Win Free Stuff!

I've talked before about Gotcha Day plates that Laura from Pitter Patter Art made for the boys a bunch of years back.  We love Laura and all the awesome art she does.  Marjorie actually won a key fob from her a year or so ago in one of her giveaways!

Well guess what?  Laura's doing a give-away this week.  You can win an awesome piece of art.....and one of our shirts!  You should head over to her blog Pitter Patter Art and follow the directions.  Even if you don't want to enter the contest, this is a rad blog to follow.  Plus....Amon just came home from Ethiopia and he is a CUTIE! 



FYI:  For those just visiting the site....kids sizes and plus sizes will available soon.  If you want one of those sizes please let me know so we can account for those numbers in the next printing which should happen rather soon!!!!

Quick News, Thoughts, Updates 8/27

I realized that we haven't been incredibly good about updating lately.  I thought it would be good to just throw a bunch of stuff out there for you.

-Lots of people have been asking things like, "how's the adoption going?"  "when do you get your child?" "are you close?"   fine, no and no.  We'd like to believe that NEXT YEAR at this time we'll have great things to tell people.  What have we been doing?  Paperwork........still.

-Update of where we are with that.....NEXT week our awesome homestudy lady comes for our (hopefully) final visit.  We're working furiously to finish our paperwork for the homestudy.

-Because we're trying to double up on paperwork, we want to have our dossier done a week or so after that so that we're done with our part for awhile.  It's a little overwhelming, but with school starting tomorrow I (Aaron) hope to have a little more time to get to stuff.

-Bring Love In (well not the entire orginization...just the Benkert's) are coming this weekend.  SUPER stoked.  If you're local remember 7pm at the Crossing.  BE THERE!!!  Hoping the Benkert's can use our house as a retreat for a few days of relaxing.

-School starts tomorrow!!!!!!  Corban has spent all summer talking about how he misses his friends...and now doesn't want to go back to school even though his friends are there.  Tobiah has spent the summer not caring one bit about his friends...and now can't wait for school tomorrow so he can see his friends and his teacher.  We have had an awesome summer of Daddy Day Camp, but I'm kind of looking forward to a new routine of getting some more stuff accomplished in the mornings while T's at pre-school.

-T-shirts are selling slow but sure.  Adult Smalls are going faster than other sizes....if you want one before the next printing, you better get it now.  This is also me saying "you should buy a shirt."

I leave you with a picture of a normal day at our house.  The boys were in the other room and this happened.




























EDIT:  I just went and counted the T-shirts....on 2 smalls and 3 mediums left!!!!  Get them now!!!!

Bring Love In comes to Warren

If you have a really good memory and read our blog religiously, you might remember way back in our post about Fast Tuesday, we mentioned Levi and Jessie Benkert and what they were doing in Ethiopia.  I casually dropped a clue that they might be coming to Warren.  Well guess what.....they are. 

September 1st the Benkert's are going to be speaking at The Crossing at 7pm. 

We are STOKED!!!! 

The long and the short of it is this.....the Benkert's are American's living in Ethiopia.  They match up widows with orphans to make new "forever families" that live in houses that are sponsored.  They take James 1:27 very seriously when it says "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

They're not just talking about, they're doing it.  

Come see why we love Ethiopia.  Come here what they're doing.  Come see how you can be involved in what they're doing.  And buy some coffee too!

Please talk about this with people.  Print out flyers.  Announce it at church.  Get people here.  Pack the place out!

HERE'S THE FACEBOOK EVENT.  Share it.

PLEASE NOTE:  This is in no way attached to our adoption or fundraising for us.  This is all about Bring Love In and what they're about.  You need to come!

Something's Missing Part 2

This is for use as our new welcome to newcomers....a recap of information you probably already have if you've been around the blog awhile.


Welcome to our blog.

  This is us.  We're kind of surprised by the missing piece.  As you can see, we already have two amazingly handsome boys.  We were going along and enjoying life.  Until one weekend on separate occasions both of us heard God say " don't worry about the funds, go ahead with a new adoption".

Marjorie had gone on a mission trip to Ethiopia in summer of 2011 to explore ways to impact orphans in other ways besides adoption (read more here).  When she came home, without definite plans and knowing the waiting list was long, we put our name on the wait list.  After that recent weekend when we heard prompts from God (read whole story here) we contacted the agency to see where we were on the list.  In a couple days, the agency moved us from "wait 6-8 months" to "fill out the application now"! This confirmed for us that God was in this prompt.  We were filling out the application and sending it in, before we realized we had better update our families on the big changes coming our way! We took 2 weekends to make whirlwind trips to visit them.  (view one response here)

So here we are now... Check out the latest post to see what is up to date.  (click on the big banner at the top to return to the main page)

We want to use this blog to bring Glory to God for what he is doing.  Isaiah 43 is our verse (read more here).
We were so excited about He is doing we created these t-shirts (read more here).
There's an easy way to make a tax deductible gift as well.  (by clicking here)
Thanks for following the journey.  Feel free to share our story and blog with others.

Maps again....

I know this is not very relevant to our adoption, but I find it to be fascinatingly cool.  So we've had A LOT of activity on the blog this week between our Garage Sale Results and the new T-shirt Fundraiser.  So I had to go check the map.  See for yourself.  Argentina coming in strong!  Australia's back and we have the UK checking in.  (Canada is obvious as is Ethiopia....Russia and Latvia have regularly been checking in....even though we know no one there)

I know, I know you wet blankets are going to say that this is just random search traffic or bots or something.  I don't care.  It's fun to me. 

 

 

Pageviews by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
United States	443
Canada	53
Argentina	13
Australia	4
United Kingdom	4
Russia	4
Latvia	2
Ethiopia	1

The Shirt Off Our Back

Well not exactly off our backs....cause that'd be gross.  Now that the garage sale is over, we're on to our next fundraiser.

When we started the whole process of fundraising the first thing that came to our heads was T-shirts.  Everyone wears them (I suppose some people don't....but seriously?).  And if they're well done, people want them.

So we turned to our good friend Katie Sekelsky, who's a professional artist and author (seriously buy her book it's hilarious!).  We told her our idea and she KNOCKED IT out of the park.

We used a chunk of Isaiah 43 that really spoke to Aaron at the beginning of God calling us to adoption again...and Katie put it into the shape of Africa.  Add a heart balloon attached to Ethiopia and this thing is AWESOME!

We then turned to a local business for help.  Great Lakes Custom Graphics is one of the best business I've ever worked with!  I don't know why anyone would want to get shirts done anywhere else.  Paula is the coolest person to work with.  No pressure.  Just help.  AND she threw in the set-up fee for free because she was so excited for us!  I mean who does that?  These guys are awesome.

So here we are.  SHIRTS ARE DONE!!!

Here's the deal with ordering shirts:

Shirt costs are 20 dollars locally and 23 shipped (even to CANADA!!!) 

Sizes are Adult S-XL.  
We also have some limited sizes of youth S-L.   
(If you need other sizes we can do that in the next run...and might cost just a buck or two more.)

Payment:
If you're local, cash and checks are great and you can just pick your shirt up.  Easy.

If you're not local you can pay one of two ways. 
1.  Paypal.  You can use the donate button in the right column and put in 23 dollars and make a note of T-shirt purchase and SIZE.  Your address should be visible to me and we'll get the shirt out ASAP.

2.  You can send a check (we'd highly discourage sending cash through the mail).  A small note of SIZE and number would be helpful too.  Send checks to
Reinard Family T-shirts
12 Central Ave.
Warren PA  16365 USA

(please put Aaron Reinard on check.  THANKS!)

Pretty simple.  Look how good they'll look on you!!!

Garage Sale Results

So Saturday was our big fundraiser garage sale.  You'll remember from a previous post that we were doing a giant garage sale at our church during a community yard sale day.

We feel it's important to share not only the need, but to share the journey. 

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME....I can't stop using that word to describe what happened.

First, we had tons of people donate seriously high quality items to our sale.  Even before the sale started we were just showered with blessings from people who wanted to come along side of us and donate things to see this sale be successful.  It was incredible.  People we didn't even know who just heard about us called us up to give us stuff.  I mean, we knew we'd get some donations, but the vastness of it was beyond our imagination.

Help.....I just can't say enough about the people who helped us make this happen.  Set-up, tear down, sorting.  It was good stuff to connect.  NO WAY could we have done that all on our own.

The sale itself.....so as mentioned we got to the church at 5:15 am to finish putting up tables and putting stuff out.  Friends started arriving around 5:30 and we had a full crew by 6am.  Sale started at 8 but you know you always have those annoying people who want to do "presales"  I was ready to yell at them, but guess what?  We were ready to go by 7:20.  So when the early birds showed up I was more than willing to make a dollar!

All day we were super busy.  We had large items go early.  A kayak sold in under a minute.  A full basketball hoop set.  Stuff I didn't want to have to put away!  There were things that SHOULD NOT have sold....and they went.

The boys were pretty excited when they showed up in the morning as well.  They encouraged a few people to buy things.  We had to explain that their pressure tactics might not be what people were looking for in a garage sale.  They did great playing all day and never complained about being bored.  That might've been the most amazing thing of the day!

Conversations with people were amazing.  I sat at the table collecting the money all day and was able to just interact with people.  I repeatedly complained that my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.  Not faked or forced, but just genuinely smiling at seeing what was happening.

All sales were by donation.  We had a few things with "suggested prices" on them, but we pretty much didn't say no to people.  Now normally you get about and even split of people that lowball you and people who tell you to keep the change.....not on our day.  OVERWHELMINGLY.....people overpaid or told us to keep the extra.  There were a few lowballs, but not many.  I was amazed.

The weather was fabulous.  Sunny, hot and muggy.  The important part....it didn't rain!

We handed out a bunch of our cards with our "missing piece" picture and this blog site.  I'm not sure if we're going to be getting many hits, but hopefully people become connected with our efforts to bring one more home.

So the big question everyone keeps asking is "how much did you make?"  Honestly....honestly....the day wasn't about the bottom line.  There were so many ways God blessed us that day, and to judge the days success solely on its monetary merits would not give Him justice.  God is good.  Everything was so awesome.  God blessed us in big ways.  We still have a LONG way to go in fundraising, but this was a great event to get us headed in the right direction.

We can't say thank you enough.  For all the people that donated items, time, and bought most of the stuff on the tables....THANK YOU.  To my parents who came up to help us out and play with the boys, you know we love you so much and couldn't have done it without you.  To Zach, Andy, Allen, Riane, Diane and Larry, for getting up so early to help set up.  For the blessed people of PCC and Pastor Mike for letting us use the youth room, the tables, and some electricity....but for being our family.....we thank you so much.  For anyone I missed....it was not intentional....know that our hearts have been touched by this event.

PICTURES:

There was no way to take a picture of how packed the converted garage room was full of stuff.  It was PACKED.  Hard to even walk in before we started taking stuff out.

I know it looks like Zach is just playing with stuff....and he might've been....he's really working hard to set up.  We had some great help!

Nuttells and Larry hard at work.

I took this just as the early birds arrived.

And then I tried going back to the same place as we started packing up.  Not much left!!!!