Slip Sliding Away

I want to apologize to my blog readers for my lack of posting lately. Though I have been diligent about checking my seemingly deserted blog for comments, I have not felt like posting. Things have been too busy around here. Last week, Josh and I decided to do something that we should have done long ago... We had a BUNCH of junk stored in a shed at my parents' farm. It had been there for about three years!!! We first put it there when we moved from our house in Garland to our apartment in Garland. The junk remained, rotting in the barn, as we moved to our house here. Now that we are going to be moving again soon, we decided it was high time to find a resting place for all of this stuff that we had in storage. I vaguely remember Josh trying to convince me to get rid of all of this stuff when we made our first move, three years ago. I also remember convincing him that we simply had to keep these "treasures".

Over the past three years, we had both forgotten exactly what we had stored away. I knew that Mary Alice's baby clothes were out there, but couldn't recall much else. Josh wanted me to dump the whole lot of it, citing that if we couldn't remember what was in the shed and hadn't used it in three years, we probably didn't need it. Instead of Josh's plan of disposal, I convinced him to let me have a garage sale! What was I thinking???

I had a garage sale....once. I was several months pregnant with Major. Needless to say, poor Josh ended up doing much of the work, lifting and carrying boxes, etc. He didn't want to go through that mess again. I should have listened to him. I explained how I would do the work this time and reasoned with him about how much more thrifty this was than to just get rid of the junk. This garage sale was quite an undertaking. I did manage to make $160 and get rid of almost all of our junk. However, in the process, our house was turned upside down, our laundry was left undone, our grocery supply ran out, everything was a mess!!!! A SUPER mess!!! I should have listened to Josh.

I worked for a whole week disposing of trash that once seemed so meaningful. A few wedding gifts, teacher stuff (My garage sale was a real find for a new teacher!!), toys, books, some baby items, every tape that I'd ever owned, a CD collection, every picture/video I'd ever taken. I had pictures I had taken as a child, books I had written as a child, tapes I had made as a child. I...had saved...it all.


I threw TONS of stuff away. I am very sentimental, so this was a hard thing for me to do. When I did it, though, I felt much better. I did feel a twinge of sadness as I threw away copies of some of my old Beatles tapes. I just might have to buy those again (in the CD version). I felt like I was throwing away pieces of my childhood. It was sad, but a good thing. I absolutely did not need to keep letters from people that I couldn't quite recall who they were. Nor did I need the many MANY pictures of myself from earlier times in my life, times that I'd just as soon forget. My goodness, I was dorky and so so skinny!!!

I did find a few special items in my search. I found tapes of myself at Mary Alice's age. I used to love to play with the tape recorder. I let Mary Alice listen to dear old mom at age 6 talking about my sixth birthday party and how upset I was at the "stinky" and "ugly" boys that had absolutely ruined my party by burping throughout the event. Mary Alice and Major thought it was pretty funny. I also found audio tapes of my sister Taylor, some of Tessa at age 2, a little of Hannah, and a tape of my brother Ben at age two. I kept those and plan to preserve them somehow. I also found my video scrapbook from college and realized just how much Josh and I have changed. We look like such little kids! Right now, Josh is converting all of our videos into DVDs for us. I am so glad. These are definitely items I want to keep. Of course, I pulled out all of Mary Alice's old baby clothes. I kept all of her clothes up to size 3T. I rewashed and reorganized them, moving them from the garbage bags that held them to much tidier Rubbermaid boxes. (We couldn't afford Rubbermaid boxes when Mary Alice was wearing those clothes, so garbage bags had to do.) Surprisingly, very little of her baby clothes were stained. I thoroughly cleaned them and refolded them. Of course, I thought of how cute she was when she wore them. Now all we need is another cute baby at our house to wear all of those sweet little outfits. :)







Let's see....I'm rambling a bit...We had the garage sale on Thursday. We sold almost all of our junk before noon. The kids had a lemonade and cookie stand. That was pretty cute. Major took little breaks to play with his golf set in the front yard. That boy loves golf! Anyway... The garage sale was way too much work for not enough money. I figured out that I really love having garage sales. I don't love the prep work, but the sale itself was really fun. I got to meet so many interesting people. It was fun to talk to different people and hear about their lives. Very interesting. As interesting as it was, though, Josh and I agreed to never have a garage sale at our house again. The good thing about this is that if you see something you like around our house, you can let us know. If and when we decide that it is time for it to go, we will give it to you...free of charge. We will spare you the $.25 fee that we charged our garage sale patrons. :)

So the garage sale was a success! We got rid of our junk and made a small amount of money.

Also a part of our weekend fun was the annual slip-and-slide party that some friends from church hosted. When I first heard about this, I was thinking..."Slip-and-slide party? That sounds awfully painful!" I thought I would go, but would not participate. What I didn't know was that this slip-and-slide was not the kind that we had growing up, but more like an inflatable bounce house with a sprinkler attached to it. We had relay races with the guys. I am happy to say that I have not lost the speediness of my youth. :) It was quite fun, a little messy, a little muddy, but fun! I would totally recommend this idea for a super fun party. Kim, I was especially thinking that this would be something that your kids would enjoy. To the Smith family...Do you think Don and Evon's yard could hold this baby? It would be super fun for the family reunion!!! The people that had the party lived out in the country and had the adult slip-and slide and a pool and water slide for the kids. I don't think I've ever been to a better party. Here are some pictures...