Grand Finale...

Today was our final garage sale. I forgot to ask y'all to pray. We have made almost exactly $4,000.00 with this amazing little fundraiser. What started out as what we thought would just be a one-weekend garage sale turned into 5. We took a couple of weekends off and then had 1 more final blowout sale Friday and today. We had quite a crowd on Friday morning. I had to get the kids ready for school and then get myself ready to head out the door at 9:30. The kids had a special chapel on Friday and both of my lower school kiddos were receiving character beads and I didn't want to miss it. Matt stayed back with my mom and his parents to help him out. The West Orange Times (our local paper) did an article on our family last week about our adoption and the garage sale. It drew out SWARMS of people. Yay God! And "THANK YOU WEST ORANGE TIMES!!!"  We met some of the nicest people. SO many people were so genereous to us and wanted to hear more about our sweet Ashlyn and see her picture. It was so much fun...and a lot of work. At around 3:00 this afternoon, we started putting things out on the lawn for free and that was SUPER FUN. Alex and I loaded up a truck-full of toys and drove them over to a needy area in town where there are a lot of Mexican families and TONS of little kids. They were so happy. I came back to find our neighbor's entire church small group rummaging through the rest of the things in the garage. It was so awesome! I LOVE giving stuff away! One little lady came over around 2:00 and I told her just to gather up as much stuff as she could put in her car and I told her it was all free. I thought she was going to pass out. She said, "You people are so generous!This is a great day for me!" She called her son and he came over with his truck to get some things for his apartment. By far, this was the best part about the entire 5 weeks. I was giddy for them. Free stuff is so great! Especially in this economy where so many people are working hard just to keep from losing their homes. We are so thankful for our amazing friends who gave and gave and gave to us. We have literally had donations on an almost daily basis since we started this back at the end of October. Our friends are some of the most amazing people. Thank you also to those of you who donated money from afar by purchasing one of Sonya's prints. BTW, I still have 4 left!!! Someone buy them please! :) She is such a sweet & talented little girl. I would love to be able to tell her that I sold them all. (BTW, she and her parents are headed to get her sister in China sometime this week I think.) Here are some pictures from today. I wanted to take more, but we were so busy the whole time. I ran in and got my camera when we had slow spells. They are mostly of my family who were so HELPFUL! My mother-in-law and father-in-law were here at the crack of dawn EVERY single day we had a sale. We gave them some free stuff too! ;)

My mom, Averleigh, Matt, & his parents having a much deserved lunch break yesterday on one of our sale items:)

Alex and some of the neighbor boys acting like dorks, digging through some "junk" on the lawn.

This is a pic from the outside of our very full garage. We sold a ton of clothes.

Matt's sweet sister; Charlene

Ansley & her sweet friend Eden playing with a sale item and singing along to "Feliz Navidad" on the radio.

Another view of the driveway. This was AFTER we sold most of the stuff that was on it!

Champ of the month: Miss Averleigh! She be-bopped around the entire time, having fun playing with all the toys.