Catching up...

After a forced hiatus, due to house guests (yay!) and the family stomach flu (boo!), we're back in action and ready to catch up with all the crazy goings-on around here. And I can't believe I haven't posted about this - the Bake Sale!!!  Mondays are the day the Linscotts come into town and spend the day with us.  The Linscotts deserve their own post, which I promise is forthcoming, but for now, know that on Mondays

Melanie and her daughters Madeline and Olivia, her son Izekiel, and their friend Lily all come over and spend the day "in town".  They arrive around lunch time and once that's done the older girls and I walk 2 verrrry long blocks up the hill east of us to an old renovated church that houses ArtsWest.  This is where the girls have choir for an hour every week.  The younger girls stay home and "do kindergarten", which remains a sacred mystery to the rest of us, but they enjoy themselves quite a bit.  Afterwards, we run back down the hill to join them for snack and play until dinner time.  Well, one week choir was cancelled, and Melanie, knowing that Eliza had been wanting to have a lemonade stand, and having had a good selling day with her girls the previous week at their roadside produce stand at the top of their driveway, suggested that we have a bake sale in our front yard.  This is a brilliant idea, and I'll tell you why.  Every day at approximately 3:15, about 150 hungry elementary school students come pouring out of the building across the street from us, bleary from their hours inside and ready for home-baked goodness at an incredibly reasonable price. It worked! Anika and I made banana muffins, Melanie and Olivia made oatmeal cookies, and the big girls worked on signs ("cookies for kids" said one. "cookies for adults" said another) and setting up the table, and we had ourselves a bake sale. And heck if we didn't sell out of muffins and just about all of the cookies (there were more of those)!!! Our family made six bucks, the girls each got money for their banks, and we had a blast!  And a nice added bonus for Ani and I is that we get to hang out with Melanie and the baby, both of whom are excellent company...

 (as a side note: we tried having another bake sale this past week, and it unfortunately was a lesson in competition and corporate take-over.  the PTO vice pres lives next door, and he set up a table laden with leftovers from their halloween haunted house over the weekend, but HIS table got to be across the street, thus hitting the hungry children before they ever had a hope of seeing our goodies.  the girls took it really well - eliza even told him that if he didn't make any money and we did, we would share...the girls had all dressed up so cute, in aprons and head scarves, and they proceeded to yell "MUFFINS! HOMEMADE ORGANIC MUFFINS!" but to no avail. well, they sold three.  we'll try again next week...)