Charlotte comes up with a lot of "projects" each day. At least 4 or 5 a day. Some of them, she pulls out paper, tape, glue, and scissors and manages to do them all on her own. Others involve a lot of help from me. Some of them take her at least 5 minutes to explain and are just kind of impossible. She doesn't like it when I tell her "no" or "not today" and it turns into a 15 minute negotiation about what we can do.
She had been talking about a lemonade stand all summer. I told her when we were visiting my parents that we would be able to do one when we got back home. I knew that we had a few weeks in August with NOTHING to do and maybe I could stretch out the preparations to fill a couple of days.
Last Monday she created her sign. We chose the price point for the cookies and lemonade. We colored it. Then, she cut out "streamers" from construction paper to glue to the top. It looked great. We also did our grocery shopping.
Tuesday we decided was the day. We thought about what time would be good. She wanted to do the morning, but I told her that the afternoon would probably be better. People would be on their way home from work and there is usually a lot of traffic outside of our house then. After some discussion, she concurred.
We began squeezing the lemons. According to my lemonade recipe, we needed three cups of lemon juice. We squeezed about 23 lemons and had two and a half cups. We were out of lemons. We made a trip to the Dekalb Farmer's Market and found bottles of already freshly squeezed lemon juice for 20% off. Score! Back home we made our simple syrup on the stove and then mixed it all together. After a quick taste test, and adding some water, we decided it was good.
When Max went down for his nap, Charlotte and I pulled the mixer out and made some chocolate chip cookies.
From about 1-4:30 she asked me no less than 500 times if it was time to set it up. I posted to Facebook and texted friends asking them to stop by if they were in the area. She was so excited about it, I didn't want it to be a big disappointment.
Finally it was time. We set everything up at the corner. It was HOT. She came up with a little jingle to lure the customers in. Something about, "come get it now! holy cow!" It didn't take long to get our first customer. Our wonderful neighbors all came out and bought a cookie and a glass of lemonade. A couple of them came back to buy more cookies. Soon we had our big rush. Friends stopped by, random people stopped by, about an hour and a half into it, we sold out of cookies. She ended up making $50!
She had a great time. She had a cooler of ice. She would scoop the ice out into the cups and pour the lemonade all by herself. She took it very seriously. Max just kinda ran around the front yard drinking lemonade. I think he had a cup for each cup someone bought. We were all very sweaty and hot afterwards, but it was definitely worth the effort.
Since a 4 year old doesn't need $50, she has decided to tithe to the church. Then, we talked about it, and she decided to buy some packs of school supplies for kids that can't afford them. She did spend a little of it on herself and bought a recorder (which in retrospect was a terrible parenting decision).
She's already planning next year's lemonade stand.
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