Carnival=Success!!

Wow, wow, wow!  What an amazing time we had tonight at our carnival!!!  We had well over 300 people show up, 50ish volunteers, a slew of donated items, and a crazy fun time!  People were handing us money right and left!  It was so uplifting and overwhelming that all these people (many of whom we had never met before) showed up, pulled out their cash, and were happy as can be to help us go rescue our little girl!  I am convinced we have the best friends, neighbors and family of anyone anywhere!  Thank you so much to everyone that helped in any way and for all the people who showed up and gave so generously!  We are completely overwhelmed with love and couldn't be happier.  We would also like to say a special thanks to Picture it Photo Booth, Bopper the Clown, and A Lot of Fun Stuff (dunk tank) for their amazing generosity and donated services!  Also the Buchanan family for their cotton candy, popcorn machine, and amazing help and to the Macauley family for their cotton candy and crazy long hours of service!  Thank you doesn't even express the love and gratitude we feel for all of you.  We will never be able to repay your kindness!  And for the grand total (minus our expenses)...$6,022!!!!!!

It's Coming!!

Our carnival is just days away!  It is on September 29th from 3:00-6:30 PM (come any time in that window!).  It will be held at the park on the north side of the Skyline High School tennis courts.  We are getting really excited/nervous/anxious!  We have spent so much time planning and preparing for this (as well as a fair share of money) and we're SO hopeful that it will be successful!!  Please share this on Facebook, blogs, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you think people will read and come to our carnival!  We would LOVE to see you there, and hope you invite your friends and family as well!  We still have slots open for helpers, so if you're interested in helping at the carnival, let me know!  Also, for more detailed instructions on how to get to the park and a list of things up for silent auction, visit our CARNIVAL! tab at the top of the blog!  Thank you all so, so much!!

P.S. If you wondered what happened to our giveaway, it is still going on!  We were going to have it end the night of the carnival, but we are actually going to wait until the carnival is over to re-energize that and have it be its own exclusive thing to try and get more people interested!  

Fundraiser #1: Complete!

We are done with our big garage sale!!  WAHOO!!!  This ended up being SO much work because we had SO many donations.  It's a good problem to have and we are so grateful and humbled by the number of people (many of whom we have never even met) that contributed items to our garage sale, including items for our bake sale.  It restores my faith in humanity to see the goodness being done on Meg's behalf (and ours as well)!! 
We had 4 garages full of stuff for this sale because so many incredible people donated.  It took 8 adults a full 11 hours to set up for this garage sale (plus the help of several others off and on throughout the day).  That's not including picking items up (which took place over the weeks proceeding the sale).  I'm talking simply un-bagging, un-boxing, and setting up for the actual sale.  CRAZY!!!  We started setting up at 1:00 on Friday afternoon, and we finally called it quits at midnight.  We were all so sunburned and ready to be done, but we had to keep reminding ourselves why were were doing this.  We also had done over $500 worth of sales the night before the sale even began!!! Here's a look at a few garages full of stuff!  I didn't get a picture of my brother-in-law and sister-in-law that hosted the garage sale for us, but they are incredible!  They went above and beyond the call of duty, including cleaning out their three car garage to make room to store all this stuff for weeks!!  They are the best!!!

4:45 am came early the next morning as we woke up to get ready for the sale.  Two of my brothers-in-law slept outside to protect our stuff from people trying to steal and guess what?  Two different sets of people showed up in the middle of the night to take our stuff!!!  Jerks!  Good thing they ended up sleeping out there! 

Our yard sale took TWO yards to contain all our stuff!  Luckily my sister-in-law's neighbors were going out of town and let us use their driveway as well!

Have you ever seen so much stuff!!  We felt like hoarders!

Stroller, anyone?  Every one of these strollers sold!!

Lots of shoes to choose from!

Some awesome clothes, as well!

And don't even get me started on the toys...so fun!!!

Setting up the bake sale!  Yes, my mother-in-law recently had foot surgery, is in a boot, has to walk with a crutch, and STILL helped for 24+ hours on this garage sale!!!  The one in the green shirt is my husband's sister.  She had the idea to have this garage sale and did all the work organizing, making fliers, coordinating, and keeping such a positive attitude through this whole thing.  What an amazing gal!!

Love this girl!  She's my cousin's daughter and helped on Friday night and was there at 6:30 am on Saturday morning.  She didn't leave until every single thing was cleared up at about 4:30 pm on Saturday.  Did I mention she's 10 years old?  She's pretty excited for Meg to come home.  Thanks, H!!

We had a great stream of people, and we were also able to raise some awareness for a cause that has become very dear to our hearts!  I am truly so touched by the goodness of so many people!  I was fortunate to be stationed at the bake sale table, and so many people dropped more money into our bucket than they owed and said so many kind words to me about our efforts to save Meg.  Such a heartwarming experience!

This is my oldest.  She was so excited to help at the bake sale!

 

Hungry!?  All these goodies were donated by friends.  Not just my friends, but the friends of my sisters-in-law and mother-in-law as well.  What amazing people!!!

After our sale was done, we ended up making $5,009.47!!!  So amazing for a yard sale!!  This more than doubled the amount we had raised up to this point for our adoption, so we are more than thrilled! 
Thank you just simply isn't enough to express how grateful we are to our AMAZING families for the amount of hard work that was put in on our behalf!!!!!  We are also so very thankful to our families, friends, friends of our family, and complete strangers that showed up to our sale, made purchases, and donated to our adoption fund.  I love you all and will be forever in debt for your kindnesses!  Now...bring on our carnival!!!
P.S. Guess what I got in my inbox this weekend!?  OUR HOME STUDY!!!!!!!  We are getting closer to traveling!!