When life gives you lemonade stands...

With the term "lemonade stand" certain images are immediately evoked: a bright summer day, a hand-lettered sign, a glass pitcher full of yellow lemonade, cute freckle-faced children, and coins dropping into a piggy bank.

This past Sunday I set up a lemonde -- and cupcake -- stand with my 6-year-old daughter Hannah. Our first attempt at participating in this quintessential summer pastime included almost everything in the list above.

We had the summer day, the sign, the lemonade, and the cute kids. The only thing missing was, yep, the cold hard cash.

I'm not sure what I was expecting. But it was decidedly more than three customers total for the entire day -- and one of those was a family member. Was it because we didn't advertise? were on a slow street? chose the wrong day?

In any case, we didn't fill up Hannah's piggy bank as much as we would have liked. However, if you can't have both, what's better -- money or memories? Because we did make plenty of those.