Lemonade Stand

A few days ago, we had a big garage sale. I made a deal with the boys: I get all of the money from selling your toys, and in exchange, you can get the money you get from a lemonade stand. That sounds fair. They agreed.

The boys wore their pirate aprons that Mimi made, and proudly sold lemonade at the bottom of our driveway. I think we found that sales is Ryan's forte. As soon as someone set foot on the driveway, Ryan would say, "Would you like some lemonade?" They would say, "Sure!" And he would say, "Ok, it's fifty cents." And they would say, "Oh... let me do some shopping first, and I will get my lemonade when I'm ready to leave." And Ryan would say, "Do you think you're going to want ice or no ice? I'm going to start getting your cup ready." And they would say, "Probably ice." And Ryan would say, "Good. We have ring ice." Then he'd model the ice cube on his ring finger. If people were taking too long with their shopping, he would run a cup up to them. He was so assertive, how could anyone resist?

I didn't have to assist with the lemonade stand a single time, and the boys sold 72 cups! Aaron helped for about 3 hours, and Ryan didn't leave his post once for EIGHT hours. He was so dedicated. I've never seen Ryan so dedicated to anything, or see him see anything through to completion, so I was really, really proud of him. Of course, it was a tough lesson for Aaron to learn when we divvied up the money, and he did not get as much as Ryan got.

Yesterday a chimney cleaner came to clean our chimney (what else would he be doing here?) I found out after they left that Ryan sold THEM lemonade, too, and got a dollar from them. I was SO embarassed. I explained that when someone comes to clean our chimney, we GIVE them lemonade, and as much as they want. We don't SELL it. How embarassing...