A good idea...on paper

This weekend Lakewood hosted a 3 day city wide sale. Basically a bunch of businesses on Detroit and Madison had street sales. Since so many people would be out wandering the streets, it was the perfect time for residents to have yard sales. The city even organized a website with a listing of all the residential sales so shoppers could plan the best routes. Debbie and I decided to have another adoption yard sale. We didn't enlist a lot of help. We figured everything should be well organized and priced after our last sale..... wrong! The clothes did us in. Hanging what was on hangers, hanging more on hangers, organizing kid clothes, laying out adults shirts, took for ever. We forgot that it started raining at the end of our last sale and the clothes got thrown all together in no particular order. We started bringing over what we were storing at 4pm. I didn't get home until 11pm! At least it was really well organized so we didn't have to get up too early Saturday morning.
We had made our first buck in less than 5 minutes so we had high hopes. Unfortunately, that was the only excitement for a while. We had bursts of people, but we found out that their were around 90 sales going on, not including businesses. People were out, but they had a lot to see so we didn't get the traffic we saw for our last sale. We ended up making about a third of what we did at the beginning of the month. That stunk, but we still managed to have some fun. We thought about doing one more sale, but we decided we're done. We split some of the bigger items that didn't sell and we'll try to get rid of them on Craigs List. The rest is going to the City Mission and Good Will. The sales were a good experience, but I wont be doing another one ANY time soon!

#5

I checked in with our social worker yesterday. Things are still moving slow over there, but they have placed 2 babies this month. Both were ER calls, meaning the baby was born and the mom did not want to take it home. With the first baby, the mom told the agency to pick the parents. In that case, they go to the couple that has been waiting the longest. The second baby was a boy so our social worker did not present us.
Right now we are #5 on a list of 7. They haven't had that many families willing to take AA babies in a year or two. How sad is that? 2 of the four families ahead of us are not willing to accept a baby with ANY exposure to drugs and alcohol by the mom and are very limited as to what family issues they will accept--meaning does a parent suffer from depression, heart disease and so on. So in a way that kind of makes us #3 on the list. Its rare to come across a baby with no (or little) social or medical issues. What does being #3 or #5 mean---pretty much nothing. If a mom comes in she is still presented all the families that are willing to accept her history. The only time it comes in handy to be at the top of the list is if a mom tells the agency to pick. It happens, but not often. So, we keep waiting!

Not that kind of call

The phone rang 2 days ago. I picked it up and looked at the caller id. It was the adoption agency. In about a second 50 thoughts went through my head----is it Megan? Does she have a baby for us? What if she is just checking in? No, she checks in by e mail. This must be it. Don't get too excited, it might not be it.... and so on. I picked up the phone and heard, "Hi Jenna, its Megan and this isn't THAT call." CRUSHED!

Yard sale

My friend, Debbie and I had a yard sale yesterday. Her family is also adopting a baby so we got some friends to donate items and we had a massive sale to help finance our adoptions (Thanks for the idea, Betsy).

12 families contributed to the sale. We received a little bit of everything from shoes to baked goods, dishes to a drum set. The location was even loaned to us from a couple at church. We had an amazing day. We had a couple friends, and my mom, with us the entire day helping out. More family and friends were in and out all day long to support us, drop off goodies and do some shopping. Customers started coming before the sale officially started. It started raining for the last half hour of the sale, but people kept coming and shopping, so, we got wet! We did better than anyone expected, but we still have a bunch of stuff to sell. We plan to have another sale at the end of the month when the city hosts a sale weekend. Thank you to everyone who stayed up way too late Friday night, got up way too early Saturday morning, donated items, food, time, muscle, cars, money, the house etc. The sale was a huge success thanks to all of you!

Its nice to have something to take my mind off the waiting. It wasn't as bad while we were waiting for the home study to be completed. At least there was a reason for our waiting. Now, we're just waiting for someone to decide they can't keep their baby. I feel awful for wishing that on someone. Not that I'm really wishing it, but that is the only way this adoption will be completed.

I talked to our social worker last week. She told me that things have slowed down the past couple weeks. She hasn't had a dry spell like this in a while. It sounds so cold to put it like that. Of course, I wouldn't want any mom to have to give up their baby especially if their was a chance of them being able to provide a decent life for them. I'm just waiting for that mom to come in that knows with out a doubt that adoption is the way to go for her. In the mean time, I will continue to hold my breath every time the phone rings!