What did you do today?

Today was a different kind of day. I met Auntie at the home of an elderly lady from our church. She wants to hire Auntie to sell some of her stuff on Ebay, and I just went along for moral support and to drool!

She's in her eighties and still has a mind like steel trap. She is from Rhode Island originally and still has a bit of an accent-which I just absolutely LOVE! Her husband's family is from the U.P. (that's how she ended up in Michigan). She seems pretty lonely. Her husband and daughter passed on a while back and her son and his family live in Texas and it seems like they haven't visited in years. She has to go to them.

She lives in a pretty upscale and exclusive area, but I really didn't see anything upscale or exclusive about her condo. Maybe at the time they purchased it, but not so much now. She LOVES to talk about her stuff, and each piece has a story all its own. We spent almost 2 hours at her house and I don't think we even scratched the surface! We never opened the kitchen cupboards or went upstairs.

Most of the things she has are really regal and elegant, not at all the kinds of things Auntie and I shop for when we are out. We are more into vintage stuff from the 40's, 50's and 60's.

She seemed like she really didn't want to get rid of her stuff, but she knows her son doesn't want it and she doesn't want to leave him with a mess to deal with when she's gone, and she doesn't just want it to be tossed out. Before we visited she told us that she had an auction house in Detroit come out last year and take a lot of her furniture (all the "Victorian stuff").

We saw a paper mache table from (she thinks) the 1700's! It was BEAUTIFULLLLL!! It looked like it had  a type of oyster shell inlay, and was painted black with a hunting scene. She had her great grandmother's bridal shawl and black bonnet, framed in a giant mahogany shadow box over her sofa, and the most precious thing I've ever seen, was a picture of her late husband on the wall with a couple pairs of his baby booties on the wall next to it. She also showed us a box of a bunch of his baby shoes-even a pair with buttons and a button tool to fasten them.

Needless to say, we were VERY overwhelmed, she had soo much stuff! She says she isn't a person who does a good job decorating or even someone who enjoys it, but her house, even though it was FULL of stuff, it was displayed very nicely and thoughtfully. You can tell family and history means a LOT to her.

After we left her house, we stopped for a quick lunch and then I had to get to work for a couple of hours. Our 5th & 6th graders were heading off for a weekend retreat, and since I am the assistant to 3 youth ministry directors, I have to run the check-ins for trips and retreats.

Everything ran smoothly for the most part until one family (very well known for always being late), was late again! When I called their house at 2:20 to tell them that everyone was going to be pulling out at 2:30- I was told the mom was too busy to come to the phone, and that they'd "try" to get there. They finally arrived about 25 minutes later-only 45 minutes late!

After that, Eric and I ran out for a few groceries (a few for us, but for most households, I bet it would be a lot of groceries! With 2 teenage boys and their friends, we go through a massive amount of food in our house! Kevin and I always say we'll be rich once the boys are on their own and we don't have to feed them anymore!).

While we were shopping we got a text at 4:30 from Adam asking if we were out getting pizza (that's a Friday night standard at our house-thank goodness for $5 Little Caesar's Hot and Ready pizzas! We have to go for quantity rather than quality right now-with keeping these guys full.). Eric texted back not yet, we are grocery shopping.

To him, that meant, go buy them. To us, that meant, we'll pick them up on our way home...but Eric and I decided we wanted Jet's pizza (deep dish, BBQ chicken pizza and a loaded pizza). So...with the 2 we bought and the 5 he bought, we ended up with 7 pizzas tonight!! I'm sure they won't go to waste, because Adam has some work friends coming over around 10 tonight to play capture the flag in the dark. All the running around is bound to work up some appetites!

That was my Friday. What did you do today? Did you hit any sales? Did you find any treasures?