I didn't have a yard sale to get rid of my junk and I'm so glad!

As I prepare to move out west one of my many tasks is to go through my attic and basement and clean them out. I've kept so much stuff. I kept so many bill receipts, and papers. Glad I bought a shredder. Last week my daughter and I finished the last 4 boxes of papers. I've also kept all kinds of toys, stuffed animals, games, videos, books and other supplies for the house. So many people have said "Have a Yard Sale." I said "NO!" There is this dream that other people will wander by and buy the junk you don't want and you will end up with a pile of extra cash. But to me the time to set up the yard sale, and advertise, and then the time sitting and waiting

for people to come is just more time to give than is worth the possible money I might make. The thought of sitting around watching people pick through things I don't want just sound so boring. So as I went through my stuff, I gave to good will, I donated to a yard sale to help struggling women, and I picked out items that I thought my friends would like and I gave them to them. Free of charge! I gave my wedding dress to one of my best friends whose brother is getting married and needed a dress for his bride to be. Tomorrow I give the last bit of things to one of my other friends who has three young children.

They have been struggling and I have all these stuffed animals, and toys that will be just perfect for the kids. It will be like Christmas for them. I'm glad I chose to do this. Could I have made some money? Perhaps, but giving to others who really have a need brings me so much joy.

Today I read an article " I had a yard sale and made nothing." And I thought I'm so glad I didn't waste my time. My attic is almost finished being cleaned out. There are some jeans up there that I'm donating to a drive at the local grocery store which I think supports our troops and then the rest of the stuff up there needs to be labeled and brought across the country. I need to start figuring out the best way to get all
my belongings out west. If anyone has tips for moving cross country I'd love advice! Also did you have a yard sale and was it a success or a waste of time?

Never believe you have enought boxes when moving!

Just a short blog today before it is back to cleaning and packing. Never believe you have enough boxes when you are moving, and take from anyone who offers them to you. At first when boxes started to come into the house I thought, hey that's enough. Now I know, it wasn't. I guess I just didn't realize how little fits into a box, or how much stuff I have. My house the past few days has been a disaster area. I'm now waiting for my husbands friend to come and finish some stuff, and then I can call the painters so they can finish painting once he finishes. I knew we should have just hired someone else but my husband would not listen, and so I'm a little

stressed. So I continue to do what I can do, and wait. I pray and pray all will work out in the end.

There is so much cleaning to do, that I keep busy all day long. Between the attic and the basement and everywhere in between I have something to do. Again most days I feel the Lord carrying me. It reminds me of the dream I had of the Lord carrying me down a very steep and treacherous cliff blindfolded. When I turned around I felt it was impossible that I did it. Perhaps he had sent me the dream as a warning and reminder that he would carry me. It's a lot to ask of me. But I just continue forward. Constantly praying for the

Strengthen to make it. Hope you enjoy the flower photos. My garden still keeps me calm. Just to go out and see the flowers and weed, helps so much. Have a good weekend all.

It's been 1 year since I lost my Job in New Jersey!

Well it has been one year since I lost my library job. I have to say I never imagined all that could happen in this year. My husband lost his job about two weeks after I lost my job. He is now working at a new and better job for him, but he had a huge struggle to get there. I took last summer off to help watch a friends child, and have what I thought would be my last summer off. Only to find that I'm now on a leave of absence with my company. They are being so kind as to let me transfer to where my husband works. One of the employees made me cupcakes on my last day. I never thought that working in a big retail company I would make so many

friends. I loved learning about the company and how a big company runs. Wow what a lot of work. I enjoyed so much of my new job, that I never really missed the library job. I've continued to garden. I've failed a bit in not using credit cards. I hope to take that back up when we get to our new home. I always pay the bill off, but I now know there are some other traps with credit cards and I really want to avoid that. So I'm thinking of Changing the title of my blog again. G.G.'s big trip out west. My house right now looks like a tornado went through it. I have painters and contractors all over during the day.

We've been eating take out a lot! As the kitchen is being finished. I had to go to the neighbors to use the bathroom today as the bathroom was also being worked on. My husband left a little something undone in every room! Ugh. I've been packing up his stuff in the basement. I'm sure it will take him a few years to find what he is looking for. I've contacted the Realtor. Looking for them to reply. I've been packing boxes. I never realized how many boxes moving takes or how much packaging tape and paper to wrap things. My bedroom is pretty much packed up.


that's the other room with major work going on. Its sad to say the house is finally almost totally finished and we are moving! Oh and poor Miss. Kitty she has been locked in my sons room everyday to keep her out of the way. She must really wonder what is going on. We've been thinking of making a book about her move. I wonder what she is thinking is happening to her home. My poor daughters room is a total mess too as I had to stuff everything from my room into her room so that they could fix and paint the ceiling. We all are sleeping in the living room which is just about as crammed with stuff as all the other rooms. Ugh. My husband has no clue as

to the disaster I'm living in. This morning I spent some time in the garden to just de-stress. But what I've been telling most people is that God is carrying me. The other day in my store I saw the footsteps in the sand poem. And I thought the only reason I keep going on is because God is carrying me. I have felt for the most part comfort and peace. There have been days that I have been stressed, but for the most part I have felt all will be well. So a year has come and gone, and I'm still moving forward. I have a huge adventure at my door. I know if I had had my


Library job I would have been less willing to move. I sometimes wonder if all the trials were God's way to push my husband and I to where he wanted us. I mean the company my husband is working for has been trying to get him to work for them for 5 years. Perhaps the Lord had to be a bit hard on us, to get us moving where he wanted us. I can only imagine what we will discover together. I'm actually very excited to see what Utah people think of the Girl from Vermont who was able to survive 16 years in New Jersey. I still have people who tell me that "I'm definitely not from New Jersey". I wonder will the natives from Utah find this Vermont girl to be a bit different too?

Be Still, My Soul, Patience is what I need to learn most in this life.

Gardening in an act of Faith and Patience. You have the faith that a tiny seed, planted in soil, nourished by water and sun will sprout into a seedling, which will grow into a plant, which will bring forth beautiful blooms. With some flowers it takes a few weeks, some a few months and some a year or more. And you have the faith it will happen. And you work hard and you patiently wait for the flower. Most people think I have a green thumb, and that I'm patient. Sometimes I look at my garden and wonder how it all grows so well. Sometimes I wonder how anyone could think I'm patient. I have to say that I know I have much more to learn.

Right now I want to be in a whole different state, and I want my house ready to sell. None of which is happening at the pace I want it. When I was a teenager I worked with horses. All my young life all I wanted was a horse of my own. One thing I learned was it's not good if the horse gets the bit in its teeth and takes off with you. But most days I wish I could be that horse with the bit in my teeth, tearing across a field as fast as possible. I want thing to move at a much quicker pace, and they are not. And so I constantly come back to the song "BE STILL MY SOUL." I need to slow down, and let God be in the lead.

I need to trust his plan. I need to live in the thorns for a bit longer. I need to have confidence in him that he is leading my family to where he wants them at his pace. I'd be there now, but I need to bend to his will and wait for him to bring my family together at his pace. It is hard. It is hard to not be able to say "we are moving on this day in this month. We will be living in this town and the kids will be going to this school." It is hard to just not know and have people wondering why. But that is my life right now. I'm blind folded. I only know I'm moving, everything is in God's hands.

" It is the Lord who goes before you; He will be with you, he will not take away his help from you or give you up: So have no fear. (Deuteronomy 31:8)

Well I'm off to clean, and pack. Thanks for reading!

What if the blessings......

There is this really great song: Blessings.


It makes you think are your trials really blessings from God. I like this part :" What if your blessings come through raindrops, What if your healing comes through tears? And what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near?" I've had two years of sleepless nights, and I've always know God was near. My thought when I hear this song is what if your blessings come from moving? What if the answers to my prayers are taking me somewhere far away, but will bring me so much nearer to


God. I truly believe my family is supposed to move. Perhaps we were supposed to move years ago, but couldn't see it until the Lord made it the only option. I'm at peace with this move, and my husband and children are at peace with the move. Yet the world around us seems very unsettled about it. They continue to want to make what little time I have left here miserable. Many of my husbands friends don't believe what we believe, and they keep saying to my husband that if he were a member of a different church he would never have had the problems we have had.


They continue to try to find him a job here. Yet when he was here none of them helped look for jobs, helped him with his resume, all they wanted was for him on his days off to help them with their projects. It seems that to all his friends poverty for our family would be much better than moving. None them have looked beyond what they want from my husband, to what might be good for him and his family. None of them will care if we can't afford to pay for our children's college, or if in a few years the minimum wage, six day a week job they found him will not be enough for us to be able to keep our house. They think nothing of what it will take for us to continue to live here both working 40 hour plus a week just to barely make it, and hardly being a family. They just want my husband here so when he has free time he can fix their car

projects. Only two of my husbands friends have offered any help to me since he has left. So I know who the true friends are. Most of the help I get has been from people I work with and my neighbors. They have constantly gone above and beyond for me. This past week has been hard for me. I miss my together family, I miss my husband to pieces. I find myself in tears often. If I have to figure out how to fix this house on my own to get it on the market I'll do it. I just want to be where my husband is. I want my family back together. I'm tired of the negative remarks I get from people who should be supporting us. I'm thinking God must think I'm very strong to give me this trial. I'm putting all my faith in him. I looking for his blessings in all that is about me. The last flower photo is of a blanket flower. It has become my favorite flower. It blooms everywhere. It will grow and be beautiful wherever I move. I will too.

How the Great Recession has changed my families life.

The flowers that go with this blog today are lilies. Highly poisonous to cats, but beautiful to behold. You wouldn't think from the first few photos that something so beautiful would come from something that looks pretty plain and then pretty weird. But they do. So enjoy.


I've been contemplating how the Great Recession has changed my life. When it all started a few years ago I was just applying for a position as a library assistant at my daughters school. I had volunteered for a year because the position got cut due to budget cuts. You would have thought that because they brought the position back it would be safe. But a year later I found out




that was not to be the case. The lowest always go first. Way back then though I worked on a school project for the PTO called after school activities. The year before the activities would fill up fast and we would have tons of people to call and say, you didn't get in. The year the recession first hit the enrollment started to go down and we barely filled the activities. I told the people I worked with we should do less activities as it seemed people were struggling to be able to sign up due to the economy. No one wanted to listen to me, but I know I was right. Soon the teachers took over the program because they were upset that I

wanted to do activities every other month instead of every month. They wanted to make more money, but I could see that was not going to happen. In the end they stopped the program all together.

The recession next hit when my husbands boss could no longer pay our health care. He didn't tell us, we just got a letter saying our health care was cancelled. So I began to always deposit the pay checks in the savings account encase they became bad. The Health insurance no health insurance went on for quiet awhile. That was not fun.


Then in January of 2010 I found out my job as library assistant was being eliminated. It wasn't a school district decision, it was a state wide school decision. This was followed by watching so many co-workers lose their jobs. People were always crying in the halls. It's hard to know your job is ending and yet still have to work for 6 months. Especially when you don't want to lose your job. It's harder still to listen to those who are staying making plans knowing you won't be there. Yet looking back I'm glad I left because I would never have experienced my new job if I

hadn't left. And I've loved all I've learned. Soon after I lost my job, my husband lost his job. He had been looking for a new job for months, but hadn't found one. The job loss for him was much harder. He went through a depression. Although he found a new job rather fast, the job was hard, and paid very little. I often wonder if he had chosen the other job where we would be. As he got 3 offers at the same time. And now my husband has a new job in a different state. We are moving. This is something we never thought we'd ever do. This great recession as it is called has certainly changed my life. I'm not sure if it is for better or for worse. I tend to try to make the best of every situation. Has it changed your life? Well my husband came home this past weekend. It was wonderful. He is so much more his old self. It is much harder now to be away from him. I tell him each day apart is one more day closer to being together. I'm working hard to clean out and pack up my house. What a task. I've already donated tons of clothing, given away tons of stuff to different friends and thrown out at least 50 bags of garbage, and that's just from my attic. I can only hope this move will be one that brings us to a more stable life, and that we will find ourselves thinking back and saying this was a good thing. I have to say there are moments where I become absolutely terrified. That is when I just focus on the moment at hand and think of nothing else. Finish what is there in front of me. Here are two songs that help me.

Strong enough

Stronger

Enjoy!