Pack-n-play :$25

Julia: priceless (or as my sign read - "baby not included")

After wrapping up Vacation Bible School last night at 9pm I headed home to put my over-tired son to bed and begin my marathon pricing frenzy to get ready for my big garage sale today. From 10:30pm to 1:30am I sat in my driveway wearing Brian's headlamp, pricing clothes before moving into the garage to price toys. I was up at 5:00 in order to be ready for the early bird shoppers and sure enough an hour before the sale was scheduled to start I had my first customer. She bought $14 worth of stuff that started us on the road to a total of $380 for day one. We have many people to thank for the success - My mom for bringing me tables; Brian's parents for helping set up, bringing supplies, hauling furniture away, watching the kids, building steps for our back patio door; Brian's sister for watching the kids, bringing us lunch, buying us dinner; my sister for helping with the kids; our friends, Scott and Wendy who kept us company, bought us breakfast and Sam's lunch, covered the cash box for a bit, hauled some furniture, and played with our kids; and to our friends and family who supported our efforts to downsize and declutter - thank you for buying our stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and if I forgot to mention anyone I apologize. Three hours of sleep is obviously not enough sleep.)

Leave it to me to have something planned for after the sale today. An event called Touch-A-Truck was hosted at the Community Center so we fed each of the kids a banana and marched on in our day.


Sam driving a lawn mower like Grandpa's
Last year's Touch-A-Truck
Sam had no issues with climbing in the big vehichles last year, but this year he'd wait up to five minutes for his turn and then freak out when we'd start to put him in the seat. As long as the car/truck was lower to the ground he did fine.


He lasted 5 seconds in the fireman boots this year - an improvement over last year.

Where's Julia?


Peek-a-boo! I see you!


You don't get to do this every day!

and hopefully Julia and I'll never do this for real!

No screaming here - although I did have to bribe him with a cooking to get him to sit on the road graders tire.

You'd think he would have forgotten about that aforementioned cookie after all these special treats, but not my Sam. No wonder it took him two hours to fall asleep tonight!