In the Summertime at the VanO's

Hi everyone. It was a busy June this year. I got home from Annual Conference in Tulsa to this sight in my front yard. It was the second annual garage sale. Annual because Ralph has decided that a sale at the house is the best place to have the "what's left in the storage units" sale. It was three days of work (really four or five because it all had to be lugged to the house.
Ralph is more than fair about giving everyone the opportunity to pay up with phone calls, letters, etc and more than the required amount of months before foreclosure.
You can imagine our horror, when one of the "shoppers" recognized her things. Ralph said, pay for it and you can have it back. She didn't. Amanda was beside herself embarrassed but the woman should have been the one embarrassed. The woman borrowed money from her friend to buy back one or two things.





Surprisingly, when the sale was over, we only had two small pickup loads to take to the Goodwill donation place.



The dark picture is the night the kids did a fireworks preview for our vendors. We also put an article in the local paper and advertised it. We had rain just before but ended up having a good turn out.
We have also had some storms. Been to the cellar twice (came right back out again, because of a poor little rabbit that fell in and couldn't get out. It was a little smelly, so we went to the Pope's house.) So there has been some clean up to do as well. Thankfully we only lost one stand completely. It was already damaged from an earlier storm, but the 90 mile an hour wind put most of the stand in the Jr. High School parking lot and front yard. There was lots of damage on Broadway and in the Presidents addition. Amanda says she saw a tornado come out of the sky.

Then there was Vacation Bible School at church. On the last day, we had a county fair. The children brought money for our mission project which is to support the start of a new ministry of feeding the general public once a month. Salvation army has lost their kitchen, so there is no where for those without to go to eat. Anyway, there was a pie in the eye contest between Pastor Dave and Pastor Margie. The results are evident, as I wait with two of my friends to receive the pie in the eye.

Each child that learned their Bible verses got to put their name in a drawing to get to throw the pie. Here I am "getting" it. The kids loved it!

We also had a pie eating contest and gave blue ribbons. They were drawn from the same group of names for learning their verses.

I got some farm animals for the children to see- three baby goats, two baby pigs and a lamb who looks full grown. Amy brought JT down to see the animals. He loved the animals but he would not let me hold him with the painted target on my face.




We are in the full swing of fireworks now.

I should tell you that this year for the first time in 19 years we have an air conditioned trailer at the stand. Ralph bought a travel trailer from a renter at the storage unit. It blew over in the "storm" and the guy couldn't even afford to have it turned back upright. So we think we are living in "hog" heaven. It has been nice for eating, because it has a table and a refrigerator. We can keep the flys and other critters away from our food. The temperature has been moderately hot (only in the 90's so far), for that we are so thankful.