(Past Due) First Friday Funding Figures- Update #7, April 2015

I know, it’s Tuesday. I’m really not so good with this First Friday thing, am I? The kicker is that I totally pulled all of these totals on Friday and had this ready to go… just didn’t happen. Oh well. One of these updates will actually get posted on the first Friday of a month. Just wait and see.

So, March. Our Auction happened in March and gave us a $1244.30 boost!Thanks again for all of the folks who participated. It was a lot of fun, and helped us out in a big way! In April, I don’t really expect to see a ton happening on the fundraising front, unless we get some donations from folks. We are filling up the space in our garage for the massive yard sale we plan to have the first weekend of May. It is going to be a lot of work. Right now we are collecting donations for the yard sale, and soon we will be reaching out to see if anyone can help us prepare for the sale (organizing stuff, gathering clothing racks/tables, and loading up trunks the night before) and also looking for folks to hang out with us during the yard sale (to set up, watch our stuff, and peddle wares, then load stuff up to take back home afterwards). From the looks of our garage, we might have to have more than one of these things. I’m also working one wedding in April and a few in May, so by June’s update, the numbers should start looking much different. Plus, by then, we’ll have written some more big checks, so things will look a lot different on both sides of the balance sheet!

So, here are how things are looking:

I’ve been checking the mail like a crazy lady the last few days, looking for our I800a approval to come, so we can get that last item authenticated and our dossier off. But it’s still not here… Hopefully soon!

In other news, Easter happened.

And Austin thinks our new minivan is the coolest thing since… himself.

I hope to have updates for y’all very soon. Good ones! Thanks for sticking with us. If you’d like to donate towards our adoption, in any amount, you can do so here. For every $15 donated, we’ll write your name on a puzzle piece to commemorate your contribution. If you’d like to help out with the yard sale on 5/2, please let me know! Thank you!

What a Weekend!

One of our new year’s resolutions this year is to stay more in touch with friends and family. That’s one of the reasons we have started this blog. We plan to go to Myrtle Beach every 6-8 weeks to visit Chris’ family and friends, so that was what we did this past weekend. One of the perks of working for a bank, is that you get most federal holidays off, so this weekend was a three day weekend for us.

Before we drove down Friday night, Chris came home and worked on his car. It had practically died on us the week before, and we were sharing one car. Chris ordered the parts for it, but not all of them came in and we didn’t get everything finished. It was a bummer, because we were hoping to sell it at the beach this weekend, and now that will have to wait. But, we are lucky to have another vehicle, so we piled into my car (we meaning the two of us and the dog), and drove the 3.5 hours down to Myrtle Beach. After we got in, we went to a local spot just the two of us to relax after our busy week. The next day, we had lunch with Chris’ parents and did some shopping together. Chris’ mom went out with us to just walk around, have a couple drinks, and enjoy each others’ company. We had dinner, and then a friend met us out for a little live music. After that, Chris and I went dancing at Revolutions, a popular club at Broadway at the Beach. We always have a good time there. There’s always lots of different types of people, all ages- and they always play fun music from the 80s through today. It was raining, and we didn’t plan to stay there too long, so after we requested my favorite “Blame it on the Boogie”, we headed back. We were still awake, though, so we watched a movie till the wee hours of the morning. The next day we slept till noon. haha. I haven’t done that in years. But hey- it’s vacation!

Sunday we again had lunch with Chris’ parents, and then after that, we went to visit with Chris’ grandparents. We stayed there till supper time, when Chris’ parents took me out for my long awaited dose of Seafood. I ordered the crab legs I had been craving, and they were sooooo good! 🙂 I was a very happy girl. After dinner, Chris and I stayed in and watched a movie, happy that we had one more day to relax.

Chris’ mom had to work on Monday, so we planned to meet her for lunch. Before doing that, we went through some of Chris’ belongings that were still down there to help clear up some space for his parents. Chris’ mom works at a car dealership, so while we were waiting for her to get off for lunch, we did a little looking around. Chris has been looking at cars for some time now, knowing that his wouldn’t be lasting much longer, but I was hesitant to take on a new car payment while we are still trying to get everything in order in our home. After a little conversation, we decided that we could probably trade my coupe in and get two used cars without increasing our monthly payment by too much. The test driving began! After a long afternoon at the dealership, we did find and purchase two used cars- a civic and a pilot. With my car being traded in, the combined payment was hardly much more than what I had been paying on my car alone each month. We got an economy car, and a bigger, comfortable car that we can haul stuff in and take trips in. Both were great deals thanks to his mom’s employee discount, and we are both happy with the decision we made.

The long afternoon at the dealership was followed by a long drive home, but we are back, and have returned to the grind. It’s always nice to get away, but always great to be home, too. Here are just a couple pics from the weekend- I didn’t take very many.