Now that my time is not consumed with eating away my stress, I have time for reading a book (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle--not as consuming as Twilight, but I'm enjoying it so far), watching my favorite show So You Think You Can Dance, and today we garage saled. Kyle and I are lovers of a good deal, so of course we love garage sales. Before the kids, we'd casually stroll about with Tim Horton's (coffee) in hand and look for some household/tools/furniture bargains. We did a bit when the kids were young, but not as much. Once we moved to this more rural area, we weren't able to go out as much since we are fairly far removed from most communities who have the good sales.

This year (today) we finally hit the yearly 10 mile garage sale in our area. Ten miles and about 5 communities all selling their crap. And we loved every minute of it. We tried to plan a course, but that got cumbersome and just started hitting the ones we though looked good as we passed by or the ones we could get out and walk around to several. We took the kids with us, knowing that they would score some free crap (and did they ever), but also knowing that they would probably get cranky and need to go home at some point.

We headed out at 9am and I could feel the thrill of the hunt immediately. I lost track of how many we went to, but we just kept going, feeding the kids snacks, lunch, drinks all along the way. We took our jogging stroller knowing that if we were walking quite a bit or if they started to just get plain tired they could crash in there for a bit. Best. stroller. ever. And we got several compliments on it. We had two potty breaks, filled the SUV up to the point that we were shoving things in between Cameron and Kaela and tied stuff to the roof, didn't get home until 4pm, and spent $92 including a couple hot dogs, water and cupcakes. We couldn't believe how amazing the kids were behaving--they loved it! The kept saying "are we going saling more?" "Are we going to another sale garage?" I'm sure that getting toys and clothes for them helped, but I think they also enjoyed talking to everyone. We also were in awe of our finds...we just wanted to have a fun, carefree day and took out $100 cash. This is some of what we came home with (not sure I can remember it all, but I'll try):

• At least 20 pieces of clothing for Kaela including boots, slippers, pj's, snowsuit, and playclothes (no boys clothes in Cammie's size!! Just one pair of snowpants)
  
• some little toys, crafts, baseball glove, sport backpack, stuffed Barney (ick), FREE bubble blower that we already have but the kids always fight over, FREE helicopter toy that Cam is in love with, strawberry shortcake colorforms and figurine (free)
  
• 3 wood chairs (two are in my kitchen now) for $3 each
• scarf for me
  
• 2 nail guns--finisher and stapler for $20, new weeder tool because my disappeared
• FREE wood lounger that was sitting on the road waiting for garbage pick up
• bike for Kaela for next year--all girly and she took $10 less than she was asking ($30)
• a trellis for $2 but we didnt' have room and have to go back for it. hope it's still there tomorrow!
• horse swing for swing set--$5 (they are about $50)!! and bouncy hopper ball

The kids were troopers the whole way and Kyle started to peeter out after a while. It seems my recent and unfortunate run-in with poison ivy, and the prescription of prednisone to control it, has kept me fairly wired and energetic. I can't remember having this much energy, which helped to keep me going but has also helped me to motivate to get the house spotless and laundry done. I know, most people do these things normally, but I wanted to do them and could probably clean until I fall over--if only I wouldn't keep the kids up in the process.

Tomorrow we are going to try to work on the raised vegetable garden again. It was put on hold when we weren't sure what money would be coming in, but now we feel that we can move forward. Nothing substantial, but it's new to us so it's exciting!