Sunday, October 21, 2012

Enterprise Yard Sale


     Our first yard sale was a success! My grandmother, great aunt and uncle, daddy, sister, aunt and cousin all helped out and really made it an awesome fundraiser! We tried to make it all donation based, but a few things were priced. My sweet cousin made a lemonade stand and sold cups of lemonade for $0.25. My family took care of making signs for the yard sale, putting up tents, setting out tables, and ran the yard sale all Friday until 3! It was honestly a huge blessing, because I know they all did so much work to make sure our yards sale was great. My sweet daddy took everything out of the loft above our garage (which is a ton of stuff, btw) and sifted through all the stuff. He delivered tables that had been bought and helped organize everything.  He even stayed all day to help. My whole family stayed out all day! If there’s one thing I’ve learned, its that… yard saling is hard. So for everyone to work so hard to help us really meant a lot.

I have a few of my favorite stories from today that I want to share.

     First of all, my cousin is one of the sweetest and most thoughtful people I have ever met. She donated her old bicycle to our yard sale, and came out early this morning to set up a lemonade stand. And it was so serious. She and my aunt had one of those fancy lemonade containers that is tall and clear, and has cute little spout. They made a fancy sign. She brought her own fancy cash register that made a “cha chinggg” sound when she opened it. It was all really fancy. And she sat there faithfully most of the morning asking people if they would like a cup of lemonade. This morning I sat down at her lemonade table and grabbed her shoulder. I told her that I really appreciated all of the things she was doing and it was so thoughtful and sweet. I almost teared up, because, she just said “your welcome!” and went on about her lemonade business. I felt a similar way several weeks ago when a friend’s daughter had a lemonade stand also to raise money for jack jack. Children seem to have this innate desire to be helpful and do right. Of course, not every second of the day, but overall they do. It didn’t even seem like a big deal to her. She’s just helping out her cousin because she loves her. It’s such sweet and pure perspective. She didn’t want anything. She wasn’t getting anything out of it. She was just doing it. And that $15.75 is some of the best money we’ve earned so far. I wish I took that attitude more often.

     There was another little girl that came up to T.J., and he later told me her story. She said her and her mother came by and looked earlier (I’m assuming she heard our shpeal about raising money for the adoption). She looked at T.J. and in her shy little voice said, “We looked around and there were a lot of things we liked, but we just wanted to give a donation…” and then she dropped a handful of coins into his palm. He came inside to tell me the sweet story, and I kept the money separate because I wanted to count it by itself. It was exactly two dollars in change. But it so blessed my heart because I knew she put herself in the frame of mind to sacrifice. Offering up her money without taking or expecting anything was amazing. It completely energized and encouraged me.

     Seeing other people’s generous hearts has taught me something about my own. I saw God’s heart in those actions and their selflessness, and it makes me realize there are many times in my life that I don’t show those same things. Kids will teach you a lot.

     We also had a couple of family friends that came up and just made a donation.  One friend literally drove to our house way early on a Saturday morning just to give us a wad of 20-dollar bills. She got out of her car, walked up to T.J. and chatted for a bit, gave him her donation and drove off. How awesome is that??!

     So, today was, EXHAUSTING. It is seriously hard, taxing work to put on one of these things. But at the end of the day, when we finished the yard sale and packed everything back up, we all sat around the kitchen table and counted. Altogether, from things we sold at the yard sale, our lemonade stand, and donations, we raised $782.00!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

YARDSALING

     Ok, so I admit I have been slacking on the blog updates lately. Life had been a bit on the crazy side! But I am determined to become more devoted to keeping this blog up, if only to be able to look back on this experience one day and see God's faithfulness.
     So, we had our first phone interview last week with a social worker from Lifeline. If I understand correctly, its kindof like the first step in our homestudy, which is a series of interviews, education, and paperwork. At the end of our homestudy, we will be able to apply for adoption grants and get matched with a child. Don't quote me on all of that, because I am by no means an expert at all of this yet, but I think thats right or pretty close to right. I was really nervous about our interview for some reason, but it was no big deal at all. Our social worker was so nice and it was completely non-intimidating. I keep trying to take the advice of my other adoptive parent friends, that it is really no big deal, but it all still seems weighty. Something about having my entire future family dependent upon the content of some paperwork and interviews feels... like a big deal. lol
     We started clearing out Jack Jack's room, aka the office, last sunday. Is it weird I'm already nesting??? We decided to sell most of the things in there at our

ADOPTION YARDSALE
( ON NOVEMBER 3, 2012 AT A LOCATION TBD IN THE NEAR FUTURE...).




Althoug of course wading through all of our junk and deciding what to get rid of is not necessarily the funnest of life's activities, there is something so energizing about this fundraising. It feels like we're transferring all of our junk, and all the junk other people are donating, into this awesome gift toward our son. My friend Jess took me to meet her friend this weekend at a yardsale she was having to help raise money for her family's adoption from Haiti. She had so many fantastic ideas, and really a lot of wisdom and insight into the heart of adoption and the financial issues that sometimes follow. I'm going to wait to blog about all of her advice until after I have our own yardsale and can speak from experience. 
     This weekend, with the help of my family in Enterprise, I'm having our first official Joy Family Adoption yardsale in my sweet momma and daddy's front yard. I'm so excited to start off our yardsale fundraising excursion in the same city that grew me up. I think its going to be exciting and fun, and humbling- because the farther we get into this adoption, the more we realize we can't do it on our own. And being insufficient, and really NEEDING help from other people seems to go against the grain of the society we live in. Being unable to do something on your own is broadcasted as some type of shortcoming or failure, and subsequently makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes. But I think thats a flaw in this society and not a flaw in God's design and plan, or in our calling to adopt. Also, I really LOVE yardsales :). My mother and my husband have different thoughts entirely, but I, LOVE them. So wish us luck and pray to the Lord for his blessing as we start in this new fundraiser!
     Just to give an overview of the fundraising we have already started, let me recap everything we're doing to raise money.

 We started by having cards printed with a short description of our heart for adoption and how people could help support us. Its pretty cute if I do say so myself. It has a link to our website, http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=4922&url=thejoyfamilyadoption which is a website anyone can go to in order to donate money to our adoption. It accepts paypal and all major credit cards.



 We went to Regions and set up a separate adoption account that all of our adoption donations go into. So far, the money has helped cover our application fee, two SBCN application fees, the $9 it cost to mail our SBCN fees off, and our first major payment toward the adoption.

We are selling t-shirts that have "ethiopia: 5 million minus 1" on the front of a grey comfort color shirt. T.J. designed the cover art :). They cost 20 dollars, and we will hand them out personally to everyone who lives in Tuscaloosa, and mail the others to people who live outside the city. The t-shirt company has been very gracious to make the shirts at cost for us and said hand delivering or mailing ourselves will be less expensive than having the company do it for us. The  link to our t-shirt site is http://www.alatees.com/index.php/joyfamilyethiopiaadoptionfundraiser.html?fb_action_ids=4247504338193&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=246965925417366

And finally, we are having yardsales. One will be in Enterprise this Friday and Saturday, and the other will be in Tuscaloosa on the first weekend of November. If it snowballs, and we keep getting more and more donations and momentum, I might just keep having them every weekend!

I'm also throwing around the idea of having a "mom's day out" or "date night" at our church, but I don't know if there are problems with the church bylaws regarding public use of the facilities or something. I might also put a carwash together, but I haven't decided yet.

So far, from all the donations on our website and in response to our cards, the money our friend's daughter raised for us by having a lemonade stand, plus any extra money we have at the end of the month and birthday money, we have raised $3,231.43. Thats awesome so far! In the grand scheme of things its only 12%, lol, but the help and support from our friends has been overwhelming and encouraging. We need to raise 3,000 more dollars before the end of our home study in order to make our next payment.

We are so excited to really put action to our calling to adopt. It makes it feel even more real for some reason. And working for it all is hard, but it makes the goal of having our son home all the sweeter!