The Mom Prom

On Friday the 13th, Owen's daycare had a Mom Prom, as a belated Mother's Day function.  As most reading this know, Mother's Day was the day after Derby this year.  We live in Derby City.  You begin to see the scheduling conflict.  The week before Derby the parts of town not directly involved with the track, hats, or consumption of alcohol all but shut down. We considered ourselves fortunate that the daycare was even open.  The FRIDAY before Derby is the Oaks race.  Now, having lived in KY 99.9% of my life, I have always been cognizant of Derby, but seriously had never even heard of Oaks.  For the locals, the Oaks IS the Derby.  The town shuts down.  Everyone takes off work if humanly possible. There are skeleton-crews only working, if a place is even open for business that day.  And the track is PACKED.  So there was no way that anything was happening for Mother's Day the week prior to Mother's Day this year.  Our gift from the daycare was that they were even open on Oaks.  But I digress.  Owen's classroom invited the Mom's to come at 4pm the following Friday, dressed in Prom attire if they wished, for a snack and some dancing, and a little art work.  I went straight from work, so no Prom attire from me, but Owen was OK with that. We showed off our famous wind-up-spin-and-dip, previously only performed in our kitchen, and it was a hit! :)

Garage Sale!

I thought I'd post some pics of our garage sale. 
You may not know this, but I have always somewhat prided myself on the fact that I'm not a "saver".  Haven't used it in the last 6 months? OUT it goes.  This habit undoubtedly developed from all the moving around I've done.  Move more than once, and your fondness for memorabilia starts to dwindle exponentially with each move. Trust me.  So I really thought I had my possessions streamlined.  Then Jim and I got married and we suddenly had two of a lot of stuff!  But I thought we'd gotten rid of a lot of the duplicates.  THEN we started contemplating adoption, and I started putting Owen's out-grown things away, instead of purging them, because we didn't know gender/age of the child we may adopt, and I was trying to be thrifty.  Then I started back to school, and all purging stopped anyway.  Enter the garage sale idea.  We needed to purge, and it could also be a good way to shore up the funding for all the application fees involved in adoption.  To sum up, the day of my final exam, as soon as I finished, Jim and I cleaned out the garage and painted it.  If you're going to have a garage sale, you have to hold it in a clean garage, right?  Then we started pulling stuff out of closets and the attic.  

I have to say I was shocked.  I had no idea we had so much stuff.  (And what's even more bizarre is that you can't tell by looking around the house that we got rid of a bunch of stuff!) I did not take any photos of during or after, as we were otherwise occupied. It took all four of us - Mom, Jim and I to answer all the questions, haul all the stuff to cars, and make change, and Babe to keep Owen (at her house, so he couldn't try to reclaim his old toys). 

Who knew so many men came to garage sales? And by themselves, not with their wives, either. Per the recommendation from Better Homes and Gardens, Jim had put together a "man-table" of old exercise equipment, baby food jars of nuts-and-bolts odds-and-ends, old electrical equipment and tool bags, and duplicate lawn tools that we had. Probably 90% of what he put out there sold!  What an eye-opener! 

In the end, it was a success!  We realized enough money to cover the next wave of adoption application fees.

I have to insert here that Jim and I were using this sale a little like litmus paper.  We've been praying for awhile now about adopting. Up to this point, however, we hadn't really had an opportunity to see God's opinion on the subject. This was before we started gathering stuff up to sell. Also, in my mind, I'm not a hoarder, so I KNEW we didn't have enough stuff to yield any significant money, not from a yard sale.  Then we started going through closets, and I tell ya, it was like the loaves and the fishes...the stuff just kept piling up!  Jim did some side work for a fella he knows, and came home with a fist full of kids toys to put in the sale.  And then we got the 10 day forecast....thunder showers. Again.  As late as Saturday morning it was saying thundershowers all day.  But do you know that other than about a 20 minute nice spring rain at about 8am (which was nothing to serious garage-salers), it held off until we closed shop at about 2pm?
  We resisted counting it up until it was over.  We took in the $20's every so often and sat them by the coffee pot (thanks for the tip, Lillie), but didn't count it.  I had it in my head that that would constitute doubting God, to tally before we were done.  So after we'd shut the doors, and tidied up a little, we sat down and added it up. We made $841.75.  FROM A GARAGE SALE.  Mom says only Anna Simpson has more lucrative garage sales than that! :)  So, there is The Nod we were looking for. I just wanted to officially document that we're grateful.

Owen's first bike!

On Mother's Day, we went and got Owen an early birthday present. The thought of climbing up and down a jungle-gym, trying to squeeze my rear down yet another kiddie slide, just seemed too much to for my ego that morning. I asked Jim if we could get Owen his birthday present early, to which he agreed, and we spent Mother's Day walking along side him, or waiting at the bottom of various hills to catch him. He intially applied the brakes very well, but then got his confidence up and Jim and I became targets that he tried to run into! Bruised shins included, it was a good Mother's Day.  Notice the mounting technique toward the end of the video...I thought it was very innovative of him! :)

Play ball!

Owen had his first t-ball game a week ago Friday, followed by his second game last Monday.

 I have to say I find the experience hilarious for the most part, but a little worrisome as well. It's hilarious to watch all the kids struggle with their attention spans. It's a little embarrassing to have the game interrupted so I can trot Owen over behind some bushes to pee, while the entire ballfield knows what your doing.

And then there are the bullies. One took Owen's hat and threw it on the ground. Owen was completely baffled by this, not too upset, just baffled.

Anyway, they play two innings, and by the time we get to the bottom of the second, time starts to really crawl for these kiddos! :)

 Hope you enjoy the pics!

Bittle