It has been an amazing few days. Aaron and I both work at Willie’s T’s and we close down during the Christmas and New Year holiday. It gives all the employees a much-needed break and thanks to Will and Tracey Carrier, we get to spend the holidays with our families.
This year, we relaxed, played with Kiera and winter cleaned our house. It’s like spring-cleaning but we do it in the winter because we have the time off. I also decided it would be a great time to go through all of our clothes and Kiera’s toys.
Now, many of you may remember a couple of weeks ago when I discussed in my column about Kiera telling people I sold her toys… well, get ready because she has another story.
We are planning a vacation to California in February. Aaron’s grandparents live in California and Kiera has never had the opportunity to meet them. Aaron’s parents will be traveling out to see them and invited us to tag along. We couldn’t pass up the chance to see his grandparents and let Kiera meet them and experience where her Daddy grew up.
We’ve talked to Kiera about the upcoming trip and how we are trying to save money. This last week as we started to purge our closets, I came up with the brilliant idea to have a garage sale this Saturday. Well, I think it is a brilliant idea. Aaron, on the other hand, I think might be considering hiding. But, that’s beside the point.After cleaning out bags of clothes and shoes out of our rooms, we headed to Kiera’s playroom. As she and I sat down in front of one of the toy bins, I began to explain to her what we were doing.
“Baby, we are going to go through your toys and have a garage sale!” I started out explaining excitedly.
“Today?” She asked, her face lighting up.
“Umm… no. We will do it next Saturday. But, we need to go through all the toys in here since you got new ones for Christmas.” I continued. “And the money that we get from the garage sale will go in our vacation fund for when we go to California!”
I was so impressed by how well she went through her toys. There was only a few times that we discussed whether she really played with a certain toy or not. She was willing to part with several that surprised me. Now, when we got to the baby dolls it was a whole different story.
After I asked about the fourth baby doll and she declined to part with it, I gave up. She pulled all her babies in her lap and begin to feed, bathe and change their diapers. I didn’t push it any further.
Finally, she grew bored with our organizing efforts and moved into the living room to hang out with her big sister, Moriah. As I walked through the living room at one point, I heard this conversation.
“We are going to California to see people I haven’t seen before!” She told Moriah.
“Really?” Moriah replied. “Are you excited?”
“Yes! Gigi and Pop are going and we are going…” She paused as I walked by. “Mommy?”
I stopped before walking back into the playroom. “Yes?”
“Are we going to stay in a hotel?” She inquired.
“It’s possible.” I answered and started back into the playroom.
She turned back to Moriah. “Well, we are going through my toys so I can sell them. That way Mommy and Daddy can have money to go to California.”
I made it into the safety of the playroom before I did a face palm. Perfect. Just perfect. I can just hear her telling people at the garage sale how she has to sell her toys so her Mommy and Daddy can go to California.
I love the way her mind works.
In other news, this is my one-year anniversary for writing my column! I can’t believe it has been a year. Not to get all mushy and silly, but I just want to say thank you to all of you that take time out of your day to read about our crazy life and the fun of raising Kiera. Thanks to all that encouraged me to start writing a column. I truly hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. I’ll stop babbling now.
I’m off to start pricing items for our garage sale. We all know how fun that will be. I also need to start practicing my speech for when Kiera tells people how we are selling her toys for our trip. Maybe I’ll just get a shirt made that reads, “I’m not actually selling my child’s toys for my own benefit.” Nah. That’s too many words.
Rowonna McNeely is a graphic artist for Willie’s T’s Screenprint & Embroidery. She is a mother of a four year old girl and step mother of two adult girls. Her crazy life includes a dog, Sloane and psychotic cat, Gracie. Both females. She is married to her prince, who is outnumbered by the opposite gender.
