Cutest Little Beggars

Pam ~ The town where we live does what they call "Beggar's Night" on October 30th, the night before Halloween.  We only had two "little beggars" stop by, but they were the cutest little beggars ever!!!

Meet Curious George and The Man In the Yellow Hat

{otherwise known as our nephews ~ Ben & Joseph}.

"Okay, Aunt Pam.  Picture time is over and we need to attack Uncle Nate!!!"

Tupperware

We are so excited to be starting a new two-week FUN-raiser!!!  Tupperware is a great company with a wonderful product that is high quality and lasts for almost FOREVER!!!  The Tupperware fun-raising program will give us 40% of what is sold ~ but we are getting an even better deal!!!  Our Tupperware "lady" is the mom of one of Pam's former students and she is giving us her profit of 10%, so we will be profiting 50%of what is sold!!!!  What an incredible blessing!!!! 

 Here is how it works.  If you are interested in ordering, all you have to do it go to this Tupperware link and shop {make sure you click on our link, otherwise we will not get the credit}.  Your order will be shipped directly to you {as long as you are anywhere within the USA}.  When the two weeks is over, we will receive a check for 50% of what was sold.  So please pass along our info to friends, family members, or anyone you know who might be interested.  This is a GREAT idea to consider for Christmas presents {hint, hint}!!!

 Also, if you would like a packet that contains the Tupperware fun-raising line of products to pass around to people you know, please let me know.  I have 25 packets that I can distribute to people {if you are local to central IA, that is} and you can collect orders via the included order form and personal checks. 

 We are praying that we will be able to submit our dossier by Christmas, and are working hard to bring in the $3589 that we still need.  This fund-raiser could really help us lower that amount, and we are praying hard to that end.  Will you please join us in this endeavor?????

Fund-Raising Friday

Just Love Coffee ~ One of my co-workers purchased some coffee from our site, and this is what he had to say about it.  "As a coffee Connoisseur, I'll give my WORD that this coffee is the MOST AWESOME jolt you'll have had in years!!!  Try it...You'll like it!!!!!!"  If you are interested in ordering, please click the photo/link on the right side of our blog.  We get $5 for every bag of coffee you order.

Home-made Cards ~ If you are interested {$10 per pkg of 4 cards} please send me an e-mail {hearts1982@gmail.com} or use our "donate" button {just make a note that it is for cards and which pkgs you are ordering}.

Soda Cans ~ Keep 'em coming!!!

Sponsor a Puzzle Piece ~ I was hoping to have an updated picture for you this week, but I guess it's going to have to wait for one more week.  If you are interested in helping us put our African puzzle together, please sponsor a puzzle piece for $10.  Thanks :-).

"Together for Good" Photo Shoot ~ If you haven't had the chance yet, please go check out Erin's blog "Together for Good" and take a look at some of her beautiful photos.  Erin is still willing to set up a photo shoot with you {think Christmas cards!!!} in exchange for a donation of any size to our adoption fund.

Thermometer ~ We've reached and passed the half-way mark toward our dossier!!!!!!!!  Praise the Lord!!!

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!!!!!!

Fund-Raising Friday

Just Love Coffee ~ I posted about this new fund-raiser earlier this week.  We have had many people tell us what a GREAT idea it is, but we've only had one order!!!  Will you be next???  All you have to do is click on the link on the side bar of our blog.  It will take you to our personalized coffee page and you can order whatever and however much coffee you want.  We will get $5 per bag you order!!!

Home-made Cards ~ We are continuing to sell a couple packets of cards a week.  It would be GREAT if we could have them all sold by Thanksgiving!!!  Will you help us???  Please pass along the info about our unique home-made cards to people you know, and maybe even consider buying some yourself!!!  I know how many cards I run to the store to buy last minute before a Bday, wedding, or anniversary.  Why not stock up on some cards now {$10 a packet = just $2.50 per card!!!}.

Soda Cans ~ It was such a blessing to have a few people bring soda cans/bottles to our garage sale for us.  We have passed $230 worth of deposit money!!!  Thank you!!!

Sponsor a Puzzle Piece ~ Our puzzle was in pieces on the floor for a good portion of this past week :-(.  We needed our card table for the garage sale, and the puzzle broke when we tried to move it.  But we've fixed it and are waiting to add more pieces.  Just $10 to sponsor a puzzle piece.  We will write your name on the back and our children will always have a visual reminder of the many people who helped bring them home to us!!!

"Together for Good" Photo Shoot ~ Erin has been busy with several photo shoots these past couple of weeks.  But she still has some times available.  If you would like to schedule a photo shoot with Erin, she will give you a CD with all the pictures she takes in exchange for a monetary donation of ANY size towards our adoption fund.  If you are interested, please contact Erin via her blog "Together for Good."

Thermometer ~ I love updating our thermometer totals each week!!!  We are now just $158 away from the half-way mark!!!  I can't wait until it's FULL and we can mail our dossier to Ethiopia!!!

Biometrics Appointment

Pam ~ You may remember a few weeks ago when I told you that we had mailed away our I-600A form.  {Click here}  Our letters with our scheduled appointments came in the mail today!!!  They came much faster than I thought they would so I was VERY excited!!!  Our fingerprinting appointments are scheduled for November 15th at 9:00 in the morning.  I guess we will each get to have to take the morning off work in order to make our apt :-).

I have heard that we are allowed to just show up at an earlier date for our "appointment" but have to be willing to wait a while if they are busy.  But since we are still working on dossier paperwork and don't yet have the money to send our dossier in, we aren't in too big of a hurry.  Although, if we don't start making major progress on the remainder of our dossier paperwork, I think I might go crazy!!!  Our lives have been nonstop for the past few weeks, and we are both ready to have things calm down so that we can get crazy busy on paperwork!!!

Just Love Coffee

This may be our easiest fundraiser yet!!!  If you love coffee and would like a portion of what you spend on coffee to go towards our adoption, all you have to do is go to our side bar and click on the link.  It will take you directly to our personalized family page.  Order whatever coffee you would like {and make sure you look over at the left side of the page ~ there are more coffee options listed there for you to choose from}, and we get $5 per bag you order.  They will ship your coffee directly to you, and then mail us a check once a month with our adoption profit!!!

Please pass along this link{http://www.justlovecoffee.com/Maxwells) to everyone you know who drinks coffee!!!  The more people order from our site, the more money will be raised to bring our children home!!!

Joe Sings

Watching this just makes me smile!!!  This is my nephew, Joseph, singing "Jesus Love Me" and "I Will Obey."

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!!!!!