Catching Up

Things have been pretty busy these last couple of days and I finally have some time to sit quietly and update my blog.

Ian took this pic of Jordan the other morning. Cute, but all I keep thinking is "great...another person who wants to control the remote!"



I have been continuing to work with Jules to teach her how to ride her bike. She's RIGHT THERE but is so afraid to just let go and do it. I keep running alongside her, holding on to her but she still struggles with balancing herself. She is adamant about learning without falling. It's tough.

Here she is, putting on her Hannah Montana bike helmet, ready to practice.



I can still remember when we were first starting out and she wouldn't even get ON the thing. She's ok to pedal once or twice, but she's afraid to keep going.



Giving herself a pep talk..



Feeling discouraged...



Sam decided he would try to help her out and got on her bike to show her how easy it is to ride...



Giving her a few tips and encouragement...



While Julie took a break Sam showed me some of his tricks.



Oooooh....go Sam....



I have run out of tips as to how to get Julie going with her bike. Its hard for her to see all of her friends - and her own brother - riding their bikes around the neighbourhood and she can't go with them. She's so, so close but something is holding her back. I honestly thought about just letting her fall so she'd get it out of her system but that just seems like such a mean thing to do and I know it would be a very long time before she trusted me and an even longer time before she'd try to ride again.

Sigh. Tomorrow is another day. I'd love for her to do it before she goes back to school so she can tell her friends she learned to ride a bike over the summer.

Saturday was a gorgeous day and we were FINALLY able to have the yard sale. Ian was going to run it because I knew - even though I've never had one before - that I was not going to have the patience for it. All the signs that he posted clearly stated that it would start at 9 am, however that didn't stop people from arriving between 8 and 8:30.

The sale started at 9am and I was fired by 9:02. I couldn't help it. A man was asking Ian about a bike we were selling and said he wanted to buy it, but not until tomorrow. Ian said the sale was only today. Again he said something about wanting to buy it tomorrow. Ugh. This went back and forth and finally I said "You can buy it TODAY or TODAY!"

That was the first time I was fired.

A short while later Ian was emptying a box of things on to the table and another man was poking through the box and pulled out a black magic marker and asked Ian how much it was. I said something like "that's not for sale....it's to write the prices...maybe you could just step off for a minute so he can finish setting up!"

Fired again.

You don't have to fire me three times...I was outta there.

Julie decided to set up a lemonade stand to earn some money. Here she is preparing...



Open for business!!



She did a great job and sold about 4 pitchers. She kept giving Sam free drinks but made the rest of us pay.

Sam has a million Pokemon cards and decided to sell some of them, so he set up his own stand. He ended up selling about 30 cards.



Some dude browsing...



Sam demonstrating one of the items for sale. I don't know why I found this so funny but I did, so he kept doing it.



Some guy actually asked Ian how much he was charging for this.



I'm not kidding. He had to explain that it was there as a garbage bin for people to put in their empty cups.

A short while later someone else started poking around this, checking it out from all angles. Then he asked Ian what he was charging for it.



It's a laundry basket that was in the garage, that Ian had taped a "Yard Sale" sign to!! He patiently explained this to the person a couple of times until finally he moved on.

I swear, Ian has the patience of a saint and is polite to absolutely everyone. I bet he'd be polite to Charles Manson too if he were to have shown up at this yard sale.

I spent the rest of the time inside with my mom, aunt and sister, while Sam sat on the porch for a short while with Jordan.



We still have a lot of stuff left over so, weather permitting, we'll hold another one this coming Saturday. Julie is already excited at the prospect of selling more lemonade. There is something so sweet and innocent about a lemonade stand.

Ian headed off to do a volunteer magic show for the street party a couple from our church had planned and took Sam and Julie with him. Jordan and I hung out together and cuddled.

Julie, Jordan and I went for a walk along the ravine together after dinner and once we came home Sam came out and we walked around the block a couple of times together while he and Julie rode their scooters.

Once Julie was in bed, Sam and I had a huge heart-to-heart talk that lasted 2 hours. He had so much to get off his chest....I don't know how he carried it all. After the first hour I started writing things down, repeating what I had heard him say, then together we worked on some solutions. He was exhausted afterwards. So was I.

Long, long day.