Every now and then our church has a bake sale to raise money for one thing or another. It’s always a fun event, with a table full of yummy treats and tempting goodies. The children will beg us to buy something, but usually I’ll tell them that we’re not going to buy anything. If I do splurge and buy something, it’s always a very special treat.

Last time we had a bake sale at church, I collected some donations from some local businesses to put in the sale. I didn’t understand why the children were so excited about the sale until I realized that they thought that we would keep any money that people gave for the sale. I quickly explained to them that the money went to the good cause for which the money was raised and that we didn’t keep any of it.

When Isaac heard the announcement about the upcoming bake sale, he asked me if he could make something for the sale. I thought that would be fine, but I made sure he knew that he wouldn’t get to keep any money. He understood that, so I gave the ok for the project.

When Amelia heard that Isaac was going to get to make cookies, she asked if she could also bake something for the sale.  This project was getting bigger all the time.

So this afternoon I told the children it was time to make our goodies for the sale. Isaac did most of the work on his No-Bake Cookies himself, and I helped Amelia mix up the cake mix for the giant muffins she was going to make. Miguel and Judah stayed right in the middle of all the action, getting in the way and being a nuisance. So when Amelia was sprinkling the white chips on her cake batter, I offered to let the little boys sprinkle some white chips on some smaller cupcakes. They thought that was just dandy and they took their own sweet time, dropping on chip at a time onto the chocolate batter.

Once everything was baked, Miguel asked excitedly, “Can we buy some of these?” I laughed out loud! Now I knew what the racket was the children had going. Now that we had trays of cookies and tins of muffins, they wanted me to buy these very items for us to keep for ourselves.

Maybe the next time we have a bake sale, I’ll just drop some money in the box and tell the folks, “This is for the goodies we made at home and didn’t bring today.” But for the bake sale tomorrow, Isaac and Amelia will take their goodies and no doubt be very proud to see them displayed with the other items. And of course, we did save some of the extras to enjoy here at home.