I had a bunch of stuff I needed to get rid of so it was good motivation getting it to the garage and then out the door to goodwill. I also put of 5 other friends/family members stuff so the sale was pretty large. A lot of people came so it was definitely worth it!
The girls have been wanting to do a back sale for some time so I talked to them about what we could do with the money. I told them we could:
1. keep it for ourselves
2. donate it to people who need it (people who don't have food, people who are sick, animals who need help, etc....)
I also told them that if they donated it that they would make more money. And not only would they make more money but mommy and daddy would match what they brought in. Their eyes grew wide at that and their wheels were a turning and decided to donate it. Anna wanted to give her portion to kids who don't have food and Ashley wanted to give to kids who are sick. So we settled on two amazing organizations; the weekend backpack program through Harvester's and JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Relief Program). We personally know 2 kids with Type 1 diabetes (an old neighbors grandson and a boy in Ashley's preschool class) so this was a good motivator to get people to donate to the bake sale.
I was up all hours of the night finishing up enough goodies (the girls did help me bake around 1/2 of them) but the girls were in charge of the bake sale the entire time. They manned the bake sale 8 1/2 hours the first day, for 4 hours after school on Friday and a couple on Saturday. An hour into the sale, Anna declared, "These garage sales are tough work!"
But all in all the girls enjoyed being outside 3 days in a row; 8 hours a day. The weather was perfect and the girls were great! Friends dropped by throughout the day on Thursday to see the girls and make a donation to their bake sale. I think at one time there were 11 children in our front yard; so much fun!
Not only did we bring in a lot of money for these organizations but we learned so much about others. We had strangers sharing their stories, asking us why we were doing this, crying as they heard Anna and Ashley tell them, thanking us for our generosity and even sharing with us that they had Type 1 diabetes and even going to the length of showing all of us the monitor they wear on them at all time. It was overwhelming and unexplainable. And on top of all the emotions involved, we brought in a total of $380. I'd say around 1/3 of it was from total strangers and it helped that my dad donated all the earning from his stuff in the garage sale to the bake sale. Rob and I then double it to $760 and American Century matched that to $1520.00. Pretty darn amazing for the work of a 5 and 3 year old. Amazing.
A special thanks for everyone who helped out or stopped by. It was such an amazing experience for our family and I can not wait to do another bake sale with the girls sometime down the road....
Much Love.
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