We decided to begin setting up our Garage Sale on Wednesday afternoon. We just started to bring box after box out in to my sisters driveway. As we were bringing boxes out people just started stopping and asked if they could go through the boxes (my sisters house is the best garage sale location for sure). We made a few hundred dollars that night while just setting up! We had received so many amazing donations, it took until Saturday before I finally pulled the last 15 boxes out of her garage. We ended up having our sale from Wednesday night until Sunday afternoon. For most of those days nothing was priced and we just let people look through boxes, bins and bags. It was so unorganized and trashy looking. But there were so many moments where there were 15-20 people there at one time; we just couldn't keep up! Even with our complete lack of organization and pricing we were able to meet our goal of $3000.
We are so grateful for all of the people who helped at our sale and for all of the donations we received. We wanted to give a special thanks to Carson's swim teacher and her family for donating the majority of the items we sold this week. They are moving and we are so sad to see them go, but we are eternally grateful for their generosity and kindness. We also are so thankful for my parents, Ed and Kathy, who took time off work to help with our sale. My sisters Alyssa, Amy and Ashley also took time off work and time out of their weekends to work our sale and hangout with Carson. Aaron's mom, Terree, also took a day off work and kept Carson for two days so he didn't have to sit at the garage sale the entire time. My grandma Sharon and Phil, also spent many hours taking money and just hanging out with me so I didn't have to be alone all day. We never could have done this sale without the help of all these people. Thank you so much for everything you have done (and I'm sure will do) to bring our new addition home.
Another thing that made this past week so special, was that we were able to share our story with hundreds of people. Between the many people who were just looking for a bargain, there were a few people who really touched our hearts. We had a lady who found out we were adopting and gave us $40 for just a few small items. A young man came up to our sale asking of we would buy his 200 vinyl records from him for $20. We told him no and what we were fundraising for. He then came back with all of his records and about 30 matchbox cars still in their packaging. He said he wanted us to have it because he wants a little kid to be able to have a better life than he did. We were so touched we did give him the $20 and told him what a blessing he was to us. There are many stories of people who gave a little more along with stories of people who were actually quite disrespectful. But we are choosing to reminisce on the positives of this experience and hope to be able to share our story with more people when we do ths again in a few months!
With our 1st garage sale of the year behind us, I was finally able to make a change to our thermometer on the left side of our blog. I'm so excited that we were able to finally do something towards our fundraising goals. I did change the total to $12,000 (from 8,000) to more closely reflect the cost if we do become blessed with a sibling pair.
We have some more fundraising events coming up this summer and will let you know as we begin planning those. We are also planning another garage sale for August. Please let me know if you have anything you would like to donate and one of us can pick it up from you.
We are sure we still have many months (6-9) before we will get our referral, but our goal is to have the money raised so that as soon as we say YES, we can make our payment. We will then have to figure out the monthly fees and the next set of fees that come with this process, but we know that God will provide. Again, a big thank you to everyone that has donated. I don't like to put names on here that aren't family or that I don't have permission for. But you know who you are and we are so grateful for your generosity. Hope everyone is having a wonderful day (and as always leave a comment we'd love to say hi back)!
~April & Aaron
No comments:
Post a Comment