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I can't believe how fast this week has gone. We're home from the camping week, and so the entire week has been about recovering. Now it's almost the weekend again. How lovely!
On Saturday, M and I got up and headed to the campground and hit some yard sales on the way. We had average deals, bought a few things but not much... until we stopped at one where there was an extra-large plastic tub full of toys. Random crap, including some Happy Meal type of toys, but also including a giant talking Pooh bear, half a dozen Barbies, etc. The lady priced them at eight for a dollar. M started grabbing things out wildly, because he has a weird hobby and well, so do I. (M likes to shoot at random objects during special gun events that he know goes to once or twice a year. They're freaks and enjoy splatterng the contents of stuffed animals, cars, refrigerators, satellite dishes and explosives with AK-47s and othersuch firearms. Me? I apparently enjoy having yard sales as a method of increasing cash flow. Also, Evie loves junk. Surprise, surprise.) Anyway, after a few minutes of this, we re-enter pricing negotiations and walk away with the entire tub for $4. The tub alone was worth $4. (She even went and found us the lid!) So we were high with our sucess on that sale. We had lunch at the camper, and headed back out to go to a sale at a church that my parents had been to that morning.
It was 1:50 when we pulled in, and the signs said they closed at 2:00. As we walked in, the lady announced to us, and then to everyone inside, that she was lowerng the price of everything to a quarter. EVERYTHING. We think we were the first people she told. M went absolutely nuts, and quickly enlisted my help in running around, grabbing things to buy and stacking them up in a huge pile. A quarter! We usually avoid church yard sales because people tend to contribue absolute junk and then overprice it, but this one had some pretty good stuff. She talked me into paying two dollars for a full set of dishes, and then we bought a chrome and pink bicycle--a NICE bicycle, in the next size up from where E is now for five. (The bike was outside, and therefore exempt from the quarter price tag--it had $25 on it. The dishes.. I think she just couldn't bear to see it all go for a quarter--I'm guessing she's the one that donated them.) Anyway. Four floor lamps, four wreaths (one of which is so huge that I'm not sure I have anywhere to put it), a bunch of kids clothes, three Littlest Pet Shop playsets, three or four My Little Pony playsets, a couple of small dollhouses, a bunch of large boy toys that I can't place due to my child being female, but that involved dragons and possibly one of which where cars come shooting out of dragons? I don't know. Four sleeping bags, one SpongeBob tent playhouse, a photo printer, a Knex Corkscrew Canyon toy, packed in a flat plastic tub--I had no idea what it was when I bought it but thought that the tub was worth a quarter. Stuffed animals, a fancy wooden block set with 150 carved pieces (all there), a brass wall candelabra, a talking, story-telling Baby Bear, Then they lowered the price of all shoes to $.10 a pair, and I bought a couple of pairs of sandals and a pair of winter boots (for, guess who?) It was CRAZY. We ended up spending maybe $35, and came home with a pile of stuff that I can't even describe to you. We brought everything in and dumped it in the sunroom, and Evie and I have spent most of our free time sorting and cleaning and putting away. Even Evelyn has been somewhat overwhelmed with the new stuff, and has even agreed to put some of it back in the yard sale without fighting. (We bagged up half of it before she even got to look at it--stuff that was not age-appropriate or interesting to her or us to keep.)
So.. that should be pretty profitable. I can't wait to throw this stuff back in a sale and see how it does. We bought around 120 items at that sale, and there was plenty that we decided to keep, but mostly, we bought it for stocking our own sale. The other customers were just sort of picking something up and turning it over and thinking about each item. It's a quarter! If you think, AT ALL, that you might want it, then buy the darned thing and move on. I know that not everyone would want to buy everything remotely interesting like we did, but we definitely will have at least one or two more yard sales this year, and we are lucky enough to have space. Win win!
Currently, my child is obsessed with playing a Swedish Barbie/Rapunzel computer game. I mean, she plays it all the way through (which takes about an hour or an hour and a half) and then wants to play it again. It was the first thing that she asked for this morning. It's a really, really cute game but I'm not entirely sure if it's all about that or if it's partially just that she knows she's doing it in Swedish. She doesn't need the words to play the games--there are a few places where it would certainly have been nice for her to have spoken instructions, but we muddled through, and now she just knows what to do. Remember a couple of weeks ago I talked about her playing computer games in Swedish and how I didn't think they would actually help, since she didn't understand enough of them? I am happy to report that she has learned a few words while she plays this particular game. Blomma! :) Gee, flowers in a Rapunzel game. Who would have guessed? :) Once, she also pointed out that Rapunzel said, "[swedishpart] yadda yadda [fade to swenglish]" when she tried to put a puzzle piece in the wrong place, and then she continued placing it on the wrong space just to hear her tell her that again. So, happily, she is getting something out of it, which is good for her because I have a harder time telling her to turn the computer off when she's doing something beneficial. ;) Every little bit helps, I guess. :)
While I'm speaking of my kiddo's achievements.. she swam by herself a little bit yesterday! She fell off her kickboard but kept swimming. Her teacher was thrilled. *giggle* I missed it because it happened on the far end of the pool. He was also practicing with her going under and started bouncing her up and down in the water, and she was going under each time and doing fine with it. Very happy about that! In a way I think she's too little for swimming lessons of this type, but in another way, she has such issues with this idea of going under water that I think it's important. She loves it, anyway, and she tries SO hard. In gymnastics news... I am a little concerned because I think that Evie is now modeling the behaviors of the younger or less enthusiastic members of her class. It started about three weeks ago--she's suddenly acting like she's afraid she's going to fall off the balance beam (the teachers are RIGHT there, holding them) and she has forgotten how to get up on the beam. I don't have any plans for her to be a professional gymnast and I'm not emotionally invested in her becoming brilliant at it, but it seems weird to suddenly lose skills that she'd learned. I believe she's seen how the other kids get more time (ie, attention), and she is subconsciously regressing so that she will level the playing field. sp I'm not sure what to do with THAT. I had hopes that the problem folks wouldn't be signing up for this session, but they were all there again. *sigh* On the bright side, I felt a little regret at first that I hadn't started earlier with the toddler class--not for her development, just for fun--but now I see how the eighteen-month-old acts and I am so glad that I didn't. She's getting the hang of it a little more, but yesterday they were doing handstands and she was just sobbing because she didn't want to. That is so wrong.
Oh, the many navel-gazing topics of parenting.
Anyway, I should get moving and get a little laundry folded before lunch. I'm going to try to make it to the gym after lunch so it'd be nice if I could accomplish a few things first. TGIF!
On Saturday, M and I got up and headed to the campground and hit some yard sales on the way. We had average deals, bought a few things but not much... until we stopped at one where there was an extra-large plastic tub full of toys. Random crap, including some Happy Meal type of toys, but also including a giant talking Pooh bear, half a dozen Barbies, etc. The lady priced them at eight for a dollar. M started grabbing things out wildly, because he has a weird hobby and well, so do I. (M likes to shoot at random objects during special gun events that he know goes to once or twice a year. They're freaks and enjoy splatterng the contents of stuffed animals, cars, refrigerators, satellite dishes and explosives with AK-47s and othersuch firearms. Me? I apparently enjoy having yard sales as a method of increasing cash flow. Also, Evie loves junk. Surprise, surprise.) Anyway, after a few minutes of this, we re-enter pricing negotiations and walk away with the entire tub for $4. The tub alone was worth $4. (She even went and found us the lid!) So we were high with our sucess on that sale. We had lunch at the camper, and headed back out to go to a sale at a church that my parents had been to that morning.
It was 1:50 when we pulled in, and the signs said they closed at 2:00. As we walked in, the lady announced to us, and then to everyone inside, that she was lowerng the price of everything to a quarter. EVERYTHING. We think we were the first people she told. M went absolutely nuts, and quickly enlisted my help in running around, grabbing things to buy and stacking them up in a huge pile. A quarter! We usually avoid church yard sales because people tend to contribue absolute junk and then overprice it, but this one had some pretty good stuff. She talked me into paying two dollars for a full set of dishes, and then we bought a chrome and pink bicycle--a NICE bicycle, in the next size up from where E is now for five. (The bike was outside, and therefore exempt from the quarter price tag--it had $25 on it. The dishes.. I think she just couldn't bear to see it all go for a quarter--I'm guessing she's the one that donated them.) Anyway. Four floor lamps, four wreaths (one of which is so huge that I'm not sure I have anywhere to put it), a bunch of kids clothes, three Littlest Pet Shop playsets, three or four My Little Pony playsets, a couple of small dollhouses, a bunch of large boy toys that I can't place due to my child being female, but that involved dragons and possibly one of which where cars come shooting out of dragons? I don't know. Four sleeping bags, one SpongeBob tent playhouse, a photo printer, a Knex Corkscrew Canyon toy, packed in a flat plastic tub--I had no idea what it was when I bought it but thought that the tub was worth a quarter. Stuffed animals, a fancy wooden block set with 150 carved pieces (all there), a brass wall candelabra, a talking, story-telling Baby Bear, Then they lowered the price of all shoes to $.10 a pair, and I bought a couple of pairs of sandals and a pair of winter boots (for, guess who?) It was CRAZY. We ended up spending maybe $35, and came home with a pile of stuff that I can't even describe to you. We brought everything in and dumped it in the sunroom, and Evie and I have spent most of our free time sorting and cleaning and putting away. Even Evelyn has been somewhat overwhelmed with the new stuff, and has even agreed to put some of it back in the yard sale without fighting. (We bagged up half of it before she even got to look at it--stuff that was not age-appropriate or interesting to her or us to keep.)
So.. that should be pretty profitable. I can't wait to throw this stuff back in a sale and see how it does. We bought around 120 items at that sale, and there was plenty that we decided to keep, but mostly, we bought it for stocking our own sale. The other customers were just sort of picking something up and turning it over and thinking about each item. It's a quarter! If you think, AT ALL, that you might want it, then buy the darned thing and move on. I know that not everyone would want to buy everything remotely interesting like we did, but we definitely will have at least one or two more yard sales this year, and we are lucky enough to have space. Win win!
Currently, my child is obsessed with playing a Swedish Barbie/Rapunzel computer game. I mean, she plays it all the way through (which takes about an hour or an hour and a half) and then wants to play it again. It was the first thing that she asked for this morning. It's a really, really cute game but I'm not entirely sure if it's all about that or if it's partially just that she knows she's doing it in Swedish. She doesn't need the words to play the games--there are a few places where it would certainly have been nice for her to have spoken instructions, but we muddled through, and now she just knows what to do. Remember a couple of weeks ago I talked about her playing computer games in Swedish and how I didn't think they would actually help, since she didn't understand enough of them? I am happy to report that she has learned a few words while she plays this particular game. Blomma! :) Gee, flowers in a Rapunzel game. Who would have guessed? :) Once, she also pointed out that Rapunzel said, "[swedishpart] yadda yadda [fade to swenglish]" when she tried to put a puzzle piece in the wrong place, and then she continued placing it on the wrong space just to hear her tell her that again. So, happily, she is getting something out of it, which is good for her because I have a harder time telling her to turn the computer off when she's doing something beneficial. ;) Every little bit helps, I guess. :)
While I'm speaking of my kiddo's achievements.. she swam by herself a little bit yesterday! She fell off her kickboard but kept swimming. Her teacher was thrilled. *giggle* I missed it because it happened on the far end of the pool. He was also practicing with her going under and started bouncing her up and down in the water, and she was going under each time and doing fine with it. Very happy about that! In a way I think she's too little for swimming lessons of this type, but in another way, she has such issues with this idea of going under water that I think it's important. She loves it, anyway, and she tries SO hard. In gymnastics news... I am a little concerned because I think that Evie is now modeling the behaviors of the younger or less enthusiastic members of her class. It started about three weeks ago--she's suddenly acting like she's afraid she's going to fall off the balance beam (the teachers are RIGHT there, holding them) and she has forgotten how to get up on the beam. I don't have any plans for her to be a professional gymnast and I'm not emotionally invested in her becoming brilliant at it, but it seems weird to suddenly lose skills that she'd learned. I believe she's seen how the other kids get more time (ie, attention), and she is subconsciously regressing so that she will level the playing field. sp I'm not sure what to do with THAT. I had hopes that the problem folks wouldn't be signing up for this session, but they were all there again. *sigh* On the bright side, I felt a little regret at first that I hadn't started earlier with the toddler class--not for her development, just for fun--but now I see how the eighteen-month-old acts and I am so glad that I didn't. She's getting the hang of it a little more, but yesterday they were doing handstands and she was just sobbing because she didn't want to. That is so wrong.
Oh, the many navel-gazing topics of parenting.
Anyway, I should get moving and get a little laundry folded before lunch. I'm going to try to make it to the gym after lunch so it'd be nice if I could accomplish a few things first. TGIF!
