Family Fun Night

In May, we organized a family fun night and silent auction as another way to raise money for the adoption costs. We knew a family that hosted a similar event last year. So, we basically thought we'd try the same thing.

My friend Melinda and I spent two months planning the event. Melinda is an event planner-extraordinaire and a super great friend who would do anything for me. It took hours and hours of planning but was so incredibly worth it. We ended up with over 100 auction items (a lot of which were packaged items), a gym full of carnival games, hundreds and hundreds of hot dogs, chips, and drinks (about 400+ of each!) and a completely overwhelmingly great evening. We had people donate their time to run carnival games, serve food, bake goodies for the bake sale, supervise the auction tables, and set-up and clean-up. Honestly, I had a fear that after everyone showed up to help with the event that we wouldn't have anyone left to actually show up as guests! But the gym quickly filled up and I think we had well over 300 people come. We had so many auction items that I also thought we wouldn't have enough people to buy everything. But nearly everything sold! We earned $3,000 from ticket and food sales. We earned another $3,000 from the auction items AND an additional $9,000 from two auction donations of granite countertops! Yes, that is a total of over $15,000 in just one night!

One of the most amazing things about the whole night was that most of the people who helped us and came to support us were from our church that we have only been a part of for a little over a year. We had so many people whom we didn't even know offer to help. It truly was a visible example of the body of Christ working together. We knew that God would work in great and small ways to make this adoption possible. And we saw a great work of God that night. We are so thankful to every single person who came to enjoy the night and who came to serve that night. (Hopefully those who served enjoyed the night as well!)

Above: admission table and cotton-candy maker Ryan (he was COVERED with cotton candy by the end of the night and must have had a very sore arm b/c he never moved from this position the whole night!)

Below: Kara gets her face painted by a clown who looks very much like a good friend named Paige! My dad and John working hard in the kitchen. Andy's mom working at the overflowing table of baked goods. Real live goldfish for prizes and two balloon artists made things extra fun!