Category: Travel

I just wanted to say thank you for all of your kind words and prayers! We survived our first garage sale last Saturday even with all the rain and wind. We had a lot of people come out, and it was great to see some of our friends! We sold quite a bit. Between selling on Facebook and our garage sale our total at this point is about $2200 in addition to $1000 I made selling some of my less used photography lenses (don’t worry, I still have 4!).  Not too shabby.

We still have quite a ways to go. Knowing that we still need to live in our house for the next 2 months, we’ve kept beds, couches, the dining room table, and the washing machine (turns out our dryer is broken but that’s another story). A lot of our furniture is being claimed by my siblings as one is moving out and getting her own apartment (taking my dishes and pan set too! Hooray!), and my younger brother and his wife are upgrading to a larger one. We also haven’t sold the tools yet as we are still working on remodeling the bedroom in the Airstream. Short answer, this was only the beginning. We’ll still have another big “Tool & Misc” Sale in June to get rid of the last of it. For now though, I’m feeling more relaxed that our house is slowly emptying out. We’ve made great progress in only 2 weeks and I’m really grateful for that!

We are planning on getting storage unit. I have too many wall portraits and canvases of our family (casualty of being a portrait photographer I suppose), we have a nice sleep number mattress that’s worth hanging on to, and we’ve promised the kids we will store any toys or stuffed animals they want. It may be that we’ll look at our pile in a few years and think “why on Earth did we keep that?” but for now its what makes sense.

Sam and I have talked at length about the next time we have a house. One great thing about selling *almost* everything is that we have a chance to start over and create a different life for ourselves. While we don’t want a ghost house with nothing in it, we definitely want to be more deliberate about what we buy and what we keep.

Today I am an emotional mess. Only, it probably didn’t start today, it probably started the second we pulled up to the house in the Airsteam and it has just been building over the last week and a half.

One thing that I struggle with is I fixate on projects. If something needs to be done (craft, home improvement, buy a TV stand, whatever) I seriously can’t do anything else until its done. Sam laughs at me and we joke about it, but I honestly don’t understand why I’m like this. Sometimes its not a big deal, and sometimes its a serious problem. Right now I think I’m falling into the problem category.

We have stuff. Lots of stuff. And I want it gone. Yesterday. I’ve listed a bunch of our larger items on KSL and Facebook and we’ve sold over $900 worth but there’s still piles. Everywhere. Its not DONE. Until all we have in the house is our beds, dressers, furniture my siblings are taking and what we’ll take with us in the Airstream or put into storage I won’t be happy.

It’s ridiculous.

I really need to slow down.

And I don’t know how.

Technically we don’t have to be out of our house until June 23rd. JUNE! That’s like 2 months away. Why am I in such a hurry?

I’m also a terrible mother when I’m here. Remember the awesome-always-adventuring-with-her-kids-and-not-sick-of-them mom I was for the last 6 months? She’s disappeared. Probably has something to do with the whole fixation on getting everything cleaned out of our hour. Super awesome mom got shoved in a closet and crazy mom came out. Sigh.

I’ve really been praying a lot recently that the Lord will change my heart. That He will calm me down, and help me feel okay with my current situation. Just pray for us okay? This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be.

I swore we’d be better this time around. We’d keep exploring, we’d keep traveling, we wouldn’t just STOP. And then somehow we did it anyway! So frustrated with myself. I had so many plans to do FUN things on MONDAY. We weren’t going to wait.Then life completely got in the way and now I don’t have plans to really go play with my kids until THURSDAY. How did I get here?

We had a family council tonight. Due to my frenzied desire to sell every possible item in our house, I’ve been a little…. distracted. Sam has not only been working, he’s been making amazing progress on our Airstream bedroom remodel. The kids have had fun playing with friends, but that is all it has been. PLAY. Without me. Without Sam. I take advantage of their distraction and list a few more items on our FB sale page, or organize one more thing in the garage. Sam is shut away in a room downstairs and we see him only when he emerges for lunch. Even the kids have sensed something is off.

The kids got in trouble for not helping tonight. They were relaxing on their beds reading (something we totally promoted in the Airstream) and were whiny about helping me clean up their room for the Appraiser who is coming in the morning (house needs to be “show ready”. As if we are anywhere close). After 4 minutes of arguing and listening to their whining, I gave up and told them to just go to bed. This led to tears (Rachel) and grumpy faces and more whining (Andrew). To their credit, they dutifully put their Pj’s on, brushed their teeth, turned off the lights and went to bed.

After I cooled down, I went in to go apologize and snuggle. Something was off and we needed to get to the bottom of it. After more tears (both kids) and the” world is ending” dialogue (Rachel) we called daddy and Cara in so we could all talk about it.

We determined we are missing a schedule. While the kids love to free play all day with their friends, they also need structure. We need some school. Some chores. Some WORK. We need more audio books, more family time. Rachel and Andrew want to spend time at places where they have great memories (Trafalga, the swimming pool, the library, Thanksgiving Point). We talked about school and chores in the morning, some designated reading time after lunch, and playing with friends after that. We also talked about everyone cuddling up on the floor in the evenings and listening to our audiobook stories (previously only allowed to listen while driving). We also talked about mom and dad needing help getting ready for the yard sale, and the kids could even earn money by helping with “big” chores.

I feel it was a good heart-to- heart. They went to bed smiling this time, and I feel better prepared to meet their needs. Moving is HARD. Selling all your stuff and moving into an Airstream is HARDER. A lot harder. They are so brave. I’m so proud of them.

We’ll see how things go over the next few days, but I will definitely make an effort to slow down (a little) and make sure we stay balanced.