Garage Sale

I've been looking forward to having a garage sale for some time.  Cory and I had a last minute pull things out on the driveway sale about 5 years ago, but have never had a sale that we did prep and planned for.  Primarily my goal was to get rid of the 'stuff' we have been collecting in the basement.  Our basement is in the process of getting finished so we can't really afford to just hang on to things for years anymore.  I also wanted to get rid of some of the mountains of clothing Brady has accumulated over the last 3 years.  I will say the process was exhausting, but a lot more fulfilling than dropping off sacks at the Goodwill.  My mom came up which helped tremendously.  I was very impressed by her ability to push 'treasures' on the garage salers.  My favorite was the dialogue she had with a lady wearing a Budweiser sweatshirt.  My mom says, "Hi how are you?  I have the perfect pair of pants for you."  As she pulls out a old pair of Budweiser Nascar pajama pants that were Cory's.  She continues on, "I thought they would match your sweatshirt well!"  Classic.  We were able to part with some miscellaneous pieces of furniture and Cory sold one of his smokers. (don't worry he still has 3)  The biggest surprise was the number of adult clothes that we sold.  Everyone has always said adult clothes don't sale, but we put them out anyways and marked everything $.50.  We had several folks that bought SACKS of adult clothes.  One guy said this is awesome and bought up every t-shirt that would fit. (He explained that he is a welder and burns holes in his shirts.)  He particularly liked one of Cory's fraternity t-shirts that said 'Big Daddy' on the back.  We ended up making almost $800 and got rid of a ton of stuff.  I forgot to take a before picture, but did take a shot before we closed up.  We still had quite a bit left, but I would say we sold 60% of what we put out.

Playset

Brady has outgrown his plastic playset so we decided he needed a bigger wooden set.  After some research and looking we had picked a playset.  We had heard horror stories of people trying to put them together themselves so we opted to have someone do the install.  The description of the playset actually said something along the lines of it would take 2 men approximately 24 hours to install.  No thank you.  What frequently happens in this scenario is that I become the 2nd 'man' and then am struggling to carry, lift, etc.  The 24 hour comment though made it a no-brainer.  The 2 men that did the installation were impressive and had it done in 4.5 hours.  I will say that I was a little concerned when I saw the guys roll up with a cigarette in their mouth and then before we discussed the install plans he pulls out $2 and asked if I could go pick him up a Diet Mountain Dew while we were out.  A little rough around the edges, but they had certainly put together many playsets.  When we asked him how many he said it was in the 1,000s.

Brady is very happy with the end product.  He did not want his picture taken so I had to be quick and sneaky.  The playset has also been a hit with the neighborhood kids and has resulted in Brady making some new 'big kid' friends.

Easter

We spend Easter at my grandparents in Wichita.  Brady was really good at church and enjoyed listening to Papo Larry sing.  I did get a kick out of the fact that he brought his binoculars with him and broke them out about half way through the service for a closer look at the action.  I am not so proud of the fact that we went to church sporting a dinosaur tattoo.  Brady thinks that stamps and tattoos are the coolest thing and somehow we continuously end up with them even though I have yet to purchase one.  After church we had a Easter egg hunt.  Megan and Lexi filled all of the eggs and somehow knew exactly which ones were the money eggs.

For Easter lunch Cory had his fill of pretzel salad and I had my favorite pickled beets.  One of these days we will have to learn how to make our holiday favorites, but for now we will continue to enjoy to have them made for us.

Wichita Botanica Gardens

We headed to Wichita on Saturday after Brady's soccer class.  My grandma has been talking about taking us to Botanica for months so we went on Saturday afternoon.  Brady and Grayson had lots of fun in the children's garden.  Grayson was most interested in climbing in the tree stump that was part of the tree house.  Brady thought it was too dark and scary because he couldn't see all the way through it.  His preference was the tunnel you could see all the way through. 

Johnson County Museum

Brady's preschool was closed today for inservice so we were looking for something new to do.  We decided to check out Kidscape at the Johnson County Museum.  Despite it being only 10 minutes from our house and free this was the first time we had visited.  It wasn't very big, but it's cute and good for younger kids.  I think the advertised age is 3 - 10, but I'm pretty sure 98% of 10 year olds would be bored out of their mind.  Most of the exhibits are geared towards 1 - 5 year olds.  They had a train/car room, a doctor room, fishing & golf area, book area, theatre area and a farm area.  We spent most of the time playing putt putt and trains until Brady discovered the Wii.  They had it set up in the golf & putt putt area since it had a 'sports' theme.  When we got back to the States in September we made the mistake of introducing Brady to the Wii.  He has since been addicted.  Once he saw the Wii that's what he wanted to do for the rest of the time.  This was a little disappointing since we had left the house to get away from tv, video games, iPads, etc.   I did chuckle when a little boy that looked to be about 5 wanted to play and his mom couldn't figure out how to set it up.  Brady turns to them and says, "I can do it for you!"  Yes, the three year old is very good at turning on the Wii, selecting games, adding controllers, etc.  Not sure this is something to be proud of, but I guess I can say he embraces technology!

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt!

Yesterday we had our neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  There were a number of games to play, eggs to hunt and of course the Easter bunny made an appearance.  The park is only about .5 mile from our house so we walked.  Not sure this was the best decision though as it was extremely hot and humid which is crazy since it's the beginning of April.  We stuck around long enough to get our egg quota and say hi to the bunny.  Brady really doesn't liked characters too much, but he's starting to get more comfortable with them as he gets older.  I'm still not sure he wanted to visit the bunny, but we got him to say hi and happy Easter and then he snuck in a quick "I want a telescope and binoculars in my Easter basket."  I couldn't figure out where the idea for these particular requests had come from, but when I asked him it made perfect sense.  He wanted them because Dino Dan has them and this is his very favorite show.

Such a Boy!

I got a chuckle out of this so took a picture.  Such a boy in so many ways!!