One Man's Trash....

Everything is going pretty smoothly around here.  The Greers are so ready to hit the road that we feel like Texans already, from our cowboy hats to our jeans and boots!  Boxes are mostly packed, emotions are excited, job offers  have been pouring in, our families are loving and supportive even though they'll miss us (so they claim).

Elizabeth is very proud of her
newly acquired climbing ability!

Bella helping out at the yard sale

Two Saturdays in a row have seen our front yard littered with our worldly goods for sale.  It's amazing how much STUFF one can accumulate in thirty years!  Really, it's 58 years because of our combined ages.  I had the lion's share of the hoard though--TJ left home four years ago with only the stuff that fit in the backseat of his little Honda Accord, whereas when I moved in with him it took about six trailer loads to transfer my STUFF to our apartment.  Plus all the STUFF we collected in three years of marriage.  It feels so good getting rid of STUFF!  It's cleansing, like taking a shower.  We've pretty much sold everything but our oldest child.  It's amazing that people will pay actual real money for STUFF like that!  I need to revamp my mind and get out of the mentality that "someday I might use this so I should keep it and store it and love it and give it a name and not let it be pried out of my cold dead fingers..."

Hats and sticks--best childhood ever!

STUFF is so temporary.  It really doesn't matter at all in the long run--it's only real value is it's immediate usefulness.  I hope my children grow up learning not to be emotionally attached to STUFF  in an unhealthy way.  It's sad when people are hoarders--it shows a lack of love and fulfillment in other areas of their lives.

I find that the older I get, the less sentimental I become.  I honestly don't care if my great-great grandmother used that hideous chartreuse glass bowl--I don't want the thing in my kitchen.  My wedding shoes were awful and killed my feet with blisters and almost caused a twisted ankle--into the yard sale they went (nobody bought them and they ended up in the kids' costume chest because Bella loves clomping about in mommy's shoes!)  Knickknacks and glass items passed down to me from remote ancestors--I'm sorry ancestors, but you're going to have to turn over in your graves because I'm not keeping them around.  As TJ says, "They aren't our memories--so why keep them?"

Hiding among and climbing over the packed moving boxes
is Bella's latest hobby.

 Bella just came in with her bleached blonde hair in disarray, her monkey pajamas, and her sleepy morning smile on her face.  I love my darlings so much!  The other day we were having dinner at a friend's house and their little boy asked his mother, "Can I ask Bella's mommy if she can have a cookie?"  I realized that wow, this is how other kids see me now--as "Bella's mommy."  I am incredibly privileged to hold that title!  In this crazy dangerous world with shootings and fires and hurricanes all around us I want to hold my babies so tightly and never let them go!  But they are in God's keeping and I will cherish every precious moment that I have with them.