Take our Vinyl... Please!

Wow, I can’t believe how quickly time has passing and that it has been almost two weeks since we blogged anything at all. I figure that I had better update with something otherwise that guy in Hanoi who has looked at our blog might start going somewhere else for his VanderHoeven updates. Have I mentioned yet that we have been busy with vinyl?

Since Thanksgiving (which was also a blog-worthy event that is somewhere on our list of things to write about) the ladies in our family have taken their vinyl wares to two separate craft shows to sell stuff.

The first was held on Saturday, November 22nd at Sarah’s school right at home in T-town. This turned out to actually be a very successful show and they did very well, especially comparing themselves to the business that seemed to be going on around them.

My duty in all of this was to first, keep kids at home and semi-taken care of during the show. Of course this didn’t include Zachary who is still hard-wired to Valerie and seemed content to spend the majority of the day under the counter.

As far as taking care of the kids goes, I wasn’t terribly successful. You see, at the craft-show, they were taking custom vinyl orders with family names, sayings and whatever. I was at home with a rotating cast of characters trying to fulfill orders with the cutter and deliver them back to the school as quickly as possible. One order was promised to be ready in ½ hour which is pretty much impossible. We are not Domino’s.

That set the scene for the rest of the day as conditions on the home front continued to deteriorate into a sea of vinyl discards and confusion in support of the sale. By like three o’clock I noticed that there were still kids in jammies and Ben’s diaper was sagging and I knew I was a failure at my job. The confusion though was a sign of success at the show which was good.

Adding to the general feeling of chaos surrounding that weekend, my dad had taken ill again the day prior and had been taken by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way. He was doing so-so at the time and thankfully the hospital was only a 10 minute drive from the show should we have needed to have been there for him quickly.

Having sold a lot of merchandise at the Meeker show was kind of a mixed blessing since we were also signed up for a craft show the following week in Purdy, WA which was about a 45 minute drive from home.

Our stuff to sell was greatly depleted but by now we had a better idea of what people were looking to buy so we spent every minute of the preceding week working hard to resupply our stock. That meant a lot of late nights of weeding, sanding, painting, planning and rushing to and fro getting stuff done. It was in this rush that Joshua was injured as you read in the previous post and was another straw on the back of that week’s camel.

The kids through all the rush were exceptional. I love that I have kids that can go with the flow and feel right at home, no matter who in the family’s home they happen to be in. It is an enormous blessing to live surrounded by family and to know that whoever happens to be watching your kids loves them and cares for them as you would themselves.

Also, I’d like to give Valerie and me props for having the wisdom to have a daughter as our first-born and to let her age a bit before we started piling on with the sons. Sarah picks up a lot of slack when things get busy. She is fantastic in every way.

They also did quite well with their sales in Purdy and thankfully their stand there had room to have a computer and vinyl cutter on site. They again sold A LOT of customized stuff. By the time that show was over we all had a sigh of relief and hauled all the gear back home again. We were on standby for a show the following weekend (last Saturday) but never cleared the wait list. I’m not really disappointed.

By the time we finished it all up, counted the cash, cut the checks and subtracted expenses, we had earned a nice bit of extra money for Christmas this year. Dividing that by the number of hours spent, I would say that we are making at least like $1 an hour. Eat your heart out Bangladesh!