Garage Sale Update... FINALLY!

Well, it sure did take me long enough! My life feels like a whirl-wind. I finished up the garage sale, jumped right back into work, continued sorting out garage sale stuff, was pet-sitting for a friend, then had a volunteer commitment last weekend, and NOW.... I'm finally relaxing. Almost forced to actually. Apparently, at some point while working on the garage sale I re-injured my back. I have been seeing a chiropractor since last Friday and we are still trying to sort things out. I am very sore and after about 30 minutes of any kind of activity, it really starts flaring up.

Anyway, back to business! The garage sale went great! The week before was filled with errands, set up and pricing. Then Thursday morning rolled around (after two hours of sleep!) and we were open for business. We had a great big banner hanging up explaining what the sale was for, we handed out about 300 of our business cards to people, and sold lots of stuff/food too! All in all, people were very receptive to what we were there for. At the checkout we'd hand people our card with their change and explain more about what we were trying to do, and 9 times out a 10 the person would wish us luck or tell us an adoption story that they knew of. It was very cool to see people in our own community wanting to help out and wishing us the best on our journey.

What absolutely amazed me most were the little kids. We had some of the cutest neighborhood kids coming over and getting lunch and shopping our toys area. Each time they'd make a donation on top of what they paid for their new treasure. We even had a couple of young boys, probably around 10, that stopped by to shop the "free box" at the end of the driveway. They found some items and then both walked up to one of the donation jars we had out and shoved a couple of crumpled up ones in there and took one of our cards. Amazing!

I also can't say enough about the help we had. It was definitely a LONG few days and I couldn't have imagined doing it without the support of the family and friends that jumped right in. We had TONS of stuff... and TONS is not an exaggeration. We even had stuff still sitting inside not priced because there was no room to put it out. We eventually were able to price stuff throughout the day and get it out on the tables... but seriously, it was a LOT of stuff. By the time Saturday rolled around we started looking like what a "normal" garage sale would look like.

When it was all said in done, Saturday night we were able to sort through everything that was left, figure out what we wanted to hold onto for our next sale (yes we're doing it all again!), and brought a few truck loads of stuff to a local charity. We already have a small pile of things for the next sale started in our basement. So, if you didn't get a chance to go through your closets or attic, start sorting. I'm hoping that by the end of August, beginning of September we'll be able to do it all again and hopefully raise some more money and awareness to our mission.

Oh and I guess you'd like to know the money stuff too! Well it was a great turn out and when it was all done we had raised a little over $1,700!!!!! While it's a fraction of what we will need, it's definitely not bad for a week of work.

Other than garage sale stuff, there is not much else to report. We are working on trying to get a facebook page up and getting our profile ready for THE BOOK. We're still on the waiting list to get in it, but hope to get a call in the coming months. Better yet, we hope to get a call and a match long before we have to enter into the book!

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. If you are interested, let me know and I'll get you some of our cards. We are very open to many different situations so please keep us in mind if you hear of anything. And of course, thank you all again for reading the blog, for supporting our efforts and for helping us get one step closer to parenthood!