At some point I realized I’m an adult now and I can’t rely on my parents to keep me united with my family…it’s time for ME to take some responsibility for seeing everyone and not wait around for planned family functions! As many of you know my dad has been married more than a couple times and he has several children who are all my brother’s and sisters 🙂 My closest sibling (other than Brandon who I share our mom and dad with) in age is Kori who is NINE years older than me! With such an age gap we didn’t spend a lot of time together growing up. Now Ryan (Kori’s older brother) and his family only live about 45 min away from us and we keep meaning to get together. Well we’ve FINALLY done it! Yay us!!!
Julia, my niece, and I have been chatting on Facebook and texting back and forth for awhile and we finally made some plans for her to come visit. Our big plans for the weekend were our neighborhood garage sale and Payton’s first birthday party so it was a great weekend to have her visit. I met Joy, her mom, in Lake Park and picked her up Friday night. I was a little nervous about the whole thing which is kinda funny! She’s 13 and I haven’t been around many 13 year olds (especially not girls) lately and I didn’t know how lame we’d be in her eyes. I mean how cool can two twenty five year old married new parents be?
After I picked her up we grabbed some chinese food and rented a movie then headed home. After Kye went down we baked some cookies (I figured cookies are cool to everyone right?) and watched 2012. While the movie sucked Julia, Zach and I had fun making fun of it together!
It was great how quickly we all meshed and got along so well. It was wonderful for me to have some of my own extended family visiting! We had SUCH great talks and really got to know each other better. I loved seeing how many things we have in common and things that I didn’t even realize were “Sedgley” traits (big heads, loves of reading, lack of a desire to play sports, gaps in front teeth, and being pack-rats!). While getting to know her better I felt like I was getting to know parts of myself better too.
Friday night Zach got VERY sick (like spent the entire night hugging the toilet…yuck) and Saturday morning we had our neighborhood garage sale. I’d been working all week getting ready for it. For years now I’ve been saving things (did I mention the pack-rat trait?) to sell on Ebay. Well, selling on Ebay is a PAIN and it’s not even very profitable! So this past week I went through ALL my “Ebay” boxes and divided things up. I took a huge car load of stuff to a local consignment shop (Anastasia’s) and I listed 200 books on half.com (wanna buy some from me? Here’s a link to my “shop”).
heading to consignment!
all listed online!
The consignment shop only accepts stuff every 2 weeks and they only take 40 items at a time so I figured I’d try to sell the rest at the garage sale along with some other random stuff and just see how I did. I’m SO thankful Julia was there to help me Saturday morning! Mrs. Charlotte came by for a little bit to help but she had to leave to help Courtney with Payton’s party and Zach was in the bed from about 7:30 until 11!!! He was so sick poor thing! Thankfully Julia helped watch the sale so I could take care of Kye 🙂 We made $100 plus I’ve already sold 6 books online and made another $70! Pretty awesome for stuff I didn’t want anyway!
Julia and Kye
Kye took a picture of G-Mama, so funny!
Aunt Emily with Julia and Kye
Kye was rockin’ her shades
Spencer was the STAR of the garage sale
Luckily, Zach was feeling better when he woke up and he was able to help us clean everything up from the sale. We had a TON left and a lot of the clothes are brand name stuff that Julia actually liked so she took home a bunch of them which made me feel so good! I’d MUCH rather my stuff go to my family who will enjoy it than random strangers 🙂 We sorted through everything that was left and I kept one tub for the consignment shop and the rest we are donating to Goodwill so we can write it off on taxes. After sitting in the hot sun for the sale we were EXHAUSTED! We just chilled and ate and talked while Kye napped and then we got ready for Payton’s Party (post to come!).
I’m so glad that Julia wanted to come visit with us and we really enjoyed having her! Her younger sister, Anne, already had some plans for the weekend but I’m hoping we can get to spend more time with her in the future too. I was SO impressed with the amazing young woman Julia is! I remember when she was born and it’s hard for me to grasp that she’ll be 14 in August. That means I’m getting pretty old huh? I’m so proud of her and the good choices she’s making. Talking to her it’s INSANE to realize the kind of stuff kids are into now so so much younger than we were when kids in my grade were getting into bad stuff. It’s so great that her parents have raised her to love GOD and not to focus on being in the world doing the worldly things others may do. I hope our children have that same grasp on reality and that Julia will hold strong to her values and beliefs as she enters high school in the fall.
AND I also don’t feel half as lame as I thought I would! She had a good time too which made me feel good about myself and my “cool” status haha. What made me feel even better though…she told me she has a picture of Zach, Kye and I on one of her binders and that the guys in her class have told her how hot I am!!! Is it sad that hearing that 13 year old boys find me attractive makes me feel good? Maybe I AM lame…
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