Hobbies ("Sailing")

It wasn't until we built an apartment, connected to the office, for missionaries, that I knew anything at all about yard sales aka "sailing". Or is that sailing aka "yard sales"? Anyway, I asked people at church to donate anything they needed to get rid of to the cause of furnishing the apartment. Sister Mauri Bell suggested that I go to yard sales, and I told her that I wouldn't have a clue about prices, how to wheel and deal, etc., so she invited me to come along on her excursion the following Saturday. She said that I would have to arrive at 5:55 A.M. because they would leave promptly at 6:00 A.M., whether I was there or not. This was serious business. My first lesson was that you did have to go that early because all the good stuff was gone by 9:00. And, no matter what the price was, you offered half. That was hard for me to do because I don't like to barter. But because we were furnishing an apartment we had to buy virtually everything from beds to potato peelers, so it became easier to dicker on the prices. It was amazing! Brand new twin beds for $25 each, peelers 25 cents, free-standing bookcase $2.00, rice cooker $3.00, pop-corn popper $1.00. The list goes on. I had Paul go with me because I didn't think I could do it by myself and I didn't know how much we could spend. I only wish I had kept track of how much we spent all together to furnish the apartment. After our first Saturday we were hooked. We went almost every Saturday after that for about twenty years. There were "treasures" to be found every week. It became a family tradition, but to bribe the kids to go with us we would get donuts at the local mom and pop donut shop. The double chocolate cake donuts were to die for, even took the place of my favorite donuts from when we lived in Salt Lake. I would say that all of us now have a huge percentage of our things bought from garage sales. It wasn't too long before we were buying presents from yard sales to give to the kids at Christmastime. It replaced our tradition of letting them open one gift on Christmas Eve. It became Garage Sale Christmas Eve. We were buying all year long and saving them until the magical night. But the parents were doing all of the buying, so we eventually brought the kids into the choosing of gifts...they would all buy something for everyone else in the family. It became the highlight of Christmas. Friends heard about it and wanted to come over and watch the unvailing. Though we would buy from the stores and give those gifts on Christmas Day, the Garage Sale Christmas Eve presents would always be the most fun. And our time spent together was the most memorable. One year Annie even said, "Let's not buy regular presents...let's just do the garage sale ones."

It's been a family joke that when I shop yard sales I will shop until I have at least six of everything...one for me and one for each of the kids. A famous and very funny quote from Ben is, "My mom even buys for people who aren't born yet." Well, that may be exaggerating a bit, but I have to admit, not by much. The problem is that right now Annie is the only one with a house, and the rest of the kids don't have storage space enough for me to inflict all these possessions. I have filled up all my storage space and then some, so it really doesn't make sense for me to shop every week anymore. But when I do go I usually say, "We've got to start going every weekend again." We do almost always go when we are out-of-town, however. We even found one when we were in New York with Annie. They blocked off the whole block. I can always find something to buy, even if it's just a book, but I was especially happy that Annie found several treasures. Katy is still in the regular groove so when she comes to San Diego to stay with us on the boat we always go...plug in addresses on the GPS, and away we "sail". We have more fun than should be allowed. She even wanted to write a book about "sailing", but has since put things on a blog instead, with photos and all. Maybe someday I will have her teach me how to do that.