Fundraising and Money

It dawned on me that when I first started this blog (and we first started our adoption process), I made a very comprehensive post detailing all of the awesome fundraising ideas we had in mind. And then it dawned on me that some of you might be wondering whatever happened to some of those awesome ideas. So I thought I would take a moment to explain where we are at, money-wise, in the process, and what we have lined up still to do.

We (I) had some great ideas for fundraisers, that just ended up being a lot harder/more time-consuming than I expected. My mom was going to make dolls for us to sell. She made a few (and they were really cute), and we realized that by the time we paid for materials and looked at the sheer time it was taking her to make them, they were horribly cost-ineffective. I wanted to make a cookbook (and still think it's a great idea!), but I don't have any graphic design/publishing knowledge, so I was going to be bugging friends to put it together for me, and that didn't feel right.

And then our garage sale was so much more successful than we expected, and a very generous and wonderful relative gave us a donation, and the money was just there as we needed it. So far, much to my absolute shock and amazement, the financial aspect of this (hands down our biggest fear as we started) has not been an issue. I can only attribute this to God. One of my favorite quotes as we started was this one by Martin Luther King Jr.: "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." Faith is something Chad and I are both constantly struggling with, and it has been so amazing to see our financial leap of faith working out, at least so far.

As of this moment, I believe our adoption fees are accounted for. When we get our referral, we will have a LARGE lump sum payment due, and at this point, we have that money tucked away and earmarked. I can't believe that. So the costs we are still trying to cover are our travel expenses. Originally, Chad and I were both going to go on our first trip for court and to meet our daughter (if we both meet her before court, she gets to come into the US on a different Visa and that's a good thing). The plan was for just me to go back to bring her home. However, through the wisdom of friends who have done this before, we are realizing that traveling for 24+ hours with an infant on a plane around the world by myself might be impossible. And honestly, neither Chad nor I want for him to miss what will surely be one of the greatest moments of our lives. Plus, the more time we get to spend in Ethiopia, the more connected we will get to be to our daughter's first home. So we are in agreement that we both want to go, both times. We are figuring our travel (x2 trips) will be around $10,000. This is the amount we are still trying to make magically appear in our bank accounts :)

So...all of that is to say that we have two fundraisers lined up for the next few months. The first is a Spring Family Dance that we are co-hosting, along with our fabulous friends the Taylors. My respect and love for them is a whole other blog post, but for now let me just say that they adopted their gorgeous daughter Mia from Ethiopia in 2009 and are working on adopting a son this year. Sarah had the brilliant idea for a dance, dessert buffet (yum) and silent auction as a fundraiser, and we are super excited to being doing that with them. That will be April 9th. If you own a business, sell something, make something, etc. and would like to donate an item/service for the silent auction, please let me know!

The other idea I had was for Chad to run the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon (13.1 miles) and have sponsors pledge per mile run. (Don't you love how it was my idea, but Chad has to run?) We have tons of family and friends who have been so supportive, but are not close enough geographically to participate in any local fundraisers. We thought this might be a good way for them to support us if they want, and the beauty is that people can give as much or as little as they want or are able. That will be May 7th. So far Chad hasn't trained one bit, so who knows? Pledgers might get off easy!

Whew! I have been meaning to write all this money stuff down for months, but have you ever noticed how unenticing discussing finances is? Anyway, just wanted to fill people in as to where we are in the process, from all angles :)