MVPs

Lila + Friend = Smiles!

I think Lila and Eli are missing the regular time spent with their friends (and away from each other). They will play together nicely for a while and then turn on each other. That's nothing new, really, but they are spending more time together, so it's happening more often.

This is why I'm planning a couple of fun outings every week and inviting our friends to come along. Attendance has been spotty, but we have seen a few friends. Tomorrow, we're going to check out a very Austin-y toy store and have brunch/lunch at Kerbey Lane.

I hope one of Lila's friends can make it because she hasn't seen any of them in a couple of weeks. I can only imagine the amount of pent-up giggles she's dealing with! Plus, a friend for her means a little less refereeing for me.

- - - - -

If, by some miracle, you haven't heard, our church small group/Bible study pooled together our excess belongings and had a charity garage sale this weekend. We raised $434.16 for Feed My Starving Children!

According to their donation site, $400 will feed a family of 5 for a full year! And $33 will feed 5 children for a month. And, on top of all that, we had so much fun doing it! There were half a dozen of us running the sale and we had a lot of laughs.

Robert Gomez and Doug definitely worked the hardest, and the Garage Sale MVP Award goes to Robert, for being able to speak and understand Spanish! The kids should probably get some kind of award too, for not falling apart as they watched their toys being bought by strangers!

Though, I must admit, Lila did give a bit of the ol' Stinkeye to the lady who loaded up all her Barbies in a pot (which she bought for cooking tamales - yum!). Fear not, she still has so many more that they can barely be contained.

For our own convenience, as much as anything, we decided not to put prices on anything. When someone asked how much we wanted for an item, we said, "All the money we make from this garage sale is going to charity, so you can decide what you think is a reasonable donation."

After they got the deer-in-the-headlights look (which they all did), we simplified it to, "Name your price." It was really pretty funny to watch people's reaction to this approach. There were a few who were so confounded that we finally helped them out by suggesting a price.

A few highlights of the day:

* The bizarre, homemade Satan hand puppet that one of the families was selling. Eli took a liking to it and, among other things, used it to beat up a cardboard Darth Vader. He also got it stuck in a tree, at which point I got to hear myself say:

"We've got to get Satan out of our tree!"

* The two sisters who were so enamored with our belongings that they kept - very cheerfully - buying more and more things. They got so much that they couldn't fit it all in their car. When they came back for the rest, they bought a few more things. It doesn't sound all that funny, but it really was.

* The mother and two children who milled around our sale for an HOUR and kept buying things, 50 cents or a dollar at a time. We probably made $15 off of them, in the end. And really, who has children that will patiently browse at a single garage sale for an hour?!?

* The guys who bought a twin-size wooden bed frame, three mattresses, and a two-seater kids' wagon... and managed to load all of it into (and on top of) a Honda Civic (or something like that). It was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.