Yard Sale Season Begins

I always hate doing this, but I must start with a correction from the last post.  While I will never forget about the grants we have received so far, I do sometimes forget to include them in the amount already paid when they were sent directly to our agency instead of going through us.  For that reason the total I gave you in the last post should be about $4000 more for the expenses already paid and the total cost of our adoption.  When we are entirely finished, I'll do a better post with the final totals.

As for now, we have officially begun yard sale season.  I was going to start a couple of weeks ago, but our Sunday school class offered to help us with one which was held this weekend.  Since I had an offer of help, it seemed insane to try to get things going by myself.  Plus, Tim's summer job was keeping him from being available for a Friday sale.  With help, I could do a Friday sale, and now Tim is off for the rest of the summer.

Anyway, we had a really big sale this past weekend.  With more people helping, I didn't have to leave things in the garage or attic.  We actually got it ALL out.  With so much more volume, we raised almost twice what we normally do.  **THANKS to everyone who donated and helped work!!** What we did NOT plan for was the record-breaking temperature.  I have a digital thermometer on our deck, and it read 108F before we closed for the day.  By the end of the day, our highest temp (at our house) was 113.5 F.  On Saturday, the temps weren't quite as high.  We ONLY reached 110 (point something), but the humidity was much higher, so it felt worse.

But everything is sorted and on tables now, so all we have to do is drag it all out again to have another one.  The best difference about this sale was that we were able to post pictures of M and V.  People who have been coming for a while FINALLY got to see pictures.   (Can you believe this is our 5th summer of yard sales??)  I felt like we finally had proof that we really are in the adoption process, not just claiming to be in order to get people to buy things.

We haven't heard anything from the kids yet.  Don't know if we will, but our agency is supposed to be working on getting an update for us.

We have three grant applications submitted, and tomorrow I will begin looking for more.  The ones submitted are Gift of Adoption, A Child Waits, and Show Hope.  Does anyone know of others?  We may also have a lead on an interest free loan (just in case we need a back-up plan).