April/May

What happened to April? It wasn’t even a short month and it was over in an instant! Before I knew it, it’s the middle of May and I hadn’t even started an update.

So here it is, our April and May update – the blessings, the setbacks, the struggles, the excitement…the journey.

Home Reno: The boys have been working so hard on this! They dug up the egress window to inspect our foundation crack, and thank goodness it did not go all the way through!

The bad news was the window we bought didn’t fit, AND the contractor who was going to install it backed out. We ended up calling in Home Depot and are quite happy with their service. They told us we may have to wait another six weeks before they could get the custom window built and then installed, BUT it was only three!

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While we waited, D was able to move forward and get foam board insulation on the last wall, frame it in, and put up drywall with a little help from the kids. (one helped, one caused trouble, I’ll let you decide who was who!)

They also framed in the closet so the room is really taking shape. I worked on painting a closet door we had leftover from a previous job and got a head start painting some trim.

With the drywall completed, we had someone come out to see about mudding the seams. He was fantastic and that job is also completed. Now we’re reading for priming and painting!

The window was quite a bit more expensive than we had planned so the budget took a hefty hit. But doesn’t it look pretty?! We’re trying to recoup as fast as possible so we can keep things moving along.

D has gotten the track up for the drop ceiling but is waiting to do any more work until we have completed the painting.

I really am proud of how quickly D has gotten this work done. It’s been a lot, on top of the fact that our sump pump drain stopped working properly so he dug all that up and we ended up having to call someone in, and we had a blockage in our septic so that was dug up and had to have someone called in for also (our entire backyard is basically dug up!).

He knows how important it is to me (and my stress levels) to keep making progress, so he does whatever needs to be done to keep getting one step closer.

We also had some shelves dropped off for our burn pile but I decided to use them instead. One went into the shed after clean out (see below) for potting supplies and this one I painted a pretty gray for our new child’s room.

Home Study: Nothing new on this one! 

Fund Raisers: The donations kept coming for our Rummage Sale!  We’re so grateful for the people who are supporting us even this far in advance.  D and I have this little dance we do every time someone asks if we’ll take their donation:

M:  We need to swing by so-and-so’s to pick up some stuff for the rummage sale.

D: *Stares at me* And where are we putting this?

M: I don’t know, we’ll find somewhere.

D: *Rolls eyes* Ok, what time do we need to be there?

He’s a good man and generally goes along with my cart-before-the-horse ways of planning. But after our last pick up trip, we couldn’t pull in the garage anymore, he’s worried about continuing to pile things in the rafters, my storage room is suffering the effects of a construction zone tornado, and we’re just flat out of space. He said, “Please, Melissa, no more for now.”

I have such a hard time saying no, because I know we’ll be so glad we have it next spring, but he’s right, even after we cleared EVERYTHING out of the shed and garage, reorganized, sold some of the bigger things (the money went directly into the adoption fund), and put it all back together, we simply don’t have the room to take more until it gets closer and we’re willing to fill up the parking spaces in the garage (which is also his woodworking space and we NEED that for now!).

Sooooo, if you’ve been putting things aside, please find a little corner to house them for us until we get closer to the actual date of the Rummage Sale (unless someone has an empty barn they want to donate for a year! Ha!). We would be so grateful!

The Adopt-a-Box fundraiser will be compiling some more items shortly. I plan to use my Amazon points and my Fetch Reward points to purchase a few more items so that we are not depending solely on donations. 

I also purchased an adorable child size wheely luggage piece from a virtual yard sale for $3. We’re contemplating doing a Tag-the-Bag fundraiser and this would be perfect. If we decide against it, little J can use it for our vacations.

Grants: I’m going to be completely honest here and tell you all that I have been dragging my feet HARD in this area. We have one grant in particular that we’re focusing on the narratives right now, it’s the one we’re hoping for the most and the questions are also seen on many other grants so we can duplicate our answers. D got a head start on me and his answers are just….so stinking good! It kind of had me stalling because I knew mine would not be anything like that. This man thinks he’s not a good writer, but give him a question about the Bible and the words flow with perfection. He’s smart. I am emotional. Where he’s more facts and knowledge, I’m more feelings and blind faith. Together we’re a good mix, but on these questions, I feared I would fall substantially short.

Luckily, after conversing with a lady from the organization, I learned that only ONE of the questions had to be answered separately. So with that, I’ve been working on entwining my words of faith into his words and developing answers that represent who we are together.

Savings: I have had three schools I’m working with for the better part of these two months. We are still saving every bit of it that we can but these last two months also brought two circumstances in which we had to pull a little. After three schools are acquired it is a requirement of the company that I also get liability insurance. We knew this would be coming so that $350 came out of my earnings since it is for my job.

I also really needed a new phone. As part of my job, I work from my phone a lot. Mine had a battery replacement a few months ago because I was charging it two or three times a day. When the battery was replaced the home button stopped working. I was making due, but then the new battery life depleted to 80% and so it seemed my phone was the issue. With all that, it was necessary to make sure I had a working phone and since we don’t do payment plans, it was an out of pocket expense. I chose an iPhone SE 2020 because it was less expensive but still new and I’d be able to keep it for quite a while. That came from my earnings as well, however, May was also my birthday! So I put all my birthday money toward my phone and we only ended up spending $150 from my work account.

The kicker in all this is that in addition to having extra pay from another school, my boss (I cannot adequately describe what a phenomenal human this lady is!) decided that instead of giving us the added stress of end-of-year bonus documentation, she was going to go ahead and give everyone a raise (and retroactive pay for previous months) which would equal out to the bonus by years end. Even with the two extra expenses taken out, I still banked far more than any month prior.

That God, he sure is one good problem-solving, always-providing dude.

I’ve also noticed that my Teachers Pay Teachers product sales are picking up with students doing learning at home, so I’ve been adding a few products here and there, allocating those earnings to our savings as well.

As always, we want to express how important it is to us that while we are fundraising and applying for grants that we are also putting as much of our own money into this as possible.

The early and continued support of our family and friends is overwhelming.  We are so very blessed. 

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