YARD SALE!

It was 9:30am, before I'd realized that I had not fed my daughter.
Lachlan, Ellory and I had been going non-stop since, well, truthfully, all week, but for the sake of this post, we will start with Friday.
Ellory finished her last day of Vacation Bible School at noon on Friday. She did great! Our church did great! So many servants, pouring into the all those little hearts...I'm not much of a crier, but seeing 160+ kids belting out the truth of the gospel through song, is enough to moisten my eyes.After VBS, we shipped Ezra off with my sweet sister in law, Lauren, and Ellory Sue and I began the final preparations for the yard sale.
Our first stop was our friends, the Wainright's, house. I loaded up the van with lots of stuff, and Ellory took a break to play with her friend Nora. She was very disappointed when I broke up the party, because, they "hadn't even gone to the ball yet."
Then, Princess Tiana...I mean Ellory and I rushed home, packed up all our stuff, organized her lemonade stand bag o' goodies, and loaded up the van with as much stuff from the garage as possible. To. The. Top.
I meant to take pictures of all the craziness, but it was too crazy to stop and do it.
Lachlan's Aunt and Uncle then stopped by to unload their van, and do some pre-shopping. She picked up a really cute piece of furniture for their tv, and a gigantic frog. I kid you not. Your junk? Another person's treasure. Here is a picture of the frog when we loaded it from our friends' house earlier in the week.I really mean gigantic.

Uncle Larry, Aunt Debbie and their son, Chris got there just in time for Lachlan to show up with the UHaul, which means they got the honor of helping us load the rest of the garage.

So, the UHaul was loaded, and the three Coffeys took off to Shelbyville. We made a quick stop at my friend Megan's house (read her blog) to pick up tables. And then to unload at my mom's. Yikes. By this time, we were pushing dinner. We then drove back across town to another friend's house to load up the van. Made a quick stop at our favorite Mexican place for COLD BEER, and then back to unload at mom's. THEN....We drove to the opposite end of the world...I mean, the county, to get a really amazing Antique Mahogany Table from my BFF's momma, "Momma D." That sucker is heavy. Back for a drop off...Poor Ellory was a trooper, but needless to say, this was not the most fun of trips for her alone time with us. We then jumped back in the car, headed to Crestwood and made our final pick up of the week. We were very ready to get back to my mom's and crash, but got held up by this dude:
It was frustrating but laughable. We also came with in 9 miles of running out of gas. (Or so our fancy new-to-us van said.) Thankfully we escaped the wet paint dudes, and finally made it to a gas station and then home around 10pm. We rushed Ellory Sue off to bed, thanked Aunt Lauren in our hearts that Ezra did not have to endure the journey, and then began the task of pricing...until 12 when we gave up and resigned ourselves to stress and exhaustion induced sleep. The thing with stress sleep is that it also wakes you up, so at 6am we were up and going.
I made coffee, which we were never able to drink, and we began unloading. And people began showing up. 8am means nothing to yard sale junkies. They take whatever time you say, and subtract 2 hours and your coffee from it.
We were still unloading, the UHaul still untouched, when at 9:30 I realized that Ellory was hard at work on her very successful Lemonade stand, but that I had not fed her breakfast or brushed her teeth...or mine for that matter. She very maturely said she'd find something and then reappeared with a giant bag of "EXTREME Goldfish" which she ate the rest of the day. Lachlan immediately pulled his back, and neither of us even considered sunscreen, which by 3 pm would result in some pretty awesome burns, and added blisters for Lachlan.
Labor Pains.
We were hoping to take pictures of the boxes, the sale, the lemonade stand, but by 2pm I found myself still unloading boxes, when Lachlan called it a day and I started to repack the unsellables. Literally, I went from laying clothes out on a table to repacking them in a matter of seconds. We were thankful to have my brother and sister in law stop by and then be coerced into helping for the last 2 hours or so.
WE.WERE.ALL.EXHAUSTED.
But we managed to get almost $800 closer to Baby Buna. And it was all worth it.
We are so thankful to all of you who donated and bought!
We are planning another sale in several weeks, so you are still welcome to drop off or have us pick up your unwanted items.
contact us at tsc382@yahoo.com

YARD SALE DELAY

Wah wah...
The yard sale that we have busting our tails over the past few days has been put on delay.
We were tagging onto my mom's neighborhood wide yard sale--a sure bet for yard sale junkies to attend--but, she called last night with the news that the neighborhood association had postponed the sale until June 25th.
No big deal. We considered going ahead with it at our house instead, but decided that the appeal of the neighbor sale was just too much. So, we are waiting until next Saturday.
The good news is, if anyone has any junk, there is still time to get it to us.
If you live in Shelbyville, and are able to drop it off to my mom's house, that would be great. Otherwise, you can drop it off to our house, or contact us, and we will be happy to pick it up!
We already have some great items, with more in the works! We are praying it will be a great way to raise money for our babe! If you don't have any yard sale items to donate, we still appreciate your prayers that it is a success!
More details in the coming days!

Home-study Re-cap

Painless. Totally painless.
I finished tearing apart and putting our house back together. Lachlan would probably want me to note that that included piling a laundry basket with the last few items I was at a loss of what to do with, and storing it in Beth's dining room. I'll admit that I have a problem finishing things. It's usually only the last item or task in whatever project I am undertaking, but nonetheless, it's a trait on my husband's annoyance list. He's a finisher, unless we are talking about food, in which case, he REFUSES to take the last bite...Someday when we we are not scrapping money together for a baby, we will save for therapy for the both of us. Until then, he will sigh, "Terri, really? You can't finish this last little bit?" and I will cry "Babe, it's one bite, finish it...You're going to go get a snack in like 2 seconds. Just eat what you have." And in the end, we will still love each other...
Oh. Home-study.
So the house was spot-less. Free of expired medications and with all matches and cleaning supplies in their proper, out of reach places. We were still nervous.
We handed in our reference letters, and physical exam forms. We showed our negative TB and HIV results, and were given a list of a couple more documents to get together.
She took a tour. Short and sweet. My sweet husband all but forced her into my Real Simple laundry room. She asked us to buy two additional fire extinguishers--one for each floor.
Ellory was on her best behavior. (Thank you Jesus!) And was polite and funny, and all the things that make her such a sweet girl.
Done.
We thought things went well, but made sure to ask..."So, nothing would make you not approve us, right?!"
"No red flags."
Shew!
I had been sick for days, and crashed the rest of the afternoon. We celebrated with cheap-o pizza for dinner, and relaxed the rest of the weekend.
Now we wait. We will turn in the additional paperwork this week, and pay our fees. Within a couple weeks, we should be moving on the the dossier documents.
For now we are consumed with finding resources to fulfill our training requirements, and budgeting are re-budgeting our income.
We'll be jump-starting the fundraising efforts this weekend by having a yard sale at my mom's house in Shelbyville. The neighborhood has a yard sale each year, and although it doesn't give us much time to prepare, it will be the best time to have it. If you have any items you want to get rid of, we'd be happy to pick them up from you! Call or email us!
The following week we hope to begin planning the events we have up our sleeves! We are really excited about both events. Stay tuned for details!

Nesting.

Yesterday, when Lachlan left for work, our home was...how can I put this lightly...tsunami-aftermath-esque. We'd spent the few hours we had at home on Sunday afternoon doing odd jobs to prepare for our upcoming home-study. Lachlan worked on officially sealing up our kitchen cabinets with those annoying little child safety latches...apparently access to dishrags, trash cans and chemicals is bad. (I've been foiled in my attempts to dispose of garbage ever since.)
I took on the task of the laundry room. We've lived in this house 2 years, and I have organized, cleaned and reorganized this room upwards of 6 times. Each time however, it ends up a big pile of "just throw that crap in there and I'll deal with it later." So, I reorganized my stockpiled pantry of toilet paper, spaghetti sauce and shampoo, and reassigned the tossed items of the past 6 months to their proper rooms, finally breaking myself of several appliances, linens and odd and ends into a yard sale pile, (note to self: organize a yard sale.) Needless to say, when the laundry room was finished, it could have donned the pages of Real Simple, where the rest of you would say, "yeah right, no one has a laundry/storage room that looks like that." But then, I could have panned out into the family room beyond, and you would have breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that, all the crap you have in your laundry room and storage, was now just in organized chaotic piles all over our basement.
I ended Sunday by scattering the chaos around the house, moving boxes of dry goods to the kitchen, a "return to friends pile" in the dining room, a box of too little baby clothes outside the attic door. It was all progress, but messy progress.
Back to yesterday.
Knowing that my job this week boiled down to two tasks, 1. keep kids alive, and 2. prepare for home-study, it was clear that Lachlan expected to come home to breathing children and a more organized and prepared home. At 4pm, I sent Lachlan the following text.
"Before you come home and accidentally hurt my feelings, you should know that I have worked my butt off today doing things you will never know I have done."
I passed off the alive part of Ellory to my sweet and amazing neighbor and friend, Beth. While Ezra and I tore apart the rest of our home.
Now, before you tell me, I already know that our social worker will not be opening my refrigerator, or even if she does, she will not judge the sticky goop on the bottom shelf as a sign of unfit parents. I know that she will not care about the FIVE boxes of 3-12 month clothes I have packed away from Ezra's room. She will not be alarmed to find my dishtowels and cloth napkins had made their way into the same pile... However, this has become much more than "post an emergency escape plan," and "make sure all your fire alarms are in working order" kind of home-study checklist. This my friends, has turned into full on obsession, in what may be over a year before we even see a picture of Baby Buna. I want everything perfect. I want to be prepared. I want Baby Buna. But for now, throwing out 1 month old Advil PM, and scraping the goo off my refrigerator shelf is all I can do. So. Here I am. I've torn my whole house apart in the past 3 days. Now I have 2 more to put it all back. All for my Baby Buna.
I'd call it borderline crazy, but nesting sounds so much sweeter.




Please pray for:
Us Coffeys here, as we continue to prepare our home and hearts for Baby Buna.
Our home-study that will take place Friday at 3pm.
God's provision-- we need to sell our car quickly to have the funds due our social worker. We had a great showing tonight, and are hopeful they will make us an offer tomorrow.
Faith the Lord will provide, and discipline and wisdom to manage our resources.
Mostly--Baby Buna, wherever he/she may be-- conceived or not, born already or almost-- that he/she would somehow know we are coming.