We loaded up the family and went to our annual treasure hunting at the Bainbridge Island Rotary Auction. It’s a hard thing to describe unless you’ve been to it. It’s the most massive garage sale type of thing. People donate stuff all year to the Bainbridge Island Rotary club. Then, they have a huge sale and auction at Woodward Middle School. It fills the soccer field, all the rooms in the school, the gymnasium, and the parking lots.
To give you an idea of the scale of it, I’ve taken a picture of the field of kids toys and strollers. That was just small section of it.
And here is Orion at the preview the day before eyeing a scooter. Unfortunately, on the day of the auction someone got to this before us.
The day before the auction, the boys and I went to Bainbridge Island early and visited my friend Leeanna and her 3 kids. Then we met Daddy at our hotel, the Best Western on Bainbridge, and headed off to the preview of the sale.
The next day Daddy awoke at 4:00am and stood outside the taped off area of the school with all the other die-hard auction fans. They cut the tape at 8:00am after a quick singing of the national anthem and then everyone rushed towards the stuff. It’s always frantic but fun madness.
We had it all mapped out and probably achieved buying 90% of our wish list.
After the auction we drove to Benson Lake and went swimming. It was in the mid 80’s and very refreshing to swim. Orion loved swimming with Mommy but little Ollie was scared by the lake emersion for some reason. We assumed it was because he likes swimming when you hold him close but not in a floatation device.
That evening we spent the night in the very balmy garage apartment at Benson Lake. Still, it was quite an adventurous and fun weekend.
