What's New and Exciting

It's September (I know, I completely missed August here on the blog - but I'm going to just pick up where we are right now)! It is a season of change, for us, and for most families with school age children. It is our last week of summer vacation before both girls head to school next week!

Regan will be starting third grade and Sage will be entering Kindergarten. They are both very excited!  We rode our bikes to the school and they got to check our their classrooms. Regan met her teacher too - Mrs. VanderMeulen.

We finally had our garage sale! We had been talking about it and preparing for it all summer. We wanted to have it at my in-laws condo (better location) and it worked out perfect that their subdivision was planning one for last weekend (meaning I didn't have to advertise and more traffic!! :D ). I had told the girls they could have the proceeds from any of their toys that were sold - but, that we would have to discuss how the money was going to be spent. They have been talking about getting a fish tank for quite a while and we ended up finding two at the neighborhood sale.

I intended to set up the smaller one right away, and see how it went. Then, set up the bigger one later if they kept an interest in taking care of the fish and small tank. Daddy had other plans though. A few hours and $80 of their garage sale money later - we have two working fish tanks, stocked with fish and supplies to last about a year. The girls didn't even bat an eye at spending the majority of their $120 garage sale proceeds on the fish tank. Easy come, easy go, I guess!!

The other thing the girls did at the garage sale was have a snack stand. We baked some granola bars and breakfast cookies and made lime-aid and crystal light. They sold a snack and a drink for $1 and raised a total of $42 toward their Compassion International goals. (They girls have each picked out some items they want to buy for children in need.) All day at the garage sale, they were so excited about the money they were earning for their gifts - even more excited than they were about the money they were earning for themselves (from their toys). I hope their giving hearts will continue all of their lives. :)

I have been busy this week stocking my freezer up for winter. We bought a bushel of peaches at the farmers market this week ($22) and I've made some peach freezer jam. The rest will get eaten fresh or sliced up and frozen - to be used in smoothies, for pancake topping, etc. Today we picked up 8 dozen ears of corn ($20) to be put up. And earlier this week, I cooked up a huge batch of Tortellini Soup (14 meals!!) and stocked an entire shelf of the freezer! YUMMY!

So thankful for the abundance of blessings!