and we had a nice evening. Now today we need to get back into our daily routines of school and chores. As you might imagine, we’re getting off to a slow start, but I’m being patient and not taking things to seriously this morning.

Happy September!