We are fine...wanna buy our junk?

At 7 am we were up and ready for business. Not as big of a yard sale as it could have been. Carloads of items have been donated to the charity thrift shop over the past year.

It was always just too cold or too hot or there were too many other projects to wrangle before. A yard sale was just too much work to consider.

Plus at this point in our lives it is hard to decide if a donation tax credit or cold hard cash is the best option.

The sale is in hour three as I write this and we've made about $150 and more importantly, got to meet a few more neighbors as well.

Isn't that really the point of these kinds of events anyway?

Our pilot neighbor popped by around 9 with his newborn and 15 month old daughters snuggled bundled into the most high tech stroller I have ever seen. Krauss the dog rounded out the party; the four of them were heading to the bagel shop for coffee and morning treat.

Gotta love a neighbor who will make a bagel with strawberry schmear run for you while you wait!

His only request: Wrap up the yard sale before his wife returned from doing surgery. He didn't want to give her any ideas about have a yard sale of their own!

So we are having a beautiful sunny morning with this view over our house....

Framed by flowering trees.

And another sweeping view of snow capped mountains is just down the street.

What is not to like???

(The brownish area at the base of those mountains is a working copper mine. Tours are available; stay tuned for a blog report from there soon!)

Um...what's with the towel on the bush?

Drier on the fritz?

Or did it just not want to be displayed with the rest of the sale items?

No; in addition to having a yard sale, we are also participating in our Community Emergency Preparedness drill.

Salt Lake City is one of the best cities in America in terms of disaster preparedness.

A major earthquake fault line snakes along the moutain range base. Up the road a ways is Idaho and Wyoming, both of which cover super volcano locations.

Add in the possibility of any kind of chemical or weather or terrorist event and suddenly a yearly drill sounds like a good idea.

Everyone gets a flyer like this one with helpful pictures to aid in emergency utility shut off procedures.

I wouldn't have a clue how to do these sort of things unless I had directions like these.

And then, just to keep you thinking, they also include a series of questions to consider.

I admit I need to get it in gear and take care of a few of these items still.

The most interesting one to me is number 19.

While the LDS population of SLC is around 40% now, neighborhoods are still gridded via LDS church wards.

Each neighborhood within the ward has at least one designated "home teacher" who checks in on each church member at least once a month.

In the event of an emergency, the home teacher can be counted on to direct resources to those in need.

I admire that each church member is encouraged to have enough emergency supplies for their own family, and then some more to share with the unprepared.

In fact I think that thinking is so wise that we are adopting it for ourselves.

Seems like just a reasonable thing to do.

****

Update: The garage sale is through. We sold 90% of our stuff!

$170 for sitting in the driveway and chatting with folks who hauled our stuff away while Bernie worked on shaping his new bonsai tree.

The day is young; we have more adventures on the horizon.

These adventures involve tiptoeing.

Can you guess where we are headed to next?