Yard Sale 2012

Every three years or so, Grandma Brenda, Aunt Sara, and I (along with the rest of the family) hold a garage sale at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The sale is of course about selling our stuff, but it's also about spending time together in a relaxed and generally fun setting.

We usually hold our sale on a Thursday and Friday in the summer - Thursday and Friday because we don't like to give up our weekends, and in the summer because all of us are usually free during that time of the year. In the past we've had great luck with the weather, which always helps the actual sale of our items as well as our moods throughout. This year we used history as our guide and assumed that the two-month-long drought Madison had been experiencing would go on for a day or two longer. We set up all of our items in the front yard the night before the sale, covered the tables with a giant tarp, and headed inside for dinner.

An hour later, as I walked downstairs with a fresh-from-the-shower, naked (though wrapped in a towel) Hallie in my arms, I heard yelling coming from the front yard. My stomach sank when I saw only darkness and sheets of rain through the glass window. I pretty much dropped a confused Hallie on the living room rug and ran outside to find my parents, Sara, and Jeff, scrambling to raise the center of the tarp (which because of the rain water had been weighed to the ground in the middle and was therefore no longer covering the outermost items on the tables) into a tent-shape. Jeff and Sara had crawled under the massive (20 ft. by 30 ft.) tarp, and while Jeff held the tarp up, Sara searched frantically in the darkness for items to pile up where he stood. The rest of us resecured the edges of the tarp with ropes and stakes and boards while thunder boomed and lightening flashed around us. It was my second Hunger Games experience (read about my first here).

The following morning we assessed the damage and were grateful to find that very few things had been actually ruined. Nearly all of our clothes (which I'd spent SIX hours folding, sorting, and displaying the day before) were wet, however, so the day was filled with taking piles of clothes inside, running them through the dryer, and then refolding, resorting, and redisplaying them. I was not happy, but the donuts we had for breakfast (we always have donuts for breakfast on garage sale days) improved my mood a little.

That was the lowlight; here are a few of this year's garage sale highlights:

Music to sell by, courtesy of Grandpa Paul (he
always plays his guitar during our sales).

Hallie, requesting Call Me, Maybe.

Sara, modeling a denim dress, pink high heels,
a scarf, sunglasses, and a grill tray for buyers.
Believe it or not, someone actually bought the
dress and the shoes off her.

Lily HATES and Hallie strongly dislikes
carseats. Yet at the garage sale, neither of
them could get enough of this infant seat.
They literally spent hours playing in it.

Hours.

Will had to see what all the fuss was about.

At the end of the day(s), we had a great time and made a little money in the process. I'm glad, however, that our next sale won't be until the summer of 2015...