Queenies Little Kingdom

Christmas?  It's Christmas?  Who knew?  All I've been focused on is selling my house, buying another one and packing to move there!  Christmas has been low on the list of life events for me.

I love Christmas!

This year is really going to be different for my family.  I'm glad that hubby and I helped decorate the tree at our girls' apartment a few weeks back.  That might have to hold us over until next year.  This coming weekend is our final truck-loading move time.

Boxes and piles will be all I know for a long time.

So, how do you save money at Christmas time?  I'll tell ya.

1 — Spend an enormous amount of money fixing up and repairing your old house to put on the market to sell.

   * New roof & seamless gutters

   * New paint

   * New bar & barstools

   * New window treatments

   * New heater covers

The list goes on….and my savings account shows it.  Boo!

2 — Buy a new house in a higher market area to be closer to work.  Yea, that'll cost ya!

   * Tear out the disgusting carpet and put in wood laminate floors.  $$$

   * Replace the shower heads, shower curtain rods and dream of changing the bathtub/showers.

   * New window treatments.  Baby steps here.

   * New cabinet liners & cleaning supplies for a house dirty from other people's cooties.  Don't ask about the dishwasher trim.  Eww!

   * Paint.  Eventually.

This list can go on too because everybody knows making a home your own takes time AND MONEY!!

3 — Spend all the money you have left MOVING!

   * Rent a moving truck TWICE!!  Because it takes you two weekends to move all your stuff, finish out your job and commute the long distance between it all.

   * Pay all the start up costs of new utilities; electricity, water, garbage, cable/wifi and whatever else you'll need to live somewhere new.  Kapow!

   * Blow money left & right on all sorts of crazy things you need to get moved in.  In our case, we've bought a new ladder, tools, rugs etc…  It never ends!

All of that, my friends…will suck your Christmas budget money completely dry.  I suppose its a good thing my kids are young adults and understand how tight it can be with all the moving and life changing going on.  I trust that God has a great plan for each of us. The year isn't over, yet.

Who knows, maybe we'll be all moved in with beds in place and boxes out of the way…..but I don't know how we'll do it and have any energy left.  I'm learning, slowly…ONE THING AT A TIME!!

I am so happy to be moving and I love my new house.  Christmas may be a little different this year but I'll still have all the things I treasure close by — MY SWEET FAMILY!

How do you save money at Christmas?

I’m happy to be following this moving truck. Just not happy about the weather.

The coldest day in Indiana and the Galloway’s are doing what every person loathes on good weather days!

I don’t know what we would’ve done without our kids. Ally helped unload what Gavin had helped load. Hubby did loading & unloading. I love him!

It ain’t easy being awesome!  She makes it look like a piece of cake.

So we got hit with more of this…

The slick cold snow was almost too much!

But they trudged on. What else can you do?

I’m hoping my neighbors are nice. My hubby told me if we ever see anyone moving in near us….we ARE lending a helping hand.

I love my house even through the piles of snow. It’s beautiful!

Boxes and boxes.

Stacks of this and piles of that.

It didn’t take long to make huge messes…everywhere!

We started pulling out carpet & linoleum right away.

Goodbye ugly carpet!

Yippee!!

Making way for this beautiful stuff!

I’m so excited!  It’s going to be a long week for me — as I finish out my school days. Hubby will be staying and working on the floors and his real job. It will be a challenge for us both (we don’t do apart so well) and come Friday. ..

Finish moving! !

Some good weather would be amazing.

I journeyed out into this yesterday and the roads were atrocious!  However, I was only a passenger so I didn't have to do the driving.  Only the criticizing of the driver.  I suppose it could be classified as criticizing.  When a person passes another vehicle on snowy slick roads in a car that doesn't have a lot of "get up and go"…..I think that's an okay time to get a little critical!  Don't you?

We survived!  Barely.

We were in a hurry to get to this kid.

We had some shopping to do.

This is just a little taste of how much my family loves Clinique. We snap pics with displays.

And slurping down our Starbucks.

It was a long day but lots of fun. Being a mom of girls is special. I missed Gates and loved getting a phone call from Gavin while we were out and about. He was calling to tell me what he wants for Christmas….

A suit!

I love being a mom!

Life has been a lot of this…

Snow. Ice. Freezing weather.

Brrr, right?

Lizzy has had enough.

She checks often to see if it’s gone. Drats!  Still here.

So a lot of this has bern happening during snowblow-a-geddon.

I pack. I sit.

I walk around surveying my work and think I’m making a dent but…

The truth is I’m probably going to be packing junk in January.

I can’t contain my excitement when I pull in next to this at the end of my driveway.

Pinch me.

Oh yea. Still doing this and this…

Oh and of course some of this. ..

Why yes, my car is stuck….in my driveway. Not sure I’ll miss that issue at my new house.

I’m not complaining. ..2 snowdays tacked onto a weekend have been a gift from heaven.  It’s really made my pack, sit, pack, eat system the greatest pace yourself program ever.

Success.

I'd like to think I'm growing stronger everyday as a follower of Christ.  But the honest truth is that I'm a constant "work in progress".  I've had a little dose of my own medicine over the last few days.  Remember my word for the year?  Grace?  Yea, it seems I'm really good at doling it out where I feel its most worthy.  Which in reality is not really showing grace at all but me being a hoarder with my grace and that is wrong on every level!

Clearly, I'm in too deep to turn back now.

Maybe you understand my thinking —  Someone makes a big mistake because of their own stupid choices and everyone feels pity for them, but you (or me, in my case).  Grace denied?  I think so.

So, how do we get over the fact that someone hurts a whole community of people by their foolishness and offer them/their family/friends/loved ones the grace God offers us?

By dying to self!  That's the only way.  It's not my job to police what people do with their lives or the lives of their loved ones.  I can only do my part and love them in spite of their choices.  Boy, that's hard isn't it?  Especially for a self-righteous personality like mine.  I have just enough stubborness inside of me that I have programmed myself to fight off temptation to give in to "certain" sinful ways.  Therefore, I find it easy to judge someone else who does that kind of sin.

Are you getting me?

I'm a Miss Goody Two Shoes when it comes to doing the right thing and walking the line…even though, I sin sin sin in a myriad of other ways.

Justification.  I am a master!

The point is this….I am convicted about my inability to feel sorry for a group of people dealing with a genuine tragedy in my community and I realize it's a heart issue within myself and not anyone else.  I'm mad that this person was doing what they were doing with NO REGARD for herself, her child or any of the people in her life who loved her.  She was so wrapped up in her wild lifestyle and foolishness that her actions cost her – her life!

I'm wrong to hold back my grace and I'm sorry.

I don't like how I'm feeling and I don't like admitting it to the world either.  I'm ashamed of myself.  But I'm grateful that God allowed me a peak into my own heart to remind me that giving grace isn't as easy as it seems (for us who dwell in flesh).  God makes it look easy, huh?

The year is quickly coming to a close.  As I think back over all that's happened I pretty much rode the grace bus all throughout the year.  His grace got me through and taught me that giving grace isn't about letting someone get away with something it's about letting my heart love without boundaries.

Who needs your grace today?

I'm weird!  Nothing about me is normal.  I say all the time — THAT I WANT TO BE NORMAL.  People just look at me and shrug.

I do things that surprise even me…..all the time.

Once, okay…more than once I've ordered fitness magazines with the intention of getting into shape only to leave them laying around to collect dust and eventually get tossed out.  I bring this up because I just came across an offer for a runner's magazine on sale over on another blog and I TOTALLY GOT EXCITED to order it until I remembered how pathetic I am about following through with actual fitness stuff!  I clicked away!

On my drive to school this morning (I was running late of course) I noticed that I forgot to put on my wedding ring before I left the house.  Immediately, I felt naked and thought of all the negative feelings I'd feel all day without my beautiful ring on my finger.  I love to borrow trouble!

I was running late because I spent way too long searching for a blue scarf to go with my outfit for school.  In my head, I planned out what I'd wear all based on this one scarf!  Not a good idea to do that when you're a little disorganized and crunched for time.  I left home frustrated and feeling insecure about what I looked like without the scarf to finish the outfit.  I think about crazy stuff, I know.

I don't have time for coffee in the mornings (at home) so I grab a cup when I get to school and get settled in for class.  The only way I'll even drink coffee is with a honking serving of sweet creamer.  If the box of Vanilla creamer is empty…I put my cup back on the shelf and move along.  Most days it's all there but every once in a while I get no coffee.  This morning….since I was late all the coffee was gone and I had to make a fresh pot.  The craziest part about all this coffee stuff is that I only drink a half of a cup!  No kidding around.  I fill my cup barely 1/2 full and then I only drink part of that.  Why bother right?

Weird.  I can't escape it.

The deeper I get into this life of mine the more I see how weird being a Christian is to the world.  It seems if you lean hard on Christ that you are missing out on all the fun to be had by living free willy.  I couldn't disagree more.  The way I see it…..if following Jesus is weird then I am going full-on weird and DOING IT LIKE A BOSS!  After this past week's many car accidents and deaths in my community…I can't see any other way of coping and handling the tragedies without God's help.  Call me weird, I don't care.

I'm hoping to be the weirdest of weirds for JESUS!

What's weird about you?