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Day 83 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

Yesterday was our yard sale, and we had some real success! (pictures to come) The results... We profited almost $400.00! I'm thrilled with how it went. Not only did we sell tons of the donated items, we also passed out at least 100 pass-along cards. Truthfully, that's way more important than the money we made. And here's a little testimony to the importance of being proactive in self-promoting your adoption.

Yesterday afternoon every time someone showed up, I would give them one of our cards and explain what it was. As I was talking to one guy about our card, another lady was browsing through our kids' clothes section. After the guy left, this lady came up to me and quietly asked, "Did I overhear you right? Are you and your husband hoping to adopt?" I said, "yes!" and started getting butterflies in my stomach. I grabbed a card for her really quick, and excitedly started showing her all of our contact information. She had some questions to ask such as if we had any kids or not (I explained a little bit about Gavin), what do we do for a living, if I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, etc... I answered all of her questions, and she said, "Well, I'll definitely take this card. My best friend's daughter is sixteen and pregnant. She's scared because she doesn't know what to do. I will definitely be giving her this card." Then I explained that LDS Family Services offers free support services to women experiencing unplanned pregnancy, regardless of whether or not they choose to place. I suggested this young lady take advantage of that opportunity no matter what. The woman had one more question for me right before she left. She wanted to know if Malone and I were okay with the fact that this young lady is from Mexico. Of course we said that was perfectly fine! The lady smiled at me, said thank you, and drove off.

Now, I don't know if this will lead to an adoption for us or not. But I can tell you, I never would have reached this woman if we hadn't been self-promoting our adoption. Plus, we had at least 3 other people take 2 or more cards telling us they had pregnant women in mind to give them to. Who knows? I have also been giving them out to family, friends, my coworkers, a lady at the bank, people at church, and other random people. We will also be sending the cards in the mail to all of you who aren't living near us! Maybe just one of those cards is going to make it into the hands of our birth mother. And if she ends up reading this entry, we just want to say to her: "We love you! We are thinking of you today on Mother's Day!"

Many thanks go out to Cessi, Jerilyn, Garth, and Laura for helping us sort, price, move, and sell all of our donations. That was a serious work load! You guys were real troupers, and we would have been dead in the water without you! Also, many thanks to everybody who donated, without you we wouldn't have even had this thing in the first place. Last but not least, thanks to my aunt Billie who allowed us to have this crazy thing in her front yard and to everybody who let us borrow their card tables.

Yard Sale details

Day 70 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

Where: 467 N. 200 W., Logan UT
When: May 9, 2009
Time: 8:00 am- 2:00 p.m.

At the yard sale, we will have TONS of genty used items for sale, and we will be accepting cash donations for our adoption fund. Please contact us at maloneandbrittanyadopt@gmail.com for any additional questions.

Adoption cards and yard sale update

Day 67 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

We just got the proofs for our pass along cards, and we are REALLY happy with the way they turned out! We are ordering them through a company called Spaces For Faces and they have done a really great job with customer service and the whole process. Including shipping, it only cost us about $35.00 for 500 cards so they were really reasonably priced as well. I would DEFINITELY recommend them to anybody out there who is in need of their services (adoption cards, announcements, etc...) Anyhow, below is the proof. It shows the front side and the back side. What do you guys think?

Okay... about the yard sale location dilemma. Let me just say that my Aunt Billie is my HERO! I sent her a somewhat frantic email yesterday to see if she would let us borrow her front yard. She said yes, and so we now have a great location to use! Plus she said that she would like to donate some things we can sell which is so rad! Speaking of which, I really need to get that list of donors up... I'll get to it soon.

Whoa

Day 66 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Our apartment managers just told us that we won't be allowed to have the yard sale on the yard next to our apartment building. Here's hoping my aunt and uncle will let us borrow their front yard!

I also just ordered 500 adoption pass along cards. Hopefully we'll be able to give them all away. Speaking of which, if you haven't sent us your address so that we can send you pass along cards, write us an email at maloneandbrittanyadopt@gmail.com. We appreciate all of your help! I think I'm going to try and get a bit of sleep before heading off to work bright and early tomorrow morning. Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday! I just wish we were going to go do something fun like camping... Oh well, another weekend!

How can you help?

Day 63 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

Okay people! I cannot even count how many of you have asked us how you can help with our adoption "finding" efforts. Well, I have a GREAT way that you can help us!

First of all, let me just address the financial facts of adoption bluntly. You all know we aren't wealthy. Far from it, actually. And adoption is extraordinarily expensive. Maybe you're wondering how expensive exactly. Let's just say that I have received at least 20 birth mother referrals in the past two months that we have had to pass up because they exceeded our financial ability by AT LEAST eight or nine THOUSAND dollars. That means they all cost over $18,000.00. (If you're one of those wealthy adoptive couples who can afford that much, send me a comment with you're email and I'll pass along the contact information!)

So, let me give you a breakdown of our expected expenses.
-LDSFS fee: $4,000.00
-Matching agency fee: $4,500.00
-Attorney's/legal fees: $250-$1,000.00
-Possible cost of travel: $1,000.00
-Miscellaneous expenses: $250.00
GRAND TOTAL: $10,750.00

We have already been able to save up $6,000.00 on our own. We will continue working and saving to contribute as much as possible. But we are obviously far short of our target. So, the second Saturday in May we are going to be holding an adoption fundraiser yard sale.

We know that not all of you can donate cold hard cash to us. (Although, if you can we would really appreciate ANY amount you could spare.) We read the news, we know the economy is bad right now and everybody is tightening their belts. But, we know that most if not all of you can donate items to our yard sale. Look around your house, is there anything you aren't using anymore that you're just going to donate to D.I. or Goodwill anyway? Instead, let us take those items off your hands and try to sell them! Any items that we can't sell will be donated to D.I. or Goodwill.

So I know some of you are thinking, "Well, I would love to help you out, but I live very far away." My thinking is that you could hold an adoption fundraiser yard sale of your own. Get your Relief Society, Priesthood, Young Men, Young Women, Primary, your family, your friends, your neighbors involved! If you decide to do this, let me know in an email with your home address at maloneandbrittanyadopt@gmail.com and we will send you a bunch of our pass-along cards to give out at your yard sale. I know this is asking for some real effort from all of you. But we really do need the help.

You may be wondering what we will do with any extra money that we may raise. Here's the really beautiful part. We will "pay it forward." We know of a bunch of adoptive couples who are in the same boat as us: they would give anything to have a baby, but they just don't have enough money yet. We will GIVE that money away to an adoptive couple or two who really need it. We may or may not actually end up using the matching agency. That really just depends on whether or not we can match with a birth mother on our own using referrals or LDSFS. (Yep, your spreading the word is REALLY that important! It could save us $4,500.00!) So, that would mean we would be able to give away $4,500.00. We would ask them to do the same as us, try to raise as much money on their own as possible, and then if they had extra money, give it away to another adoptive couple.

Some of you out there have already helped us a TON. We thank you for that. We will be posting a list of all the people and items/money that have been donated. So, if you wish to remain anonymous, send me an email.

We know that with your help, this fundraising effort can be a HUGE success. We have seen it happen for some adoption friends of ours who adopted two adorable boys from Ghana. Last fall they held two yard sales that raised $2,957.56! How amazing is that!?!

So go ahead, talk about this yard sale on your own blogs. And if you have questions or comments, send me that email! We're excited to see how this works out!