My Latest Lesson Learned

I'm going to start today by asking you a personal question.  I already know your answer and if you answer differently, then I know you're lying. How can I be so sure of your answer you ask? I know because it's something everyone has done at least once, and something most people probably do every day. Even if you're not aware that you do it.

What could I be talking about?  It's quite simple.  Have you ever judged someone?  Have you ever formed an opinion about someone before you ever spoke a word to them?  You looked at their clothes or what kind of car they drive and decide what kind of person they must be.  

Or maybe you have done what I did, maybe you saw a house that wasn't kept up, the yard was cluttered with stuff and the car in the driveway was old and starting to fall apart. So you formed an opinion that the people that lived there were dirty or they were the kind of people that were scary, kind of shady.

That happened to me this weekend.  I judged the people that were having a yard sale.  I'm emberassed that I even have this story to share with you, but I do and maybe you can learn the same lesson I did without having to do the judging.

We pulled up to the house and it was very rundown.  There was mold growing on the siding and rubbermaid containers outside full of water.  All kinds of stuff all over the yard and an almost broken down car in the driveway. I made a comment to my husband about being nervous going to the backyard for the sale (I won't repeat my actual comment because I would rather try and forget what it was).  As we turned the corner of the house I saw her.

CLEARANCE

Clearance.

Does any other word sound so sweet???  I love the sound of that word. Say it with me CLEARANCE.  What can be better than getting exactly what you need at less than half the price?  

Today we had two missions as we started out. The first being to find some furniture for our rather empty house. And the second was to find our little Autumn Bottom some much needed clothes (she is doing that rather annoying thing kids do and outgrowing all of hers).  

Since it's such a beautiful Saturday and we knew of several rather large garage sales going on, we decided it was a perfect opportunity to get what we need.  But after 10 sales we found.....NOTHING!!!!!  Seriously, no one was selling anything we needed.  Don't get me wrong a lot of people were selling furniture, but just because I want to buy used furniture doesn't mean I want ugly furniture.  :)

 But that brings us to my favorite word.  Let's say it again....CLEARANCE!!!!!  You see Autumn Bottom still needed clothes.  So off to the stores we went.  I'm happy to say my beloved clearance racks did not dissapoint me today. She got a whole new wardrobe for a ridiculously low amount of money

So now  I got to share with all of you my love of the clearance rack.  I am usually very devoted to my love, but you will catch me straying to a plain old sale rack, and very very rarely I will stray so far from my love and buy something for full price.  Oh the horror of that.  Those are my very weak moments when I see something and don't think I can live without it.

I try really hard to limit those times because that's not being a good steward of the resources I've been given, but I am just a human after all.

It's Been a Looooong Time

Wow.  It has been a very long time since I wrote anything.  What a lazy writing girl I have been.  I will say that I have been busy the past 9 months. But still, no posts for 9 months is totally unacceptable.  So, I should probably start with what's been going on.

Hmmmm..... first off nothing majorly exciting happened from January to June.  So see, I saved you a lot of boring reading about mundane life.  :)  Please feel free to leave me some wonderful thank you notes.  :)

We did take Autumn out of school in March and started homeschooling her.  That is an adventure in itself.  More of that to come.  :)

In July we went on our first road trip with the rv.  We went from Florida to Indiana with it.  It was definitely an adventure.  When we got there we discovered that our truck brakes went out on the way there and only the rv brakes had been stopping us.  We were so lucky nothing happened.  Then while we were there a storm came through and broke our awning and flooded the inside of the rv.  We had about an inch of water sitting on our slide. That's not even the half of everything that happened on that trip.  We were so ready to come home after that.

Nothing really happened in August.  But then in September we found out  where the air force is sending us next.  After doing some research on where we are going we realized that it will cost us less to move back into a house. The rv park on the next base is almost twice as much every month as the one here.  So after a lot of prayer we decided to sell the rv and move back into a house.

We sold the rv a week ago today and moved into a house on base. :(  But we've decided that just because we are living in a house again doesn't mean we have to go back to a consumerism lifestyle.  Since we sold everything before we moved into the rv, we have no furniture.  Well, had no furniture. We found two couches on good old craigslist.  Our goal is to buy as much furniture secondhand as we can, so that A. we save money and B. we will lessen the impact we have on the earth.

So I'm going to keep the blog because we are still trying to live a downsized lifestyle, but unlike selling everything and moving into an rv, the stuff we are doing now everyone will be able to do.

Until next time....(which I promise will be sooner than 9 months)

Wanting What You Can't Have

Do you ever buy something BIG and then not very far down the road find something better for almost the same amount of money???  What do you do then??  If you're like me you kick yourself a little and get somewhat irritated, but then realize that there is nothing you can do to change it and life goes on. 

Autumn has an hour and a half of therapy on Mondays so Zach and I headed over to the RV dealership to look around at some different RV's.  We have decided that before we move to our next base we have to buy a different RV.  Ours does not have a polar package in it and since pretty much every other base we will go to will be colder than here we decided that it is a necessity.  But we need to get this one paid down quite a bit before we are willing to trade it in.  So we like to go look to keep our eyes on the prize. 

Anyway, we were walking around looking and happened to find the exact kind of fifth wheel we want for a ridiculously cheap price.  It's a 2007, but it looks brand new.  GRRRRRR!!!!!!!  We didn't buy one to begin with because they are so expensive, but this one we could afford easily.  It's frustrating, but we will survive.

So that's a little lesson for us in being happy with what you have.  We still are going to trade ours in before we move, but that is more of a necessity than a vanity thing.  It is hard to keep that thing warm. 

Until next time......

The Point

Good morning.  I woke up today and said that it was going to be a good day.  Then everything started going wrong.  Zach is in a bad mood because he is in some pain, then we blew a fuse in the rv for some of the lights, so I have to find the right kind of fuse and some needle nose pliers to change it.  After that I got Autumn to school and came home to get ready.  I get all ready and come down to do laundry and there is a line waiting for the washers and dryers.  I think most of my free time will be spent here.  I'm glad I brought my laptop with me. 

So I was thinking after my last post that it didn't have much to do with our adventure.  I started feeling all bad about it thinking that I wasn't staying true to my blog.  Then I realized that it has everything to do with our adventure.  The whole reason we are doing this is to get away from the consumerism lifestyle that is so prevalent in America now.  So when I write about how I see things like that, it has everything to do with our adventure. 

I am already changing how I view things.  Before I can buy something at the store I have to ask myself if I really need it.  Space is such an issue.  I have to go grocery shopping one or two days at a time.  It's a really big change to get used to.  But the bonus of that is we don't have nearly as much food spoilage.  We don't buy a bunch of stuff that we forget about and then not use. 

So hopefully I will be able to write more and you will understand why I write what I write.  I hope that even if you don't agree with me you at least see my point. 

Until next time.....

Home

Two posts, two days in a row.  I'm on a roll.  :)    Yesterday I said how wonderful the weather was, well today as promised it's cold and yucky out again.  :(    Oh well, we knew it was coming. 

Zach and I were talking last night, I was washing my face (gotta take off all that pretty make-up before bed) and he was getting ready for bed , and I mentioned that the RV feels like home.  He said that he agrees, it feels more like home than anywhere we've ever lived.  It's so strange in this country to imagine how someone could be happy living in 300 square feet, but we do. 

We were watching the house hunting shows on HGTV last night and I get so irritated at people when it's just two people looking for a four or five bedroom house (why on earth do they need all that space for two people?????).  Then when they realize that the house they want is at the top of their price range or even out of it, they go ahead and get it anyway.  Do you think maybe you are contributing to the problem this country is having with foreclosures.  When you get a house you can barely afford, then the bank takes it because you couldn't make your payments anymore, don't complain.  You did it to yourself.  Yes, the banks shouldn't have given you that much money, but you should have known better than to take it. 

Don't even get me started on the realtors that show them houses that they can't afford.  Then when no one can sell houses because everyone is foreclosing they wonder what happened.  Maybe you should show them houses in their price range.  Everyone wants to blame everyone else, but no one wants to take responsibility for their part.

Anyway, a home is not what you live in, it's wherever you make it.  You could be at home in a tent, you could be at home under a bridge.  If you have Jesus in you and in your life, then wherever you are will be home.  When you walk into someones home and it's comfortable and inviting, Jesus is there.  He is all that is good and without him then it's just an empty shell.

Now that I've probably offended a lot of people (I really don't care though, people in this country get offended if you sneeze the wrong way), tomorrow is Autumn's 4th birthday.  She is such a big girl now.  I don't know how I feel about her turning 4.  Part of me is so happy because she is doing so well and I'm so proud of her, but the other part of me is so sad because she is my last baby and she is no longer a baby.  :(   We are not having a party for her, she has made a lot of progress, but still doesn't do great at parties and the last thing we want to do is overwhelm her.  Zach has to work tomorrow, so we are going to eat lunch with him and then I am going to take her to the girls high school basketball game.  She loves going to them, so we thought that it would be a great ending to her birthday.

Until next time.....

Weather and Covenants

Hello friends.  Today is a beautiful day. The weather is absolutely gorgeous, it's about 58 degrees and that is the warmest it's been in more than a week.  Here in Sunny Florida we've been getting into the teens at night and not over the 30's in the day.  It's been down right cold.  All you northerners think that's not so bad, but please remember that you actually own winter coats, we Floridians however do not.  This isn't normal and I don't like it. 

I was born and raised in Northern Indiana, so I know cold.  But alas these bones have gotten so used to the warm that I can't take much more of this cold stuff.  It looks like if we can make it through Sunday we should be ok, today's warmth is a fluke.  We are supposed to get cold again through Sunday and then the weather channel is saying we will warm up again.  I sure hope so.

Other than the weather things have been good except two days ago we woke up to no water in the RV because our hose outside had frozen overnight.  So now we are taking better precautions.  Zach goes outside everynight and undoes it from the RV and pipes, then he drains it out so no water will be left in it to freeze.  Then in the morning he goes and reattaches everything.  He's such a wonderful husband.  I love him.

Today was my first day back at the cookhouse in two weeks.  We closed for the Christmas and New Year holiday time.  It was so good to be back and working again.  I missed it so much.  We had a great time being all together again.  We even had a new lady come and volunteer today.  YAY!!!!!

So for the new year has everyone made resolutions????  And how many of you have broken them already???  I've made several and they aren't really resolutions, they are more like covenants with God.  My main goal this year is to care less about what the world thinks of me and more about what God thinks of me.  Because when you think about it he's the only one that really matters.  I want to become more of the person he wants me to be and less of the person I am.  I love him and want to show the world that.

So I'm not going to share my covenants right now.  Maybe as the year goes and I need support with them I will, but for now I'm keeping them to me and God.  Well  my husband knows them too, but even he's not allowed to read my prayer journal.  It's me between me and my Daddy in heaven.

So I'll part with you for now.  But I'll hopefully write again tomorrow.

Don't be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.  1 Corinthians 10:24