There's something cathartic about getting rid of things, and I have a hard time believing that so much of this stuff fit in our house. Even beyond that, in light of the things that we'll be needing- and babies need a LOT of stuff- I'm in awe of what we thought we needed, what has made it with us from house to house.
Many of you know we had a garage sale two weekends ago- and it was extremely successful. For a last minute venture, we were thrilled to make over $1200! Thank you SO SO SO much to everyone for the donations and patronage- it made such an enormous difference. A special thanks to Tim and Kiersten, Courtney, Brennon, Jimmie, Rob, Jenessa, Katie (and Jorie), and Adnan for their efforts selling our things- they were pricing masters and helped to set up and cleanup so the process went smoothly.
All that said, we still have many things, and we are having another sale on May 3rd! Any additional donations of your goods are welcome and appreciated- we are happy to take your junk! We will keep having sales until everything's gone, so we expect to be professionals by summer. New stuff keeps coming in, so keep checking back. We'll also be trying to post what we have on Craigslist and Ebay in one easy to view format, but we're working on it. And by we, I mean Paul- he's the greatest.
So, visit us again for another Saturday sale- May 3rd at 8 am. Thanks for your support!
Updates!
On THURSDAY, we have our (hopefully) last meeting with our social worker- three cheers! She is lovely, but I am happy to move past this- it's an awkward phase. She'll be doing the home inspection during this visit, so we have spent a LOT of time cleaning. We've also begun baby proofing, and ironically, we've had to make an evacuation plan since the state requires that we have one posted. Yes, even for a baby. (If you were one of the people we told that we'd be meeting at the beginning of May- surprise! We got bumped up. Yay?)
After our last meeting with our social worker, she will write up our home study, which may have to go through revisions; that could take several weeks, but it will be sent to our placing agency in Minnesota, and then we'll move on to the next step, which should be getting things ready to submit to the US government and the Marshallese government.
Another good thing about being close to done with the home study is that we will be able to start applying for grants! This, hopefully, is where we'll get some more funding, and we haven't been able to apply because our home study isn't complete. I've been stressing about this because generally, the waiting is done AFTER the home study- waiting for your referral, then waiting to travel, then waiting to travel again… but in our program, it looks like the waiting will be significantly shorter. (I like to think it's because we waited so long to join the program in the first place.) We will probably still feel like waiting even a week to meet our baby is excruciating, but this also means that we'll need to work on funding pronto- we can't move on to certain steps of the process if we haven't paid for the steps we've already taken. Urg.
Another plug for Just Love Coffee, which we have been thoroughly enjoying. Our favorite has been the Costa Rican blend, but we've been trying something new each time we order. Thanks for your support!
I'll try to do a follow-up post soon, after we finish our meetings. Until then- thank you for your support and love! We love you!
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