Our Busy Lives

Pam ~ Yes, we're still here.  We're still waiting for a referral phone call.  We're still living our lives one day at a time.  We're still thankful for God's blessings.

I thought that I would update you readers on what we have been doing these past few weeks :-).

Surgery Update ~ I got to take my brace off on July 12th, just shy of six weeks after my hip surgery.  Two weeks later I started physical therapy.  My PT is having me come 3 times a week until school starts and then we will drop down to 2 times a week.  My poor leg is WEAK!!!!  I am doing strengthening exercises when I go for my appointments and some stretches at home.  Things are going well, and will hopefully continue to improve since I have 10 more weeks of PT!!!!  I am walking normal again (for the most part) but still have lots of moments of stiffness and even pain when I move in certain ways.  Slowly and surely things are getting better.

Walking to the 4th of July Parade w/my nephews.  Isn't my brace fashionable?!?!

Summer Enrichment ~ I went back to working part-time on July 7th.  During past 3 summers, I have worked part-time at my school's Summer Enrichment Program (SEP).  Think of it as a summer day camp.  We have different themes each week and do activities that relate to the week's theme.  This week is "Poppin' Around with Popcorn" and we made a popcorn volcano yesterday :-).  My fellow teacher (and fellow SEP worker) just had her baby last week!!!!  The kids were sooooooo excited to see the tiny picture on my phone of her new little girl!!!!

Garage Sale ~ We did have our fundraising garage sale the weekend of July 22 & 23.  It went VERY well!!!!!  We raised just under $600 to put toward our adoption travel expenses!!!!!  (Which reminds me.  I still haven't gone to the bank to make that deposit.  Whoops!!!)  But when we looked around our garage, we still saw LOTS of good things that hadn't sold.  So we decided to have another sale the next weekend :-).  We both had to work on Friday, so that wasn't an option, but we kept all the tables set up in our garage and put them all back out again on Saturday morning.  To be honest, my mindset wasn't on how much money we would make that day.  I just wanted to get rid of more stuff and not have to box it all up and haul away.  So when we didn't have ANYONE stop by for the first hour and almost two hours, I was wondering if it had been worth it.  When the first people DID finally start arriving, we told them that the marked prices were just a suggestion.  They could "barter" with us on just about anything.  BUT.....................God decided to teach me a lesson.  We sold basically NOTHING!!!!!!  At the end of the morning, I think maybe ten to fifteen things were gone.  But we had over $100 given to our adoption!!!!!  People would say, "I don't see anything I really need, but here is $5.  God bless you!!!"  We got to have several conversations with people about our adoption, or about THEIR adoption journey.  What a blessing!!!!!  Even though we had a lot of things to take out of our garage (which we took to "Hope Ministries" in Des Moines) we received many GREAT blessings from the day!!!!

Friends ~ Our friends, Garth & Carmen, along with their two little boys, Jeremiah & Simon, drove from NE to visit us after our sale on Saturday, July 23rd.  They have been home from Ethiopia with their boys for 3 months now, and it was sooooooooo much fun to get to finally meet the boys!!!!  The boys warmed up to us as the day progressed and we had a GREAT time with all of them!!!!  I can't wait until we have our own little brown-eyed, brown-skinned little ones running around our house!!!!

I LOVE the way Simon's hand is up like he's saying "NO more pictures, PLEASE!!!"

Habitat for Humanity ~ Nathan volunteered at Habitat for Humanity last Friday.  He had a GREAT time!!!!  But I wasn't sure I wanted to let him in the house once I saw him.  He was FILTHY!!!!

 Family ~ We had a GREAT time with my sister and her family over the July 4th weekend.  We learned that my nephews are petrified of fireworks, but LOVE to get lolipops at parades :-).

I love to make Ben laugh!!!!

My sister & her family.  Doug, Debbi, Benjamin & Joseph

We also got to go out to TCBY's for ice cream on August 2nd, to celebrate their 3rd Bday!!!!  I can't get enough of those boys!!!!  I love them to pieces!!!!!

So...................we're still here.  We're still praying for patience.  We're still praying for our children.  We're still living our lives as best we can; even though our hearts are far away in Ethiopia.

Garage Sale Photos

This was me at 1:00 in the morning.  I was holding up pretty well!!!

I think it was torture for Nathan to not "test" all the yummy bake sale treats we had in our kitchen.

At 5:45 on Friday morning, we were setting up on our driveway.

Our garage was PACKED to full and overflowing.  What a blessing!!!

Can you see the mess we were trying to work through???

My handsome, hard working husband.  I just love him!!!

Look under the table.  All those bags were full of girls' clothes that we had no place to put.  We had a few moms come to our sale who were willing to sit on the driveway and just dig through the bags.  They got some GREAT deals on cute clothes!!!

This was my station.  We put out our home-made cards and had a little "flier" that told a little about our adoption journey.  {Along with my snack and mini Mt. Dew to keep me going!!}

My sister, Kristi, came on Saturday to help for the morning.  Thanks, Kristi!!!

Praise the Lord for His goodness and blessings!!!!

Garage Sale Blessings

Pam ~ Our sale was finished over a week ago, so it's about time that I share some of the many blessings God sent our way throughout the week leading up to our sale, the sale itself, and the days following.  This may be long.  But stick with me.  Please???

*People donated more things than we ever imagined.  We thought we would just have a "little fundraising garage sale."  By Wednesday of that week, we had our entire garage stuffed full and people were still contacting us to pick things up.

*We posted about our sale on our Christian radio station's website.  They {Life 107.1} announced our sale several times throughout the week.  Totally didn't expect that!!!

*I {Pam} was really stressed about preparing good signs to direct people to our sale.  On Wednesday, my associate teacher volunteered to stencil the signs for me, and the junior high class volunteered to paint the signs for us!!!  They ended up bigger and brighter than anything I would have done.

*We "accidentally" got the EXACT number of smaller pre-made garage sale signs and when Nathan "guessed" at the number of wooden stakes we would need {he added 1 extra} we had EXACTLY the number we needed.  {This saved us from having to run to WalMart at 9 o'clock on Thursday evening.  A BIG deal!!!}

*We went to post on Craigslist {at 8 p.m. on Thursday night} and someone had already posted our garage sale info at 9 that morning!!!  People had been seeing our sale all day!!!

*The ISU game was away {meant more people in town to come to our sale}

*The weather was perfect.

*LOTS of people stopped by our sale.  Many of them gave a little extra money and told us to "keep the change."

*A fellow adoptive mom stopped by and helped us by putting out many of the donations that we didn't have room for on Friday morning.  She gave of her own time to find places for the rest of the items.

*After our sale was over and done with, we had someone come by and give us another $20 as they took a few more items from our still stuffed garage.

*We were contacted by someone, after the sale was done, who ended up buying the pool table that had been donated and was taking up so much room in our garage.  {This was a HUGE blessing.  We didn't know WHAT we were going to do with that pool table!!!} 

*We thought that $300-$400 would be an amazing sale.  God showed us that He is even more amazing and incredible and He gave us $1051 from our garage sale!!!!!!

Garage Sale Total

Pam ~ Are you ready for it?  Would you like to know how much we made from our garage sale this past weekend?  Have you been just dying to know?

I am hoping that Nathan and I will have time one night this week to sit down and make a list of all the many ways God worked throughout last week.  There were so many blessings He sent our way, and we want to share them with you.  I'm not going to even try to start the list in this post.  But I do want to share with you that the sale went much better than we could have planned or even dreamed!!!!!

We brought in a total of .......

$971

 

I know!!!!  I couldn't believe it either!!!  We serve a mighty God who has a perfect plan for our adoption.  He is providing in His perfect plan and timing.  Praise the Lord!!!!!

Garage Sale

pick up. unload. pick up. unload. 

sort. price. stay up late. get up early. pick up. 

unload. sort. price. tired. stressed.
signs. blessing. friends. care. paint. pick up. 

price. too much. more. even more. 

full. e-mails. more. sale. soon.

That pretty much sums up our week thus far.

Our garage/bake sale starts bright and early TOMORROW MORNING!!!!  Our garage is stuffed to overflowing and we are still getting messages from people who have more to bring us!!!  It's a GREAT problem to have, but we really and truly don't have room for any more!!!  If you live in central IA, PLEASE come by tomorrow or Saturday and buy stuff!!!  We have a few items for a bake sale along with some bags of Ethiopian coffee!!, our homemade cards will be available for people to buy, and we are going to have a place for people to leave soda cans.  If you are not able to come but you know of someone in our area, please pass along the info.  If you need our address, please send me an e-mail {hearts1982@gmail.com} and I will give you directions.

It has been a very tiring week, but God has been doing some amazing things and we are so excited to see the plans He has for this fund-raising sale.

{By the way.  I will not be doing a "Fund-Raising Friday" post this week.  I will post pictures and info. on the sale sometime next week, and catch you up on our fund-raising next Friday.}

Our God is Greater, Our God is Stronger

 Nate ~ It's funny.  Pam and I KNOW that our God is greater than any other.  We even pray for our adoption knowing that God will provide and that He will provide in His own way and time.  Yet, somehow, it still amazes me.

We are having our sale this weekend as a fundraiser for our adoption.  We prayed that God would bless and He has brought more donations of items than we ever thought we'd get.  Then, we posted our sale on the Life 107.1 website so that people could see that it was coming up...and God chose in that moment to remind us that He is better.  The station has chosen to mention our sale on the air at least twice {Pam heard it on the way to work and then I did a little later too}.  I never even thought about the fact that they might announce it as a sale for our adoption.  Yet, here we are.  God has blessed in the donations, He has blessed in the advertising.  We trust that He'll continue to bless {weather, turn out, etc.}.  Please continue to pray with us this week that we'll be daily, continually, leaning on Him and working towards our adoption in His strength and not our own.

Somersault Fun with Ben & Joe

Pam ~ I just love my nephews!!!!! We are celebrating their 2nd Bday tonight {their actual Bday was Aug. 2) so I got to babysit them for a couple hours while their mom, my sister, got some things prepared for the party. My parents are in town visiting, and my grandparents are coming down for the Bday party too, so there will be lots of family fun tonight!!!

We went for a walk to the bank to deposit our "Tootsie Roll" soda can money, and to pick something up at the convenience store. We saw lots of fire hydrants which Joseph clearly pointed out to me over and over again, and we even got to stop quickly at a garage sale. {Although I didn't buy them the Elmo book that they fell in love with. I know, I'm a horrible aunt. But the book was for little babies and it wasn't very clean or in good shape. They'll live.}

We came home to cool drinks and a little "Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang." They sat still for 30 minutes watching that movie!!!!! Their Uncle Nate will be thrilled {note sarcasm}.

We also enjoyed some somersault fun on the sofa. Enjoy!!!!