Tidbits: Summer is Here edition

*So many things have completely wrapped up that I'm not going to know what to do with myself this week. And I mean that quite literally, of course, there's no bon-bon eating going on with 3 small kids. But to go from a weekly schedule with quite a bit...to a big empty calendar...is daunting in its own way. I'm sure we'll have fun figuring it out.

*Girl Scouts is done for the summer. In general I think I volunteered for too many things this year and I will be cutting down next fall (my oldest is a kindergartener! sign me up for everything!), but the one thing I for sure want to continue doing is leading Girl Scouts. It has been a great year and I can't wait to see what next year looks like. The only thing going on this summer is that Katy's whole troop is going to day camp togeher in July (it's so close to my house, we are so lucky! some people drive really far for camp.) But I am NOT NOT NOT helping out with that, so she will go on her own and I know she'll have a blast.

*School is also done. Katy's school did a little program (a mini-graduation they called it) on the last day, and it was super cute. They sang songs about all the things they've learned this year and did the Phonics Dance for us. The kids were arranged alphabetically in order to hand them their diploma as they walked off stage, so Katy was in the top row behind tall kids and we could not see her at all, except for brief moments when someone leaned over. But it was actually so comical how invisible she was, it will be a fond memory. 

Katy and her teacher. Remember how the last day of preschool I was hoping that I'd be happy about Katy's year on the last day on kindergarten? I am. She had a great year.

David insisted on having his picture taken with Mrs. H as well. She said, "With a future kindergartener!" We'd love for him to have her in 14 months' time. *gulp*

*The biggest news of the week is that I finally, finally pulled off the garage sale, thus completing my 40 bags in 40 days project. I was able to go through all the areas of the house and got rid of more than 40 bags worth of stuff, for sure. I am really glad that I did it - things feel lighter for sure and I know exactly what we have and where it is located. My only disappointment is that you wouldn't walk through my house and think, "Wow, you have so much less stuff!" It doesn't look that different, really. Most of the clutter was hiding in closets, basements, cabinets, drawers, etc. But I'm still glad to have it done.

The garage sale was a big success. My friend Beth brought stuff over to sell and helped me so much. We were SLAMMED on Friday, I couldn't believe how much traffic we had. And I know it's a lot of work, but I really love garage sales. I love the social aspect - we talked to lots of people we know, both well and not-as-well. And I just love the idea - I've got this stuff, can anyone else use it instead of buying something new? It also helps me to see people excited to get the stuff for cheap and even hear how they are going to use it. One lady said she was going to use our boppy pillow in a residential home for kids with severe disabilities. I love to know it will be put to good use! Another woman was literally giddy about a wallet and a bag of fabric. She kept saying, "thank you so much, I love these!" So anyway, I'm a dork. I really like garage sales.

I made $315, plus $91 from Half Price Books (I did a liberal sweep of the books, CDs, and DVDs in this house). So I'm excited to have $400 of summer fun money. I'm sure that if you worked that out to an hourly rate, it wouldn't be too impressive. But it needed to be done, so for some extra sweat, we got some spending money out of it.

*It's been 90 degrees this weekend (so glad our driveway is shaded), so the big kids are currently initiating the neighborhood pool with their dad. I think that has been the most common question I've heard in recent weeks, "Did you join the pool?" So hopefully we'll be filling a lot of that open calendar with pool time. Let summer begin!