The Sale

Folks, I apologize for the long delayed update. This is a first in my blogging history, and indicates just how busy I've been preparing for the four-family garage sale we held at our house today. For four nights, I individually priced three sets of clothes (from the first two years of all three girls' lives), and then last night put everything on hangers and hung them on the clothing racks we rented. We were high style! We looked like a consignment baby store - with clothing for nine kids hanging, we overflowed seven clothing racks. It was unreal. I also got just 5 hours of sleep last night, with a 2am bedtime not sitting so well with me currently.

Today the sale started out slow but gained traction throughout the day. Fortunately, Kyle helped with the kids (well, at least the twins) most of the day other than an hour and a half that was super difficult juggling the three kids and a sale. I was fortunate to have three other moms helping me, so I watched kids while they dealt with the buyers. Claire, of course, did a lemonade stand and made about $20 but spent a little on the ice cream man tonight.

Here's a view of the sale in action ...


... which even the twins found interesting, but by far the best kid entertainment of the day happened to be little Ella. Friend and fellow seller Jill brought over her baby girl for the day, and the four girls had this amazing calming ability on each other - the twins loved seeing a 'real' baby, Claire loved being allowed to 'babysit' a real baby, and baby Ella herself seem quite mesmerized by all the attention. It was all unbelievably cute (but no, did not make me consider having a fourth child - ha!). I took a few photos of the girls watching Ella roll around on the floor ...






... but the photo I missed was of all three girls lying on their tummies, eye level with Ella, watching her roll around - it was too cute! By the time I tried to snap the photo, Lily was off running around the house (per usual behavior), Claire had sat up, but Molly was still on her tummy staring as in the above photo. What I appreciate most about little girls is just how intuitively gentle they are with little babies. It's amazing and must be pre-programmed in us girls.

I expected reasonable success from the sale (and unfortunately, we still re-packed five large tubs of clothes we didn't sell today), but after I counted my take, I consider the sale a resounding success! I can now treat myself to that dream digital SLR, after, of course, I get a couple gift certificates for my birthday or Christmas (or both) to Best Buy. We pocketed just over $550 from the sale! I guess kid's clothes do have some re-sale value!