so, in my last adoption update i made a mysterious remark about "people coming out of the woodwork, with their woodwork." since, i am certain, many of you are on the edge of your seats waiting to find out what i was referring to... i will now reveal the deeply mysterious meaning behind said remark.

ok, so as most of you know, i am not in love with asking for help. but, i am also not in love with having to sell one of our current children in order to adopt a future one. it's simply counter-intuitive. so, instead of ebaying london... we, decided to succumb to the wild world of adoption fundraising. (feel free to support us here.) :)

as i have said before, the fundraiser was not what i bargained for. of all the unexpected emotions and experiences that have arisen during this journey... the most surprising has been in the form of a cutting board.

yes. cutting boards. what, you seriously didn't see that coming? well, neither did i. thanks to my brother-in-law and almost-saboteur, brandon, an unexpected connection was made after he posted a link on facebook to our etsy site (feel free to not ignore my previous plea, and take this second chance to support us here.)

so, here's what happened.

bran posts a link to our store, and a mysterious woodworking man, pat flint, and his passionate and studious girlfriend, megan, saw what we were trying to do and decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to be unnecessarily generous with both their time and money, and bless almost-strangers with their support by making gorgeous, hand-crafted cutting boards, donating them to us to sell on our online store (last chance people). they sent us a video-email explaining how they recently got into woodworking and had gotten a huge response from the cutting boards they had made for family members for christmas gifts, and how they would love nothing more than continuing to make these cutting boards, and giving them to us to help raise money to go toward our adoption.

it was so overwhelming, first, because i did not know that you could send a video-email. and second, because i could not wrap my mind around the fact that these people (who i did not even know) could believe in what we are trying to do enough to sacrifice their own time and money to support us.

tom and i have felt so blessed with every purchase of a shirt or dress... we have felt loved and supported by every word of encouragement, and every promise of a prayer sent up for our journey. but, when pat took emailing into the future and sent us that video, words really can't describe how blessed we felt. it was so touching that there was somebody out there who believed in adoption, and wanted to support us... and not just in theory, but by taking an actual action.

shortly after receiving this news, we had the privilege of having pat and megan over to our home for dinner. they dropped off their first batch of handmade cutting boards, and we got a chance to get to know them a little better. it was sort of intimidating, because i kept thinking "what if they decide they don't like our parenting style and they withdraw their cutting board support? what if our kids act up because they are on a sugar high from the ding-dong cake they brought us, and they think we aren't really equipped to handle another child? what if they think we don't have enough room in our house for another one? or what if they see my new curtains and think that we could afford to pay for this adoption if we would just stop buying curtains all the time?"

i seriously considered explaining that i bought my curtains with a gift card.

then i came to my senses and realized that they are just sweet, generous people who want to help out a couple who is just trying to give one kid a family. i don't think they really cared about my curtains at all. i think that they are just that rare breed of human, the kind that does nice things for people because they believe in something bigger than themselves.

so, that is where we are at. we are plugging along with the fundraiser, and are super excited and proud to announce that these beautiful cutting boards are now available to purchase at our online store. 100% of the proceeds go directly to pay for our adoption fees. (and not for curtains.)