BITTERSWEET WEEKEND

we have had quite the weekend.

It started out with a giant garage sale at our house Saturday.
For a few weeks now we've had family and friends donate things to our garage sale to help us raise funds for a future endeavor. :)

John had Friday off and let me just say how thankful I was for that....AND for my mom who watched the kids from about 1pm on Friday to 1pm on Saturday for us!

We spent most of Friday organizing all we had-then were up at 5am on Saturday to get it all set up-and didn't clean up until 11:30/noon-ish.

God is SO good.

Between what we made on the garage sale and a very generous donation by a couple friends, we have just enough $ to start our endeavor (when we're ready that is). And when I write "just enough" I mean literally -almost to the very dollar amount "just enough". :) It's actually the exact dollar amount plus $12.50-which will probably be the cost of our lunch for a 1day part of our endeavor. :)

Then....about 2 hours after our garage sale ended, John met up with a guy who was interested in buying his boat.

Here comes the "bitter" part of our weekend.

John has been toying with the idea of selling it for a couple years now and I've talked him into keeping it "just one more year".

He loves that boat.

But the kids aren't wild about it.
and we have to drive over an hour each way to get to the nearest lake...so it ends up being nearly an all day even whenever we wanted to take it out.

Because we're trying to save money and invest it wisely for future events, John decided now was the time to at least try to sell the boat.

He listed it on Wednesday -and it was sold for nearly full price by Saturday.

here are the kids saying good-bye to the boat.
Once Andrew realized it was really going, he started bawling.
which is ironic since he's the one who likes it the least!

I know it was really hard on John to let it go.
It was hard on me and it wasn't really my baby.

I saw the guy hook it up to his truck and just thought "that doesn't look right -it goes with our truck -not that one!".

I watched John watch the boat drive away and I just started sobbing.

I know-it's just a boat..but there are alot of memories we have made with it...
but mostly I cried knowing how hard it was for my husband to let it go.

This was a HUGE sacrifice for him.
HUGE.

He is a wonderful husband and father anyway, but watching him to do this made me love and respect him even more.


Since Saturday was an exhausting day, we decided to skip church and spend the day together as a family.

We spent some time at a local park flying a kite, walking around the little lake, throwing rocks in the water, and having a picnic lunch.

BOATING

Between selling the house, looking for a new one for weeks on end, moving twice..and setting up house-we've just been too busy to take the boat out. I feel so bad for John cuz he LOVES his boat. :) We took it out on Sunday -not just to have a good time, but to winterize it too.

The weather the day before was cool (in the 80's -that's cool for out here!) and rainy and we were so afraid Sunday would end up that way too -but Praise God it was a beautiful day. A bit chilly out on the lake but not bad at all.

here are some pics from the day -as you can see -all 3 kids had fun taking turns "driving" the boat. :) And Elizabeth did awesome for her first time out. She is truly the most adventurous of the 3. :)

I thought the above pic was cool -shows 3 different species of cacti right next to each other: saguaro, ocotillo, and cholla
huge canyon walls!

sometimes the desert really is gorgeous!