Thursday, April 25, 2013

Almost a year later in the Life more Abundant...

Well. after almost a year hiatus we're back! We decided that we would reinstate our Crates by the Bushel blog to document our latest adventures! As many of you know we've just bought our first house and we're finishing up our Indiegogo campaign "Help us Make a Baby". Two really big things happening all at the same time.

The house in itself has been an adventure. We had the lofty goal of scraping all of the popcorn ceilings, painting the ceilings, painting the whole interior, tearing out some cabinets and mirrors and deep cleaning before we move in. So far we're probably about 70% finished with this list and we're picking up the U-Haul Saturday morning! Also since we've been spending so much time at the new place trying to get it ready, we don't exactly have our apartment packed up. I have faith that it will all get there and work out, but I'm starting to feel slightly panicked. On top of renovating, paiting, and packing we've been hard at work managing our campaign on Indiegogo.

We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the support from our friends, families, and strangers during our Indiegogo campaign. Here it is in case you missed it. If you could be here to see us running to tell the other person "we got another contribution!" or squealing in excitement when we'd reach another milestone in our campaign, I'm sure you'd be entertained! I honestly got very little sleep the first night we launched our campaign. I kept thinking "is this crazy?" or "should we really put our personal lives out there like this?", and "is anyone even going to donate to something like this?". I also spent a lot of time worrying that people we cared about would think that we were being selfish or that because we were doing this campaign it meant that we didn't have the financial means to raise a child. Fortunately no one that we actually know and care about thought any of these things. There were quite a few lesbians outraged by our story that was shared on the Curve Magazine Facebook page, but I keep telling myself that out of 29,000 followers, a couple of crazies isn't too bad :) We also got a lot of amazing support thanks to that post on the Curve Magazine Facebook. We want to make sure and thank Missy over at theterellsjourney for posting this great piece, Throwing Stones at Our Own. As someone who has dedicated their life to fighting for LGBTQ equality and works daily with LGBTQ youth facing discrimination and exclusion it was tough to read the negative comments from my own community. But I had to remind myself--those women aren't my community, my community is the over 135 funders who contributed to our campaign, and the hundreds of others who spent 47 days sharing our story on facebook and telling the world what amazing parents we would make.

I can't tell you how swollen my heart has felt over the last 47 days. It is amazing to see the world validate us and our dreams to be parents just like they do any other couple. And I can tell you this baby will be well planned for! We will receive the funds from our campaign April 27th at 11:59pm and then the process begins! I plan on using this blog to update as often as I can any big happenings along our baby making journey.