Wrapping Up

I can't believe we're in the latter half of May already. Maren and I went to her Teddy Bear Picnic today which marked the end of her year of Preschool. Here in the photo you can see our little cuties on the night of their Awana Awards last week (or was that 2 weeks ago?), the end of the Awana year. Ben wrapped up Exam 5 last Wednesday (no results for 2 months), and then this past weekend we wrapped up our Adoption Yard Sale fundraiser.

I wanted to share about that, since so many people were involved in helping us to put that whole thing together. So many of you donated things for the sale, and we're happy to report that by God's grace, we brought in $1000, despite a steady rain for much of Friday and blustery winds and a serious "cool front" on Saturday. The high was 59 degrees that day, and I had 4 layers on throughout. We were so blessed by the generosity of many who gave big and small items, and by those who helped to run the sale, and those who gathered stuff at their home and priced it for me! All of this was so humbling. Then, there were customers who gave more than what was owed, just to donate toward our cause. Some donated by giving for one of Sylvia's autographed poems. I'm sure you all would like to hear her original poem. She wrote it on her own with just a few suggestions from her family members.

Our Ethiopian Child

by, Sylvia Rice

We are going to Ethiopia

We are going to get a boy

He is going to be my brother

And I will buy him a toy

I will play with him every day

And maybe we will get two

When we get him I hope he won't

Be blue or get the flu

We still have some left, so I'm sure Sylvia would be happy to autograph one of her poems for you if you would like. :) What a sweetie. We had a very happy experience with the sale, but I have to say, I was totally wiped out by, well, Thursday night before it even began. Setting it up was a major undertaking, and I'm so thankful for my friend, Nicole, who just kind of said she was coming over to help on Thursday. That was a real life-saver. So by Friday and Saturday nights, man!, I was pretty much a zombie. I felt like I was 75 years old with all of my aches and pains. It's not like I was doing hard work, right? Too much cold and standing on concrete, I guess. But, boy, we had fun. Ben was the total trooper, as well, taking off Friday to help and also out on the front lines Saturday. We sold a couple brownies, and a couple sodas, but not many were in the mood for cold drinks in that crazy weather. We know that this is one more step in our journey to adopt, and that made it very meaningful for us.

Well, I need to get the last things out of the garage so we can once again park our vans in there. It's been awhile!!! We'll be donating the leftover stuff to Home Sweet Home Mission, the Pregnancy Resource Center, and some other missions and Good Will, maybe.

I should note that we found out today that OUR HOMESTUDY IS DONE!!! Praise God! This is a big step, for those who don't know, and allows us to move on with getting approval from the state of Illinois. Pray that they will approve us quickly. Quickly would be 4 weeks instead of something closer to 12 weeks. We love you all so much!