April Fundraiser with Scentsy!!!

I know its been awhile, but school has been keeping me busy and I'm finally on spring break! Woohoo!

We have received a few donations from friends since January (THANK YOU!) and not having cable has been AMAZING! We have been able to add some of our money from having no cable as well as some of our tax money. We are now almost at $2500 which has exceeded our goal of $2000 by the end of March. We are hoping to get at least $500 or more from our fundraiser this month. Think Mother's Day, Birthdays, Easter, and (dare I say it) even Christmas gifts! My sister-in-law Kate's good friends Michelle runs a Scentsy business on the side and has graciously agreed to give us 20% of all the sales using the link below for the 1st 3 weeks of April. Hip Hip Hooray!!! We are so grateful for Michelle and Kate for getting this rolling and we are excited to share this win-win opportunity for you all! Please share this post and the link with all of your friends, family, co-workers, and of course feel free to share it on facebook!

https://michelleuphold.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Home?partyId=232562084 
Click on the blue/green arrow at the top and select Crystal's Adoption - shop now!

Joyce (Pat's mom) and I will be having sample scents and products at both of our work locations in case you are not familiar with Scentsy and would like to see it in person first. I have 3 scentsy burners - 2 large ones and 1 wall plug in. I LOVE THEM! They smell delicious and last forever! I don't know if I'll go back to candles! ;-) You can even set them on a timer plug that will have it kick on 30 mins before you get home and go off at bedtime. AMAZING!

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On a side note, we are hoping to get a family friendly car this week to help us out when it comes time to sign the adoption paperwork. We have been sharing Patrick's truck (18 years old I think!) since August and boy has it been fun! haha Not really! We are excited to have saved up some money and are ready to get a new used car that will fit our future family! We were able to sell his car just yesterday (22 years old - his little honda prelude). I think 7 months of sharing a truck was just enough time for him to grieve the loss of his car ;-) 

Plus, I've been working on the side this quarter creating a fun research unit about the ocean, desert, rainforest, and arctic to sell on TeachersPayTeachers. I am $6 away from earning $300 and I have now sold 166 items! Business is picking up! I'll be working hard over spring break to get some more sales in!

Additional good news! I have accepted a new teaching job at Cardinal Charter Academy and will still be teaching 1st grade come August. The wonderful added bonus - a few more thousand in the bank each year, and it is about a 5 minute drive from our place and a 1 minute drive from Patrick's mom's house. We have been searching for a few years to find something close to our area so that we could start our family and the timing is perfect! We are ecstatic that we will be able to have more quality time with our future kiddos!

Here are some of our goals for the upcoming years - 

1) Raise $1,000 or more each quarter

2) Purchase a 2nd family car next spring 2015 (possibly sell the old but faithful truck?)

3) Have a down payment for our 1st house in spring/summer 2016

4) Get our home - home-study ready! Child proofing and all! :-D

5) 2017 hopefully reached our $20,000 goal and ready to adopt!

Here's some quotes of inspiration! Our vision is in sight and our goals are attainable!

“Live your vision and demand your success.” 
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. VISION will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to achieve excellence. Only VISION allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. VISION has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our VISION is what we become in life. ” 
― Tony Dungy

“Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.” 
― Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Happy New Year

Hip Hip Hooray!
It's the start of a new year....FINALLY! Cheers to new goals, new experiences, and new friendships!

We have some good news! We weren't too sure about how our amazon link was doing and whether we were receiving a percentage of people using the link to make their purchases. Well, WE ARE! Our first deposit from Amazon has been made into our adoption account, it's not much but it's a start! We earned $24.55 just from people clicking our link over the past month and a half! If you haven't yet, PLEASE do!

Also, since I've been sick this week (can't seem to shake it!), Patrick checked the mail and we were happily surprised to find a $10 check from our JustLoveCoffee fundraiser! Thank you to whoever ordered coffee from our link!

We've also been getting some questions about our Coupaide Adoption Fundraiser link with restaurant.com. After a few emails, they have informed us that they are updating/upgrading their website and will be back online in a couple months. I'm hoping they'll be ready by March sometime, but we'll let you know as soon as we hear!

We have also sold another t-shirt to a woman who is also adopting all the way from Springfield, MO. It's so great to know that we are reaching people states away! Our first out of state sale was to another woman, also adopting, from Oklahoma! Good luck to them both!

Lastly, I've earned $12.08 this month from my teacherspayteachers account, which again, isn't much, but every little bit helps!

Our plan for the next week is to get our men's t-shirts ordered and in stock. Hopefully I'll have them ready to ship out the week after!

A bit of good news...I will be meeting with one of my students' parents who has her own online radio podcast called NapTimeRadio. She surprised us over the Christmas break wanting to help us out in some way so she will be having an adoption fundraiser for her 2000/week listeners. How exciting! Can't wait to meet with her and get it started! Stay tuned!

Our new total is $1067.63!
Only $932.37 until our 2nd $1000 benchmark and only 18,932.37 to go until our ultimate goal! Hopefully we can reach our next 1000 by April!

Hope you are staying warm and cozy!!!!

Our first $1000 benchmark!!!

HIP HIP HOORAY!
We are now past our 1st $1000!!!!
We have received two more donations since Christmas bringing our new total to:

$1012!!!!!!

Only $18,988  left to go! 

Thank you to everyone for helping make our dreams come true! Can't wait for a sweet lil buddy to snuggle up with especially on a cold wintry day like today!

Happy New Year!!!

It's almost happy New Year time! We have been very blessed to have spent Christmas with Patrick's family and our two sweet doggies! We received some great news that Zeus will be off his medicine and (fingers crossed!) free of his auto immune disease (Masticatory Muscular Myositis) at the beginning of February. We are hoping for the best but are still keeping a close eye for any relapse.

This great news means that I'm back in business for babysitting starting in February!!! As some of you know, I haven't been sitting since Zeus got sick in August. Thank you to all the families who have graciously understood my predicament. I'm looking forward to getting back into the groove and spending time with the sweet families I sit for. Please give me a call or send me a message if you (OR anyone you know!) need a sitter, house sitter, dog sitter, etc.! I'll be there ;-) 

Just wanted to give a short update: We have received two more $50.00 donations and 1 $75.00 donation along with our first 2 men's t-shirts sold and 1 more female shirt. See the pic below and order one for the men in your life :-D Adoption rocks!!! (Men's shirts will be able to ship at the beginning of Feb.)

Our new total: $877
Only $19,123  left to go! Almost to our first $1000!!! Yippee!!!

Thanks again for your amazing support! Can't wait to see what our taxes are next month! Hopefully a big chunk can go into our adoption account! Stay tuned!

It's Christmas Time!

Hello All!
Well the last week has been quite eventful! I've cried quite a few tears, happy of course! We are so extremely grateful for all of the support we've been shown. We sold 1 more shirt and received a ton of donations, one touching donation from my 1st grade team of teachers and some from parents of my students and some co-workers. We even received one from a secret Santa in the spirit of Christmas ;-) Thank you whoever you are that left a beautiful card and cash in the door of our truck. Sometimes words just don't do our feelings justice, but know that our hearts have been touched in such a special way! 

Our new total is: $678.50

Only $19,321.50 to go!!!

We still have a few shirts left: 15 smalls, 16 mediums, and 6 large. You can order them on our Etsy link!

Also, I spent the last week volunteering at the Scholastic book sale. Check out some of the baby and toddler books I picked up:

Can't wait to read the Five Christmas Penguins one day to our sweet baby that was meant just for us! Thank you again and Merry Merry Merry Christmas!!!

And check out a couple more cute outfits! 'Tis the season! **Can't wait!**

Wow! All I can say is THANK YOU!!! We have had such an amazing response to our blog and fundraising ideas and have been shown such amazing support! If you only knew the strength and the courage it took for us to take the step and make it public ----we felt so many emotions over the last several months and as timid as we were to ask for help, we knew we had to take some action to make our dream of being parents possible!

As some of you know we had set up our baby room with crib, swing, toys, books, clothes, (everything you could need!) etc. at the end of June. 

And wanting to be supportive and happy for all those around us having baby showers and sweet little ones join their family was/is quite trying. There have been a ton of hard days with doubt, fear, sadness, anger, jealousy, and of course the dooming question "Why me? Why us?". There were many days of keeping the baby room closed and many days of sitting in the room wanting sweet giggles and laughter to fill the room. And then there was the question of, well, what do we do, should we take it all down and pack it away? Of course we knew we had to work through our grieving period and see the light at the end of the tunnel. While there are still moments of brief sadness here and there, there is now hope, desire, passion, and promise! We finally got around to decorating for Christmas (but missed Halloween and Thanksgiving). We did pack up some of the baby things (after Thanksgiving) for now like the bedding and toys and stuffed animals, but the crib and swing are still in tact. We have been dealt our cards, but we are now ready to prepare our hearts to meet the little one that is meant for us! 

We started fundraising the week of Thanksgiving 2013. It's been about 3-4 weeks and we have sold several t-shirts on our etsy link and have had several donations! Our total is now $465.00. So, only $19,535 left to go!!! 

On the side, I have a Teachers Pay Teachers account where I sell teaching items and have earned $226 this year which went to purchasing the 48 t-shirts ($330). I will continue to put what I earn into our adoption account. And we have decided to cancel our cable for the next new year saving about $200-250 a month starting in January. And those of you who know me, know I love to get books for my classroom. Over the last two booksales I have volunteered for, I have been getting books for the future bambino ;-) So far we have a pretty good collection of baby and toddler board books. Such fun!!! Here are some of Patrick's favorites:

And here are some of my favorites:

We know this journey may be long and trying at times, but we have hope in our hearts and our desire is strong! Thank you so much for supporting us and our adoption. Thank you for encouraging us and lifting us up! Thank you for making a difference in our lives and for helping us have a great start to our journey!!!
Hopefully on a Christmas Day in the future, we can see our little one dressed up and ready for Santa ;-) Can't wait!