Was-Boxing-Day-Now-New-Year's-Family-Charity-Auction

This was the scene at my parents' house yesterday afternoon, as a bunch of us gathered for our now-annual family charity trash-to-treasure auction. Each family had loaded up their old junk, backed their cars/vans/fancy new Acuras down the driveway to Mom and Dad's front door, and dumped it all in their house.

Then we all sorted through each others' trash to find our new treasures. As Pete, the auctioneer, held up each object, we started bidding... sometimes ferociously. The hottest ticketed item was a bathroom faucet and towel rack set (retail priced at $245! the seller proclaimed), and was purchased for $30. Some wireless speakers (never been used! the seller proclaimed) went for $24, and a shirt bought by Mom for $20 originally, (brand new! never been worn!) was repurchased by her again yesterday for $6... bringing her total investment in the t-shirt to $26. (None of the rest of us quite understood that transaction... but, as Mom kept saying, "It's for charity!")

In the end, though, the single item that ended up raising the most money was.... a secret. John declared that he would, to the highest bidder, divulge some piece of information that was yet unknown to our family. To this family of "24"-watchers, Clancy-readers, and general conspiracy theoriests, this was too tasty to resist... and the highest bidder ended up paying $65 to find it out. As I was not the winning bidder, I do not know if this secret has anything to do with current government operations or not... It could very well be something stupid that John did in high school that the rest of us didn't find out about... Who knows!

(This also led to some discussion about whether a family member would sell a secret about another family member.... But in the end we decided that blackmail really wasn't in the right spirit for a Charity Auction.)

Anyway, the good news was we collectively raised over $300 for a missionary family, just by selling each other our junk. The bad news was, we all left with mountains of other people's junk. Oh, the belly-aching of the husbands as the re-loaded the cars/vans/fancy new Acuras! Just when they thought they had cleared out some nice space in their houses, now they had to take home all this other stuff... Pete actually is in denial I think. We brought all our new loot home -- but 24 hours later it's still sitting in the trunk of our van. If I don't monitor closely enough, he may end up just taking it all to Goodwill before I remember to nag him to bring it in the house!

Here's the whole gang who participated (sadly missing the Clarks)....

This year, Keiko's mom and aunt were able to join us all the way from Japan! We can only guess how weird they thought we all were.

Speaking of them, though, on the way to the big event yesterday, we were telling the kids that members of Keiko's family would be there who we hadn't met yet. Strider asked how we should talk to them. Pete told him that Keiko's aunt spoke English quite well, so he could just speak normally.

"What if I say a word that she doesn't know, though?" he asked.

"Don't worry," Pete replied, "She'll know any word you use in everyday speaking."

Without even a pause, Strider said, "Like non-market entrepreneurship??"

Where did we get this kid?

Anyway, it was a very nice way to spend New Year's Day. Even if my attempts to get the kids to set New Year's resolutions (in the car on the way to my parents') went like this:

Me: "So what do you guys want to do differently for 2010?"

Strider: "Watch more TV and play more video games."

Rayna: "Yeah, play more games."

And that was the sum total of the conversation.

Happy 2010!