Fundraiser Complete..... Time to move!

Our fundraiser this past weekend was a great success. The event was held on a beautiful outdoor patio at a wonderful Mexican restaurant here in San Antonio. We began to set things up at 9:45am and the weather was beautiful. It was in the 70's with a great little breeze blowing through. People started to arrive at 10:30am and the buffet line opened at 11am. We had about 25 guests at 11:15 and everyone was mingling and having a great time...... But to the North the sky was black. Within 15 minutes, high winds started to blow in and our guests were all moved inside the restaurant. A few minutes later, heavy rains hit and our outdoor event had become an indoor event.

As we were moving people inside, the bulk of our guests began to arrive. BY 1PM there was no place to sit our guests and as guests from a few other parties scheduled for the same day began to arrive. Tony and I were like restaurant employees greeting people, finding tables and even cleaning off a few tables. I think I even refilled a few drinks! Despite the inclimate weather, the event was wonderful. Due to the chaos, we had no idea how many people had shown up, but at the end of the day we added up over 150 guests. On top of that, many people paid more than the $25 ticket price. We ended up raising over $7000 through this event!!! Praise God! We are nearly halfway to our fundraising goal. It was very humbling to see our friends from different parts of our lives come together to support us. Our family, our good friends, co workers, church family, and even some people we didn't know showed up to support our adoption.

Now...... we can focus on our house. We have two weeks until closing and still have not found a home. We've narrowed it down to 2 houses that we will look at again today. We expect to make an offer on one of them and are praying that we can close quickly. Our backup plan is to rent which we know we can do quickly. There is still no word on the Atlanta job that Tony applied for, so we are moving forward as if we're staying and we're praying that God guides us in this decision. the last thing we want to do is close on a house and find out a few days later that we need to pack up and move again. We know that God has directed everything to this point, so we expect that He will do the same moving forward! We're excited to see where He leads us.......

Words of Wisdom......

Never sell your house while interviewing for a new job across the country in the middle of an international adoption process before the home study is complete as you're preparing for a fundraising event during a swine flu outbreak when you have 7 children and an exchange student! Exhausted, but pressing forward! God is good........

The Craziest Week Ever.....

What a crazy week it has been! We knew that the international adoption process would turn our life upside down, but the last 7 days has been a week for the record books. We're finalizing the our medical paperwork for our homestudy (finally) so we had 4 separate doctor appointments to go to. We also decided last week to go ahead and put our house on the market so that we can get more space for Elisa and Vanessa. As we've posted before, this would require quite a bit of work to our house. We needed carpet in our bedroom (currently it's bare concrete), wall paper in the kids bathroom upstairs, carpets cleaned, repairs made, etc..... We went ahead and placed the house on the market and started rushing to get everything done. Wallpaper started on Monday, carpet was to be installed on Thursday, other repairs were in progress when....... we got an offer. The first people that walked in the house (incomplete as it was) made a full price offer! With the market the way it is, we expect several months before we got any bites, but in less than a week on the market, we had a contract. And the contract was "as-is"! No carpet needed because they would put down hardwood floors, we don't need to finish the wallpaper because they'll use something different.

While all of this is going on, we had a swine flu scare. A few weeks ago, we took Emma (our youngest) to the pediatrician with a fever. They ran blood work and tested for the flu. After a few days Emma was healthy and the doctor called back to tell us the results were negative. No big deal, right...... Well on Sunday, the health department calls and starts asking a lot of questions. Where have we been? What are Emma's symptoms? Who has she been around? All this time Emma is healthy as can be. It turns out that Emma's final blood tests were in line at the CDC in Atlanta. They thought she could have had swine flu, but could not confirm because the CDC was so backed up. So as a precaution we notified our church and everyone we were around. What a mess!!! We still don't know if Emma had it 2 weeks ago. We may not find out for a few more weeks, but in the mean time, everyone is healthy.

Oh, and Tony had an interview this week. He interviewed for a promotion that would move us to Atlanta. This opportunity came out of the blue and of course it comes in the midst of our adoption and right when our house sells. So the good news is that our house sold quick, but the bad news is that we need to wait to see if Tony gets the job before we commit to buying anything. How complicated! We're also on the final stretch before our BIG (maybe not so big) fundraiser luncheon. The fundraiser is a good news/ bad news story. We have had so many donations come in since we started advertising the fundraiser, but very few people have bought tickets. We know the goal is to raise funds and it looks like we will raise well over $4000 ($2000 from one wonderful lady who we've never met), but we also wanted this to be a CELEBRATION! We wanted our friends and family at the restaurant supporting the adoption and we also wanted to educate people on the adoption process in case they are interested. The event is next Saturday (5/16), so there is still time for people to buy tickets or even show up at the door.

God has been so faithful throughout this process and we know that He is in control. We had so many plans to raise money through this fundraiser, but God has provided through other means. He's shown us yet again to just trust in Him (Provers 3:5-6). After all, only He can weave all of this complexity together into something beautiful. We've had some delays in our adoption process, but we know that His hand is on us and that He is in control. The house, the job, the fundraiser, our health...... these are all in God's hands. Despite the chaos of the last week, we've had such a peace about everything and we know that peace is from God!!!!