Yay! More Junk!!

I am getting ready to go on a little two-day trip tomorrow. Every time I leave my family, I feel like I will never see them again. I just hate being away from them for any length of time. Yes, I have issues.

I will be leaving in the afternoon and be back Monday evening, at which time we will have a camp-out in the back yard. I'm actually looking forward to that. I just love my family and spending time with them.

Today, I thought I would do some fun things with Allika since I won't get to see her for a few days. (Can you tell I'm really having a hard time with this?) She absolutely loves garage-saling, so we went to a few. It is difficult taking her at this point because she thinks she has to buy something at every sale. If I tell her we really don't need that right now, the obvious answer is, "Then why are we even garage-saling in the first place? Do we need any of this stuff right now?" Oh, the dilemmas with which our children present us.

I have tried that whole "buy it with your own money" thing, but that does not stop her from buying the first thing she sees at each sale until she runs out of money. It just doesn't teach her a thing about thinking through her purchases.

The solution I came up with was to tell her that she could only buy one thing for the whole day. She would have to make sure whatever she decided to buy was something she knew she really, really wanted because it would be the only thing she was getting the whole day.

Of course, she found what she could not live without at the very first garage sale. Ugh.

"Allika, you need to wait until you have looked at other garage sales because you might see something else you would rather have, and you won't be able to buy it."

"I know this is what I want. I don't want anything else."

Kind of defeats the whole point of taking your daughter garage-saling to spend some time together.

I told her she could not buy it until we had gone to all the other garage sales, and she still wanted it. I also added some fine print to which she agreed. If she bought it, she had to let me get rid of several of her things to make room for it. I am no dummy.

Well, at each new garage sale, she declared, "I don't see anything I want here. This is just other people's junk. Maybe that's why they're selling it, so other people will buy their junk." Very perceptive six-year-old.

I tried to convince her to buy another, more practical purchase that was $7.00 cheaper and took up much less room (about 3 sq. ft. worth), but she would have none of it. Even after I had the lady open the box and show us how it worked.

When it was all said and done, we made our way back to the original sale where, much to my chagrin, it was still there. I had been secretly hoping it would have sold while we were perusing the other sales.

(Yes, this is a blog for my daughter that she will read someday, and I will be exposed for what I am.)

My daughter came home the proud owner of a new contraption, and I promptly cashed in on our deal to rid her room of lots and lots of junk. It was kind of a win-win situation in the long run.

By way of an update on "The Thyroid," we found out that my insurance will cover the more convenient treatment that doesn't require me to go off my thyroid medicine for three weeks. The reason why this is a good thing is because it means I will not have to have really bad mood swings and not be able to get out of bed and function. Yay! That is an answer to prayer.

I am going to try to post something tomorrow because I have been marinating in this cool passage for a while now. I want to share it because it has really had an impact on me. If I don't get the time (with church and my trip and all), I will just have to contain my excitement until Tuesday.

Toodley-oo.