A Crazy Weekend!

I realize that I haven't posted anything since last Wednesday. Well, I have a couple of good reasons...

1. My husband left on Friday afternoon to head to north Georgia with some friends to celebrate a 30th birthday. He was gone until last night. So, I have had the kids by myself for the weekend. That normally wouldn't be so hard except...

2. We decided to have a garage sale while the guys were out of town. By the time Saturday rolled around, our garage sale grew to include 6 families junk! To keep everything straight, we had a notebook where we marked down how much $$ to each family every time someone came with their purchase. It worked out very good. I didn't think I was going to find much stuff to bring. But, it is amazing how much crap you can find in your home when you start looking for it.

Now, let me just say, "I LOVE garage sales!". I know that may be a little crazy, but I really do. I love the haggling and getting rid of the trash from my house. I also love the $$ at the end of the day. As far as garage sales go, I think this one was very successful considering the conditions. Now, I'm sure the pictures I am going to post are going to make some of you northeners laugh out loud. But, it was stinkin' cold! We spent the entire day on Friday pricing things and buying signs and organizing the stuff. Friday night, we went to get change (at midnight!) from Wal-Mart and hammer those signs into the ground. At this time of night, it had gotten very chilly and the wind was blowing. We only jumped out of the car 4 times to put out signs, but we were frozen by the time we were done.

I got to sleep that night at about 1 a.m. Then, I was awake at about 2:15 and went through the house to make sure all my kids were properly covered with blankets. I went back to sleep and awoke to the sound of a smoke alarm needing batteries at about 4:20. We turned the alarm off and laid back down. I knew I had to be up at 5 to start setting stuff ready, so I just got back up. So, we are looking at about 3-4 hours of sleep to start the day (fun, right?)

We bundled up and headed outside to set up tables and organize everything. Again, it was still very chilly (for us Floridians).We also decided to let the kids have a "hot chocolate, coffee, muffins" stand. They did a great job and made $8 by the end of the day.Now, let me just make sure you have a firm understanding of what we decided to undertake. We had 5 moms, 12 kids (ages 9,8,6,6,5,4,4,4,4,2,2,1) and NO HUSBANDS while we were doing a garage sale. I will go ahead and say that I do not plan to EVER do that again with small children. Maybe when I have all teenagers or something. But, things got a little crazy. Most of the time the kids played inside with my older kids trying to do some entertaining. Unfortunately for Jess, her house was trashed and she found several spots with marker (table, wall, floor) and a bottle of glitter exploded in 1 room. Here is a picture of all the kids listening to my 6 year. I don't think I could get them this orderly :)

At the end of the day, we walked away with a grand total of $950! It's a good thing, or the craziness of the day wouldn't have been worth it. We were all completely exhausted and headed to bed early that night. I was amazed that even with a full night sleep how tired I still was yesterday. I think I am doing good today though. I guess that's a good thing, because I am packing today to be able to head to Georgia tomorrow to spend Thanksgiving with Cory's family. I am ready for some relaxing down-time.