Garage Sale = Success

Man are we so glad this weekend is over!!!!! Don't get me wrong it was amazing, but we are completely exhausted!We finally got some great weather this week and weekend. We knew we had to jump on the opportunity because you never know how the weather is going to change from day to day.

 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

Rain, rain, go away......

The weather has really not been cooperating with my schedule. It's actually been pretty nice the past few weekends here in the Pacific Northwest, but the days leading up to weekends are not so good.

 We cannot wait to have our Adoption Fundraiser Garage Sale! We have a ton of great stuff to get out of my sisters garage, but we need to have at least 4 nice days in a row to really make it worth it. We have gone through our house mutiple times and have received lots of donations from our friends and family. We feel so blessed with everything we have received so far, we just can't wait to begin selling all of these items. With that said, WE ARE STILL ACCEPTING DONATIONS. If you have anything you would like to donate let me know and we can come pick it up. Our goal is to have at least 2 garage sales this summer to help raise the money for our referral fee ($8000+). So if your not ready to tackle your house or a garage yet, don't worry, we will take your stuff all summer long.

 Even though somedays it seems like our adoption process is moving at a snails pace (although I think all adoptions do at some point or another). We have been so blessed by the other families who are using our same agency. Monthly we are hearing about the next family that is traveling to pick up their little one(s). We have also been able to see so many great pictures of the city, orphanage, and the kids. It's been so wonderful to get to share in their joy and to share in the excitement of seeing the kiddos who are just waiting to come home to their forever families. We know we still have a long time before we get our referral, but it sure is nice to feel a little connection to the kids in the orphanage.

 International adoption is a long hard journey. We did not come to this decision lightly and knew this was going to be a difficult process. There have already been multiple delays in the paperwork and the timeline has changed significantly since we started this process about 9 months ago. Imagine, if this had been a pregnancy we would be home with our new addition by now. The thing we hold on to is that God is in control. We know this is his plan for our family and we are going to trust in his timing. It doesn't mean we won't have those "bad" days, where we feel sad and mourn the amount of time lost without having our kid(s) home. But most days we are really just focused on Carson and our family unit. We know we need to continue having a strong marriage, developing our family rules, and making family traditions.

Soon enough we will receive our referral and we will be back in that stressful paperwork chasing game. So I guess this is a nice calm before the storm. I can only imagine the "bad" days will be much harder once there is a name/face added to our prayers. We will work so hard to get our child(ren) home as soon as possible, but like most things, it's really out of our hands. Paperwork (mostly the waiting for paperwork) will become our nemesis once again, but in the end it will be all worth it. Thanks for taking a few minutes to get caught up on our adoption adventure. We are so grateful to all the people in our lives that are supporting us during this journey.

Thank you and we love you!!!!
 *** April & Aaron

 P.S. If you have a minute leave us a comment. We'd love to hear from you!!!!!

Keeping Positive..... and Fundraising like crazy!

*** I started writing this post a few weeks ago and just didn't know how to end it. I've had a few weeks to think (and got some new information) and hopefully I am making more sense as I complete this blog update!

I know my resolution this year was to not stress about our adoption and the things I can't control but it's been a hard week. I guess I didn't have a good grasp on what actually happens once you send in your dossier. I thought there was some sort of number system that helps you keep track of where you are in the referral process. I guess it is not that simple. Because the referral process is based on dossier submission and everyone submitting a dossier has a little bit different requirement they keep an internal list but its not something that would make sense to us. With that said we can still contact our agency and ask how things are going and if referrals are coming in. This is going to be a long waiting process. With that said after many questions to our agency we were given a number as a guide. We are #18 on the list. That means that there are 17 families ahead of us looking for the same age range of child. Some months there may be no change in our number and some months we may move multiple spots up.

I'm not discouraged with our adoption or upset about anything in particular I think I just came to the realization that these 6-12 months (or possibly more) of waiting are going to be hard. I'm not sure what questions to ask our agency during this time of waiting, but I know that I have lots of fundraising to do while we wait.

In order to accept any referral we have to have the money raised and sent in within 7-10 days. This guarantees that we have accepted a referral and gets us moving on the next steps of bringing our child(ren) home. The cost of the referral fee is going to be $8,000 or $14,000. If we accept a sibling group it will be the larger number. We know this is a lot of money and we have been working hard to save for this fee. With me working part-time and Aaron coaching soccer we hope to be able to come up with half the money on our own. The rest we are going to fundraise like crazy to get.

Our first fundraiser of the year is going to be a Garage Sale.  We have already been accepting donations for this sale and plan to hold it as soon as the weather gets nice (yes, today is March 22 and there is snow everywhere in the Pacific NW!) So it may not happen as soon as we would like, but as soon as the weather turns spring like we are going to be ready!

***** We are still gladly taking Donations for our Garage Sale. So as your doing your spring cleaning think of us. We will come pick them up anytime. We will be holding a second garage sale in the summer, so if you aren't ready to clean things out yet just think of us when you do. We would love to store your unwanted treasures until our next sale.

Thanks for checking out our update. This one's all over the place, but sometimes it's nice to let others know just how your really feeling!

~April

Our Dossier is finally sent in!!!

This week has been very exciting on the adoption front. We have sent in our dossier to our agency to be reviewed and translated. We still have one form were waiting on from the US Government, but once that comes we can get it notarized and then send it off to the agency to be translated with all the others. We are so excited to get through this next step. Our information will soon be in DRC and we will be waiting again.

The timeline from this point on is very fuzzy. We will get a referral number (saying where we are in the line of people from our same agency) but it will most likely take 6-12 months before we get a referral. We're anticipating it being on the longer end since we are hoping for a child as young as possible. We know this will be a trying time because waiting is never easy. But God has a plan for our lives and we are going to trust in him and his timing.

Another reason this week was so great is a family from our agency came home with their little girl. She is adorable and we are so happy for them! While in DRC they took the time to take 100's of pictures for other families to give them a small glimpse into their children's lives. It was so wonderful to see our online group light up with such joy. Even people who don't have referrals yet have been in tears looking at the pictures and videos (yes, including me!). We also got to see a glimpse of the orphanage and hear a lot about the guest hose location. We are so excited m for the families that will be traveling soon and can't wait to see more pictures of where we will be traveling in the future.

And now here's his best cheese smile for the camera this morning to make you smile!

Love, April

Happy New Year

We had such a wonderful Christmas with family. I'm pretty sure Carson got everything he could have ever wanted from his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We then had a relaxing family night on New Years getting our master shower finished (we had some floor issues and we had to tear it out and redo it). It looks awesome and I love the pebble floor look we have now.

As we begin this new year we were thinking about all those failed resolutions of years past. We decided that we need to have a goal that we could do together. We have decided our resolution will be "Not stressing out about the adoption process". Hopefully this is a resolution we can finally keep!

We know this year will be trying with a lot of "waiting" waiting for us. But, we know we need to just remember that this will all happen in Gods timing. We are so excited to finally get our referral number (although it doesn't really mean a whole lot in regards to a time line) it will give us something to keep track of.

We have our digital fingerprints this week and then will hopefully get all of our paperwork together and notarized by early next week. Then our dossier will be complete and ready to send off to the agency to be reviewed and then it's off to the DRC. Woohoo!

Thank you to all our family and friends. We love you all and can't wait to see what this New Year brings.

Just some updates....

Happy week(ish) before Christmas!

We are very excited for Christmas here at the Marvin house. Carson absolutely loves having the tree in the house and constantly takes ornaments on and off of it. Luckily we were smart and got a ton of soft ornaments on after Christmas clearances the past two years, so our entire lower half of the tree is kid proof! We've only had one glass ornament casualty so far; hopefully that's it for this year, although we still have a little over a week to go.

We have held two different fundraisers in the past few months and I got the final numbers in and wanted to share with everyone.

The "Getting Ready for Christmas" party was so much fun and hopefully very helpful for many people. We made about $250 just from the sales percentages from Scentsy and Mary Kay. Then we made about $150 from the stuff that my sister Amy and I made. Total we made just under $400. Woohoo!  Over all it was a great night, and it was so wonderful to share our journey with so many of you.

We then got a booth at the "Snowflakes Bazaar" in Sellwood. It was a long weekend, but we had a ton of fun. Aaron manned the booth with me on Saturday and my sister Amy manned it with me on Sunday. Between my sister, myself and Aaron's grandma we had a very full table with an array of items to sell. In the end we made about $75 after the cost of the booth (every penny counts!). We met so many wonderful people working their own booths and we were able to share our story with everyone who would listen during our two days there. Thanks to everyone who bought from us and to our wonderful family who helped make this weekend possible.

We are so thankful for all the opportunities we have had to make some extra money for our adoption fund. With me (April) tutoring two days a week and some other fundraisers planned for the spring we're hoping we can meet our next fundraising goal by summer. This is the big one! We will need to have all the money raised to accept a referral (meaning we will get to see a picture of our child and say we want to bring him/her home). We know this will be quite a challenge, but we feel so at-peace with our decision to adopt and we know we need to trust God and just take it one day at a time.


We want to give THANKS to everyone and to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Here's a quick picture of Carson at the Oregon Zoo that Aaron took on their Daddy Day, while I was at the bazaar.

With Love, The Marvin's

Snowflakes Bazaar

Here we are at the Snowflakes bazaar. It's been pretty slow today. Hopefully it will pick up since church services should be finished and lunch should be done. We have such a mod-podge of stuff available. Tons of Infinity Scarves, toddler hair clips, and quilted table runners/placemats. Thanks to Aaron's grandma Dorthy for all her quilting.