Saturday, June 9, 2012

Birthday/ Anniversay Weekend and book shopping

What? Is it really Matt and I's anniversary tomorrow??? Just kidding. :) 

I am still a little bitter that Christian stole our day.

Anyway, we have been hard at work here at the Ruwe house trying to get ready for the big birthday party tomorrow! We have been shopping, cleaning, organizing, getting my rooms put back in order after painting a month ago, finally deciding on curtains, etc.  I have been working at it all week, so hopefully everything will be ready to go by 4 pm tomorrow. (I like having parties later in the afternoon- it gives me a couple more hours to get things done!)

Besides getting ready for the party, I have also been shopping. As in used homeschool books shopping! There was a used homeschool book sale today and of course I had to go! There were probably 25 tables each rented out by moms and dads who wanted to sell their old homeschooling books. Note to self: Next time, take cash. I didn't even think about taking cash until I went in and started to consider buying things. I only had a check book.  I wondered if I was going to write a check out at every table I bought a book at.  After my first purchase, I got back into my car and went to the bank ( I tried to get money out of the ATM, but it wasn't working, so I looked at the door and it said it closed at 12, guess what time it was? 12! I opened the door and ran in quick. I don't think the lady behind the desk was too happy with me!).  After getting some cash and returning to the sale, I was ready to shop!

Along with remembering to take cash, I will also remember to go the last couple of hours to the sale. Over and over, I got told, "These are free, just take them! I don't want to take them home with me!" Or "The sign says 50 per book, but how about I sell them to you for four for a dollar?"  My favorite was, "Just make me an offer! I don't want to carry these books back out to my car!"  People were pretty desparate to get rid of their stuff! I remember one lady saying, "I'm getting space on my bookshelf back." I responded with," I need more bookshelves!"

I went to one table and on the floor was a big bag full of books. The sign said, "$100 Sonlight, 4th grade"  I looked at it again and it was exactly what I would be using for Megan for 4th grade. This was Core E and I am using Core D this coming year.  This would be American history from 1850 to the present.  The lady behind the table said that her friend was selling this set, but there were about 10-15 books missing plus the instructor's guide.  She also had half of a science set included in this bag on the floor.  I asked a couple more questions and told her I would think about it and call her this weekend. I was hesitant to buy it without an instructor's manual.

I keep on looking at more tables and then I get to a table that had a big Sonlight binder on the table. I looked at the title, "American history, Core E, 1850 to present." Is this for real?  Nobody else saw this? One person was selling the books and a completely different person was selling the instructor guides?? I flipped though the binder and it was spotless. There was no writing anywhere and it included all the language arts lessons too! I expressed intrerest in it to the lady behind the table and she said, "Just take it, I don't have a need for it." I looked at her kind of funny because this is probably worth $50-$75!!!  She had a price tag of $10 on it. I replied, "I'll give you something for it." She replied, "Ok, $5." Sold!!  (Do you know how hard it was this year to find a set with language art lesson plans and worksheets that were not written on??)

So I went back to the original lady with all the books and showed her my steal! Now I was really interested in those books. She gave me the list of books that were missing and I wrote down all the books that were in the set.  I didn't want to make such a big purchase on-site, especially without talking to Matt about it (plus my phone was dead, so I couldn't call him) and I did want to make sure the instructor's guide matched up with the books, which I am sure it will.  I told her I would call her by Monday with my decision!  There were probably 30 books in her set.  I talked to Matt about it and he said I could go ahead and get it.  I just need to put it away a year! I am not even going to worry about buying the rest of the books this year.

I also got quite a few books about dinosaurs for Christian, a music book, an art book, a pop-up European cities book, some horse books for Megan, Pocohantas for Courtney, a little song book for Courtney, some early American history activity books, some American history coloring books, and some other various books. I came home with a whole bagful! Most of these were $2 and under!
Too bad they didn't have any books I was actually looking for! Now to get on ebay and order the rest of what I need in the fall. 

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