Lemonade Stand

I woke up to the sun streaming through my bright blue butterfly curtains. After I remembered what day it was, I jumped out of bed so fast I was lightheaded. Today was a very important day, it was the first day of summer! Fifth graded was officially over and I was free for three amazing months. I quickly threw on my official summer clothes, purple shorts, and my watermelon shirt. I also tied my ty-dye bandana around my forehead. I grabbed an apple from the counter as I was running out the door. 

“Be back for dinner Jamie!” my mom yelled as I was running out the door.

I was going to my best friend’s house, Tyler. We have been friends our whole lives. He lives five houses down and across the street from my house. For as long as I can remember, every summer, every break, and every weekend, we were always together. I lost my first tooth while at his house and he was my partner for every school project and assignment.

We’ve spent many summers together, but we decided that this one would be the best one yet. Although we still hadn’t decided exactly what we were going to do. I was going to his house so that we could brainstorm ideas of how to spend our summer. Although I had already thought of the best idea for our summer, that’s why I was so eager to get to his house. I ran up his long driveway, surrounded by huge green trees. Right as I knocked on his bright red door I heard his footsteps running to the door. When he opened it, I saw that he was also wearing his ty-dye headband that we had made last summer, we both smiled and ran into his house. We sat down on the barstools at his kitchen counter, both eager to share our ideas. Tyler grabbed two glasses from the cabinet for us.

As he was filling them up with lemonade he said, “So, did you come up with any ideas for our summer?” 

I replied, “I have the greatest idea in the world! I’ve hit the jackpot, are you ready?”

“Yes!! Tell me!” he said as he was sipping his drink.

“You know how we are always hanging out either in your kitchen or in your room?” I started.

Tyler looked slightly confused and said, “I mean, we usually go outside during summer.”

I quickly said, “Yes we do that, but I think we need a top-secret super awesome place to hang out.”

“Do you mean like an underground base!” Tyler replied his eyes lighting up.

“No, I mean… a TREEHOUSE!” I said throwing my arms into the air. 

Tyler almost drops the glass in his hand and exclaims, “Jamie! That is the best idea in the world! Then we can always hang out there and we can paint it cool colors and bring snacks and… how are we going to build it?”

“Um… well, I haven’t really gotten that far yet,” I said looking down at my drink starting to get disappointed because I didn’t think of how we would be able to build it.

“To build a treehouse you need wood, nails, and probably a lot of other stuff. That sounds like it will cost a lot of money.”

“Oh,” I said becoming even more disappointed that we weren’t going to be able to have an amazing summer. 

“Wait a minute! I’ve got an idea too!” Tyler said as he looked down at his lemonade, “what if we make a huge lemonade stand so we can get rich?”

“Tyler! That is such a good idea.”

So just like that, we were planning our scheme to get rich. That day we rummaged through old boxes in Tyler’s basement and through the shed in his backyard. We ended up finding some poster boards, old random markers, and some scrap wood. I had to go home before we could start any real work on our stand, but I was back at his house the next day to start. We took a long flat piece of wood and tried to nail two long thin pieces of wood to make the table part of our stand. We added two more wood legs after it fell right on top of us. I wrote big bubbly letters on the poster boards while Tyler perfected our lemonade recipe. He would bring me a cup of a different recipe every five minutes until we picked our favorites. We spent four days straight painting, tasting, and nailing together our lemonade stand. We painted the whole stand yellow and painted the words, “World’s Finest Lemonade” across the front. 

It was now the day when we would have our lemonade stand! I went to Tyler’s house very early in the morning and helped him make as much lemonade as we could. We ended up filling up three pitchers full before we ran out of sugar. We set up the stand at the end of our street. We stapled one of the poster boards on every pole down our street. We had to run from the stand to Tyler’s house lots of times, grabbing cups, a jar for money, and two fold-out chairs that we could sit on. 

For the first thirty minutes at the stand we never even saw anybody drive by. We had both had so much lemonade we only had two pitchers left and we both felt a little sick. My parents came and each bought a cup of lemonade, and they handed me $2. I put all of the money we made into a clear jar that I had also found in Tyler’s basement. My mother took a sip and her face immediately turned red, “Its...um…very sweet. Good work guys!” she said as she set her cup back down on the stand. My dad took a big gup and immediately spit it out, he said he just wasn’t expecting it to be that good. Tyler’s parents also came by to taste some and had the same reaction. Tyler and I were very proud of our recipe. About halfway through the day a few of our neighbors came by and bought some, as well as a few people just driving by. Around the afternoon we had to start taking everything back, Tyler and I had drunk the rest of the lemonade. 

When we had finally put our whole stand back into Tyler’s shed we poured out our jar of money, excited to see how much money we had made. Our total ended up at $27! We were so excited! The next day, we showed the money to our parents and told them we had raised it for our new treehouse. They gave each other sideways looks and then just smiled. That summer we were able to build a treehouse and paint it all different colors, and fill it with snacks. It was definitely the best summer we’ve ever had.