Last Day of School and Garage Sale

May 26 was Wyatt's last day of kindergarten. He LOVED everything about school this year - his classroom, his classmates, his teacher - everything. He was actually sad that it was over. With no prompting from us, he made his teacher a thank you note. On cardboard. With a magic marker. It's cute because it's heartfelt.

Here he is with Mrs. Pederson, his teacher this year, on his last day.
On Saturday of last week, we had a garage sale as a fundraiser for our upcoming adoption. (And no, right now there are no big updates about the adoption process. We have finished our home study and have our family profile books out at several locations. For now, we're just waiting to be matched with a child.)

To say that God had his hand in the garage sale would be an understatement. I have NEVER experienced anything like it!

Due to the generosity of several friends and coworkers, we had a plethora of quality items to offer. (A sincere thanks to Bill, Rian, Karla, Shirley, Becky, Casey, Gretchen, and Mary) We also cleaned out a lot of items from our own home, and had collected a large number of items curbside during Fargo's recent Clean Up Week. We put a LOT of work into organizing, pricing appropriately, setting up, etc. We worked several hours at night for several days in preparation.

On Saturday, we were scheduled to start at 8:00 AM. Our first customers started coming just before 7:00. Until after 1:30, there was never a time that we were without visitors, and even late in the afternoon, we still had a steady stream. Early on in the day, I even had people waiting in line to check out.

There's a lot of "testimony" that could be shared, and lots of great stories about those who stopped by, but allow me to sum it up this way:

We set a low-end profit goal that we thought would be great to meet.

We set a high-end goal that we would've been quite happy to meet.

We set a "hallelujah" goal that would have only been possible with divine intervention.

When we tallied at the end of the day, our hallelujah goal was exceeded by 20%.

God is good!

Thank you SO MUCH for those of you who supported us in our garage sale! We still have a LONG way to go to secure all the funding needed for adoption, but Saturday's sale DEFINITELY helped us get closer.

Below is a photo taken partway into the morning, when several things had already been paid for and carried off. We had planned to take several photos throughout the day, but were so busy that we didn't have much time to take snapshots. It was a good problem to have, for sure.