Exciting Fundraising Update!

We are overwhelmed with humility and gratitude for our friends and church family.  The spaghetti dinner benefit was a HUGE SUCCESS!  We made more than $5000, which means we are getting so much closer to bringing our little one home!  Words cannot express how thankful we are to our God!  He is amazing.  Thank you Oh-so-much to all the volunteers who put this together!

We have recently had quite a few people reach out to say they wanted to lead forward with another fundraiser of their own to benefit out adoption.  So in no particular order, here are some other ways for you to support our adoption process and help impact the life of a child:

Click on the name of each fundraiser and it will take you directly to our friends' secure websites.

Mary Kay
Order your Mary Kay products from my sweet sister-in-law, Cassi and 100% of the proceeds in November will go to our adoption! Free shipping and 25% off all orders over $100!

Custom Christmas Cards
Order your custom Christmas cards from one of my best friends, Blaire and a portion of her proceeds will benefit our adoption!

31 Personalized Gifts 

Get organized or get some super cute personalized Christmas gifts from my friend, Candace and all of her November sales will benefit our adoption!

Worship CD 

Finally, our very talented friend, Katie Cruddas has come out with an amazing worship CD.  She is shipping 200 to us to sell for $10 each.  100% of the profit goes straight to bringing Baby G home! These will be available beginning November 24 on a first-come-first-serve basis.  Reserve yours now by commenting here or sending us an email/facebook message.  Hurry because I think they will be gone in a flash! 

We have a big goal of being 100% funded by the end of November!  We know that is a lofty goal, but with your help we can do it! Feel free to share our fundraisers with your friends.

We can't thank you enough for your support!  We are planning to turn in our paperwork next week and we couldn't have done it without the prayers and support of our wonderful friends and family.  God is so good! We love y'all!

Blessings,

DJ and Andrea

What to do When You've Ruined the Laundry by Washing a Crayon

Tonight I went to remove the clothes from the dryer and found out that I had ruined the whole load because I had a green crayon in the pocket of my jeans. Right now you are probably thinking one of three things:

1. Why in the world did you have a green crayon in your pocket?!?! You don't even have kids!!!
2. Oh man... I've done that!
OR
3. Oh no! Did you get all the stains out of your clothes?

Here's how the drama played out...

We have one of our college students staying with us this week and she needed to do a little laundry. I went to empty the dryer so she could put her load in and found a little surprise. As I pulled each piece of clothing from the dryer, I quickly realized that our entire load was probably ruined. The crayon had melted onto each and every article of clothing leaving greasy, green freckles everywhere.

We quickly relinquished the idea of ever salvaging the laundry. I was pretty frustrated with myself, but also knew that I had to get the dryer clean because I could handle ruining our clothes, but I had to make sure the green crayon would not ruin our college student's clothes too. I became engrossed in removing all the debris from the dryer. If you haven't ever had this problem, you would be amazed at the the way a crayon gets into every nook and cranny inside the dryer and leaves stains all over the drum of the dryer.

I began trying to wipe down the inside of the dryer. First I tried Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Counter Top Spray, and then I tried vinegar. So far very little results.

Our next thought was to google the problem. We found many suggestions, including WD-40, Dawn, Shout Advanced, and dish detergent. One post particularly convinced us we need to try Dawn Power Dissolver. Google quickly told us that Wal-Mart carries this but none of the Wal-Marts in our area had any in stock. All other searches revealed that this product is often difficult to find in many stores. I could order it online, but didn't want to wait that long. So off we went to HEB, knowing this would probably be the only other place we had any chance of finding this product in Abilene.

As I walked down the cleaning aisle I picked up some Oxi-Clean Max Force and Shout Advanced, just in case. Then I went to look for the Dawn Power Dissolver. Once again, my local HEB saved the day! (I love HEB, but that's a post for another day.)

Finally, we headed home to begin the investigation. DJ set to work using the Dawn Power Dissolver on the dryer and it worked magically! It only left a little discoloration on the back of the dryer, but we think this was from our jeans and had nothing to do with the crayon at all.

I began testing the laundry with the 3 products and soon discovered that Oxi- Clean Max Force has amazing powers. All three products were able to remove some of the stains, but the Oxi-Clean seemed to have the strongest power to remove the biggest, deepest stains. I let the stain remover set on the stain for a few minutes and then scrubbed the stains by hand using hot water. Most of the stains came completely out. Finally, I put all the laundry back into the washing machine for another wash and I was amazed to find that all of the stains had disappeared!

The moral of this story?
1. Check your pockets EVERY TIME before you do laundry.
2. Don't allow green crayons to end up in your dryer.
3. But if you do, Dawn Power Dissolver, Oxi-Clean Max Force (and HEB) can save the day!!!