Yard Sale II Pennsylvania style: the details!

My cousin Marie put up this post on her blog about the yard sale her family hosted in Gavin's honor. I thought it was so neat! I'm so glad her family (and the ones who also got to help!) had such a great experience. :) We are so grateful for their love and support!


"The garage sale is over, and I think I may have recovered, I am not sure about Matt. Matt and I were exhausted by Saturday night!! It was a wonderful day and we had some incredible experiences. I have thought about what I could share because there is so much I wanted to share about what happened on Saturday. I know that we were blessed! So many incredible things happened in preparation for Saturday and the day of the big sale. As word started to spread about what we were going to be doing people came out of the woodwork to donate items and lend support. We had some awesome items donated, a beautiful 45 gallon fish tank and filter, dining sets, new bikes, (old bikes too),baby items, musical instruments, a new scooter snow board, train sets, material, sewing machines, and so much more I could do an entire post on the donations.

The weather on Saturday was one of the big miracles of the day! The entire week it was raining and cold. Friday it was miserable, but Saturday the sun was shining and it was beautiful. The weather was great and then about 5:00 Saturday night it started raining again and is still raining now!!! We prayed for good weather and our prayers were answered. That is one of the first things the kids said as they woke up on Saturday.



Due to the rain all week we were forced to set up about five tables in the garage as well as a few along the back of the house. It was cramped, and thanks to my friend Anne coming over and helping all day Friday, it was organized as well. Once we unpacked the garage I was surprised to see how much we really had. It was amazing that 99% of what we had to sell was all donated by our ward members, friends, neighbors and strangers.

We met some incredible people throughout the day. One woman came and spoke with me as she was paying for her items. She told me that she had lost her baby at 15 months. They had donated his organs and other parts of his body and through their child sixteen other children were helped. As she was talking to us she started tearing up and all I could do was just give her a huge hug. It was amazing. Later on in the day my friend Linda came to help with her three kids. Her mother had a kidney transplant about seven years ago. As she was helping someone they got to talking and the woman she was talking to was getting ready to be a kidney donor for someone.


The kids also had some marvelous experiences of their own. They set up a little cardboard box in the front yard to sell goodies and hand out lifesavers. We had printed out some pictures of Gavin and a little paper explaining what we were doing. It was so exciting to hear about all of the people they were talking to. They even sold the plates the cookies were on!! Melanie thought it was amazing that even if people did not want a cookie they would give a dollar for a donation. By the end of the day all of the kids had decided that this was the best day ever... in their entire life. It was so sweet!

This was such a incredible experience for our family and friends to have. It was amazing to see so many different people we know throughout the community come together and show support. It was humbling to see and I can not adequately describe all of the feelings and things that happened. It was also terrific to see nice items go to people who needed them. At the end of the day as we were cleaning up a van pulled up and a mom and her teenage daughter got out. They were looking at the baby things. I went up to talk to them and found out the daughter had just had twin girls that were born at 33 weeks. They were able to take all of the baby items they needed.

As I stated at the top of this post we fell like this entire experience has been one huge blessing. It was so much fun to work together as a family and see the kids put 110% into this project. It was also so wonderful to work with our friends and to see how amazing they are. Thank you Anne, Nancy, Linda, Melissa and Phil, Kim, and Nora! It was touching to see that when given a chance most people want to do good things. Many times through the day people who I knew could not afford to part with any money gave a small donation and told us this baby would be in their prayers. This is a day we will never forget."