Progress

We made some real progress this past week! Here is the week in photos. Stay tuned until the end, and I will fill in the gaps with words.

One day last week, I spilled coffee all over my shirt --> right as I walked into the office. Good thing I had on a sweater to button up...

I've been goofing around making a playlist for Little Man's musical enjoyment and education. So far, he has a lot of his grandfather's favorites. We are taking suggestions.

We finished the online portion of our parent training! Phew!

Drew had all of our documents apostilled (which is the fancy way of saying our notary stamps basically have to be re-notarized by the state). Everything is in the mail to our agency, so we're just waiting on trip one dates!

We hit 2000 pageviews last week! Woohoo!

 The next two are not very clear pictures -- camera phones have limits. Sorry.

We went to watch one of our favorite college students perform in a University-wide talent show this past weekend! In this act, Landon played guitar while his friend performed a comedic improv song.

In this act, he sang and played a song on acoustic guitar. Landon has amazing talent! He was one of only two freshmen chosen to perform.

We were lucky to have Landon's family stay at our house while they visited for the weekend and went to see the performance. Landon's younger brother, Grayson, made himself quite comfortable! (As it should be.) We just love this family and feel blessed to be able to offer them a place to stay!

So to fill in some little details: If you gathered from the fourth photo, we are getting VERY close to finding out when our first trip will be to meet our son! As soon as we have dates, you can bet your bottom dollar we will be telling everyone we see! [Two points if you can name the bottom dollar reference. (note: points have no monetary value and are non-redeemable)]

We will be taking orphange donations with us on our first trip, so keep a lookout for a post on what they need most! On a similar note, I have finally worked out descriptions of most of our costs for this process. Click on "The Costs" tab at the top to see an estimate of all our fees, the money we have raised thus far, and our remaining fundraising needs!

This Week

So, I had this post pretty much ready to go, but then yesterday afternoon was a bit rough. Don't worry! Everything will work out. We just got some news of a slight delay with our training, and this mama does NOT like more time being put between her and her son! We talked through all of our options though, and I know we are going to be just fine. After Drew got home and talked me down, the rest of the evening was actually fairly relaxing. So anyways, that was just a little look at the emotions that come along with this process, and we will now move on to other news.

After the garage sale, Drew put several of the remaining large items on Craigslist. We had to sell off enough of the items on Monday and Tuesday to be able to return one of the box trailers on Wednesday morning. We managed to empty the trailer on time and made about $340 dollars. Not too shabby. For the most part, we just listed the furniture at the same price marked during the garage sale.

We still have several items to go, but it's nice to see progress. Once everything is out of the bonus room, we will finally get to set up Little Man's new room. The plan is to move the guest room out of the second bedroom and create a guest/game room in the bonus room. This may just be a paper pregnancy, but I have been dying to get his room all set up for him! The nesting bug has definitely hit our home.

This weekend, the plan was to meet with a family friend to try to get our required face-to-face training out of the way. She is a licensed social worker and had generously offered to put something together for us to cover this new requirement. It turns out, however, that we are going to have to wait for a different scheduled training that our agency has selected. We are not super happy about this (thus my emotional breakdown yesterday), but we will do whatever it takes. These hours are the last big item we need before we can submit to get our first trip dates. And you know what that means...we finally get to meet our Little Man!! Drew and I both cannot wait for that day to come!

And what's a post without pictures?

Seriously. How cute was he as a puppy?!

Garage Sale

So, we had our garage sale on Saturday. It was raining the WHOLE time. Pretty much the garage sale host's worst nightmare. Luckily, we live on a pretty popular street for attracting garage salers, so that helped make up for the rain. We had two big box trailers full of furniture for the sale, and we also had 4 - 10x10 tents and the bonus room was still full. Some of the stuff got a little wet, but nothing was really ruined. We set up a desk in the bonus room so that people could pay inside. It really worked out pretty well. I couldn't take photos in the dark that morning, but there were still a good number of items when I finally did get around to taking pictures.

We have a LOT of people to thank for our success! As far as donations, Mary, Drew's mom, did a fantastic job of spreading the word. A huge portion of our donations came from her friends and neighbors. Thank you Mary!! Most of the furniture came from the ranch house on my parents' property. They are getting ready to sell, and they were kind enough to donate all of the old camp house furniture to our garage sale along with items from their home and my grandmother. Several of our friends and coworkers also made generous donations from their homes.

In addition to donating items, our Life Group also volunteered an evening helping us fold and sort the clothing and begin pricing. We are so grateful to have such a great group! Jonathan and Leah helped us many times throughout the process, as they always do! (They are going to make a great fake uncle and aunt to Little Man.) They were here before, during AND after the garage sale. My mom and our friend Jordan were here to help on the day of the sale as well. Also, my dad and his friend Bruno spent a day at the ranch loading the furniture on a trailer.

And now for the two biggest thanks. First, Nate Kamphuis is a grad student at A&M who attends my parents' Thursday Night Dinner. Nate spent several hours out at the ranch helping my dad and Bruno load tons of furniture onto a trailer on Friday. He THEN drove the trailer up to Waco, because my dad couldn't make it that day, and helped us UNLOAD all of the furniture into the trailers we had set up in the yard. His sweet girlfriend, Tiffany, also generously helped us. (Sorry, Tiffany! We normally make better first impressions! Next time you come over, we promise you don't have to get sweaty!) We are so, so appreciative of Nate's willingness to serve us in such a generous way for nothing in return!

I am also very grateful to my sister, Avery. She came in on Friday afternoon and completely filled in for all of my garage sale failings. Where I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of items and the inability to ever completely organize everything, Avery stepped in and spent hours directing us in pricing and organization. Not only did she stay up until almost 3am on Saturday morning to finish, but she also woke up at 6:30am, worked alongside us all day, and then stayed for part of the afternoon to help me with the post clean-up and organization as well. I couldn't have been blessed with a better sister and best friend, and Little Man will be so blessed to have her in his family as well! Oh, and a shout-out also goes to Spencer, my brother-in-law, for loaning us his wife AND sending one of his loaves of homemade bread with her as well.

 

So, I know you really just want to know the total, right?! Sorry. Sorry. Well, rain and all, we brought in about $1,234.25! Not too bad. Drew is working to list and sell the remaining valuable items on Craigslist and eBay. Once everything is gone, I will be sure to post about that as well!

We are one step closer to bringing home our son!