ANOTHER YARD SALE

Ben got hold of the camera, and took plenty of pictures for us. OUR SIGN.
THEY DIDN'T CARE!
LATER WHEN THINGS HAD SETTLED DOWN SOME
PEOPLE VISITED WITH ONE ANOTHER (I have no idea who this is but Ben thought it was a good picture) Notice the broken flag pole in the back ground.
Millie found her a nice box in the sun to lay on
Not sure what Eli is doing, Maybe the chaos drove him crazy too!


Our originally planned yard sale happened this past weekend. I decided to have it on Friday and Saturday to see what happened. I put an ad in two papers, listing some antiques and other good stuff I had. I figured if I started the sale on Friday at 4pm, we would have most of the day to finish getting stuff priced unboxed and out on the tables.
Boy was my plan put on the wayside!
As usual we got up and started our day in the living room going over the agenda for the day and having family prayer to start the day. Good start. We hadn't even finished praying before the dogs go crazy and Ben yells, hey someone is here! Before I know it, he has darted off outside to the garage and OPENS THE GARAGE DOOR!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhh!!!!!
NOOOOOOO!!!!!! Not the garage door! We are not ready! He darts back in, "The man wants to look at your furniture". Well, ok. So I go out and ask him, "Is there a certain piece you wanted to look at?" "Oh, No, I just want to see waht all you have." I gave Ben a dirty look and told him to stand out there in the garage while the man was looking. I came back a few minutes later and there was Ben following the man around like a puppy dog giving the man a sales pitch on the piano and the hoosier cabinet. Now the info he was giving him was totally incorrect and you could tell the man was a little annoyed. My plan then was to close the garage doors as soon as the man left but that didn't happen. More people came!!!! Then more! There were women in my garage falling all over each other,digging in boxes and throwing stuff all around! My organized tables that were all crowded into the garage were no longer organized! I couldn't even get them pulled out into the driveway because of all the women. I was certainly irritated though I tried not to show it! The kids and I were in a tizzy because people were asking questions and wanting to pay and I didn't have the money box outside and the kids were pretty slow at adding stuff up.
We had a lot of clothes to hang out and so I got the bright idea to tie a line from the gutter to our metal ladder. It was working great until we heard this bending of metal and a crash! The gutter tears off the house, bends into and the clothes plummet to the ground. Water that has been in resivoir from the previous nights rain, comes pouring out and my kids just stand there dumbfounded not knowing what to do!
Much to the ammusement of all the EARLY women at my yard sale, I shout to the kids, "Don't tell Daddy! I'll fix it before he come home." I get the kids to pick up some of the clothes before they get wet while I grab a bucket tocatch all the water and then tell them, to hang them on the flag pole hanging out from my house. It was working great until a few minutes later I heard..... Yes, another crash! This time the pole came out of the front of the house. "Great! There goes my flag. Guess I'll have to fix that too! Finally I just told the kids to put all the clothes on a table, (They surely weren't being used at this point because of all the people digging through the boxes in my garage. ) Later I found a PVC pipe and ran it through the ladder and duct taped it REAL good. I was quite proud of rigging though I closely watched the sagging pole all day.
My neighbor who was taking her walk saw all the chaos, found me and said, "Do you need help?" "Yes!", I replied. She took charge and helped me start getting tables pulled out and started unpacking boxes while I checked people out! (Thanks, Renee!)
A little bit later there a short lull and by this time I was a little less frazzled and so I parked my LARGE van acroos the driveway and we made a big sign that read, STARTS AT 4PM. THANKS.
Do you think that stopped them? Uhhhh, No. They read the sign and then walked right past the van! I finally gave up and shouted! "Let them Come!, It doesn't matter anymore!" (Of course, no one was there at the time). We had about an hour & half lull and I finished pricing stuff and reorganized the tables, then it started back up til about 5:30pm. Then my husband took me to a nice restaurant with his business partners. It was a nice end to a very busy crazy day! Who knew a yard sale could be so dramatic?
On Saturday, Maggie and Ben and I got up at 5:30am to get back at the yard sale stuff. (They were the chosen ones because they were on TEASPOT (Take Everything Away for a Short Period Of Time) for the day. (Our discipline system which means you are grounded and are MINE for the day!). Do people not come at 6am to yard sales anymore? We had one here and there but for a gorgeous Saturday, it was dead. If I hadn't had some avid scrapbookers come and wipe a lot of my stuff out, it would not have been worth it. A total difference from Friday! Finally about 9:30am - 10:00am they started coming. We only made about 1/3 of what we did on Friday! I repented of my complaining about the people on Friday and thanked God for them. We raised enough money to pay for 1/2 a plane ticket. (We need 5).