It's On

Today is day one of our new journey. Well, you could consider it day two if you take the fact we made our decision yesterday, but for simplicity we'll call it day one. :)

Let me introduce us. I'm Tonya and my hubby is Zach. Our kiddies are Gavin and Autumn. The hubby is in the US Air Force and currently we are stationed in Florida. Gavin is our oldest. He is eight and lives with his father in Indiana most of the time, but is with us often too. (That's a long story that I don't feel the need to delve into right now. Maybe I'll bless you with the tale someday, but rest assured we would love nothing more than to have him with us all the time too. Our family just isn't complete when he's not here.) Anyway, he's going into third grade this school year. Autumn is our next (and last) little one. She is three and probably the girliest thing you could ever meet. She is autistic, but that's not who she is, it's just one piece to the puzzle we call Autumn. She goes to Pre-K ESE now, but when our next set of orders comes through to move she will be homeschooled. I stay home with the kid(s) and research everything you can imagine on autism and special diets for her.

Back to the adventure I mentioned earlier. Right now we are a typical American family. We own a three bedroom two bathroom house. (Luckily for us we are less than a 1/4 mile to the Gulf of Mexico though. :) ) Well, we are also Christians. We are trying to instill in our kids that "stuff" isn't important. We want them to learn that there are much much more important things in this world than having "stuff". So, we are selling all of our "stuff" and trading our house for an RV. We are going to be living in it permanently for an undecided amount of time, at least until we pay off the few bills we have accumulated, and we also want to just have the extra money to help others with.

We realize that some people will think we are off our rockers, and yet others may just applaude us for this. But we know that right now this is the right thing for our family. It will help us show our kids that we can "practice what we preach". Now don't get me wrong, the RV is really nice, LCD tv's, A/C, DVD players, stereo system, the whole nine yards. But there is no extra space for all the "stuff" we all think we "NEED".

Today is day one because we have officially started going through our things to get ready to sell what we don't need. We are keeping special things, like our pictures and yearbooks from school. I plan to ask my mother-in-law to let me keep my wedding dress at her house. (Some things can't be parted with and that is one of them.) But we have come to realize that we have closets upon closets full of JUNK!!!!!! I'm hoping to make a decent amount from the people who come to our garage sales to add more stuff to their own houses. :)

So now to go through more of our stuff and get ready for our first of many many garage sales. The hardest thing for me to part with is my clothes. We all have wayyyyy to many clothes. I know I have to part with the ones that I don't really wear, but I love them. I think it's going to be hard to get rid of most of the kids toys too. Even though we know this is the best thing we were raised like typical kids from our generation and it's a mental hurdle to get through that "stuff" doesn't equal your worth. We know that, but it is engrained in us so we are pushing through that. I think the kiddies will be better off without all those useless toys, but we will keep the educational ones.

Off to more sorting.......