Midnight Madness

This weekend was our Young Women's garage sale fundraiser (to help pay for girls camp) here at my house. Here's the breakdown of the wonderful and exhausting week:

On Wednesday for mutual, the Beehives went around and gathered ward members' donations and we brought them back to my garage.  I was amazed at how generous the ward members were with their donations.  

Thursday was drop-off day.  I stayed at home answering phone calls about drop-offs, waiting for drop-offs, helping unload the drop-offs and I really enjoyed having so many people stop by (thanks Cheri for the In-N-Out)! Again, amazed at the amount of stuff in our small garage.<-our garage before & after

Friday consisted of a few more donation drop-offs and then the madness began :).  We (the YW

presidency and some of the young women) started sorting through all the "stuff" at 4 p.m. and decided to call it quits around 12:30 yesterday morning.  We went our separate ways to get some sleep and met back at the house at 4:30 a.m.   The bishop's adult son, Danny, spent the night in my garage to provide security for all the items strewn about on the lawn (and neighbors lawn). How grateful we are to him and all the girls who helped... it was a lot to go through and organize!

Saturday started early as we attempted to have everything look decent and make paths for people to walk. The die-hard shoppers began to arrive as early as 6 and we sold, sold, sold until about noon.  The young women sold cinnamon rolls and muffins and also helped re-sort the clothing and held down the pop-up that was blowing away in the wind (the winds were crazy... quite a few things blew over and shattered).  

After the sale was over, we boxed all the left-overs up and the majority of it was picked up by a wonderful couple who drove it straight down to a community in Mexico (there were 4 truck-loads!).  What a huge burden that took off our shoulders.  The ward missionaries stopped by to say hi at the best time as we were loading all the trash into the Crump's truck.  They tucked their ties into their shirts and began to work!  By about 9 p.m. last night, the trash was gone, the boxes of stuff had been taken away, the garage was swept and back to normal and we were done!  It was a very successful day and one of the most exhausting I have ever experienced.  I really don't recommend the combination of hard labor, no sleep, very little to eat, and being out in the sun all day (can I throw in pregnancy?), but it was all well worth the result!  How grateful we as the YW presidency are that this only comes once a year and we know the girls will have an amazing (and less expensive) experience at camp!