The yard sale and the lesson learned

We were recently involved in our yearly neighborhood yard sale. You know, where you haul out all your junk to the curb to sell on a weekend and whatever doesn't sell gets hauled out to the curb during the week to get taken to a dump.

Anyway, this year's sale was a bit different for us. Nooooo, we didn't have someone come along and offer us a quadrillion dollars for our stuff/junk, nor did we find an original Picasso inside a lampshade. Instead we made money for a good cause.

While My Trophy Wife and I set about to try to sell things we longer used, our daughter set up a stand to benefit Alex's Lemonade Stand. I don't know where she got the idea, except that my daughter's name is Alexis (everyone calls her Alex), and the little girl who had the original Alex's Lemonade Stand was also named Alex.

Anyway, thoughout the course of the day, numerous people stopped to check out what we had for sale. Many also stopped for a cup of lemonade (at Alex's Alex's Lemonade Stand, as her sign said). Some didn't even take the lemonade, but merely donated money -- and these were the bargain-hunters who frequent yard sales. One family was driving by our corner stopped and donated $10 -- without ever getting out of their car OR asking for the lemonade.

It's amazing what a kid can do. The original Alex -- Alexandra Scott -- opened her stand in 2000 when she was 4 years old. She did it to raise money to help her doctors find a cure for her childhood cancer. In 2004, when Alex unfortunately passed at the age of 8, she had raised more than $1 million for childhood cancer research.

By January of this year, with the help of thousands of volunteers both young and old and the assistance of numerous Alex's Lemonade Stands, the Alex's Lemonade Stands Foundation has raised more than $10 million. (For more information, check out www.alexslemonade.org).

Now, my Alex didn't raise $1 million at our yard sale. But she worked hard to raise $73 that day for Alex's Lemonade Stand.

And us? We raised a grand total of $63 at our yard sale.

Guess who had a better day?