H-A-I-T-I That Is Right. Right?

In preparation for our big garage sale fundraiser, we bought shirts for everyone to wear.  We thought that it might look cool to have everyone wearing the same color - blue.

Why blue?

Well that is the FAVORITE color of the orphanage director, Barbara.  Everything is blue at Ruuska Village.  Many have started referring it to 'Barbara Blue'. 

See?

The crafty mom in me thought that it would be fun to have the kids get together and decorate their shirts.  Kids and fabric markers are a match made in Pinterest heaven!

Some kids were meticulous and planned out each letter.  While others were done with their whole shirt in 5 minutes.  They wrote Bringing Home Sam on the front:

And Haiti on the back:

Me?  I decorated my own shirt... this crafty mom is also a bit of a control freak too.  I'm just being honest!

I though they all turned out beautifully!  Even Jack had one.

The day of the sale, our Barbara blue shirts looked AWESOME!  I thought we stood out for the people to recognize those of us doing the sale.

I few hours into the sale, I was standing by 'Haiti Table' and talking with a nice woman about Sam, our family, and Haiti.  After she walked away, my sweet friend, Stacey, came up and whispered in my ear that I might NOT want to mention that I home school my kiddos.

OK... I was stumped.

She laughed and told me -in her very sweet manor- that I had spelled 'Haiti' wrong on the back of my shirt.

Yes, you are reading that right.  H I A T I is what it said.

Me.  The one that talks, thinks, and writes about Haiti ALL OF THE TIME -and even has a son coming from there- spelled it wrong!

Maybe the kids should have done my shirt after-all!

I went a bit longer at the garage sale, hoping that my hair was covering it up.  (see mom, it is okay to be 35 and have long hair sometimes!)  Anyway, the time finally came when I needed to do something about my mistake...

In our little town, I didn't think that we had many Haitian immigrants.  Yet we had seven Haitian groups/families come to our garage sale that morning!  By the time we had the sixth group come through, I was worried that someone would notice.

Here I am fundraising to bring my son home from a country that I, apparently, didn't even know how to spell!

So I enlisted the help of my friend, Brianna, and a handy Sharpy marker.  In no time, I at least looked like I knew how to spell Haiti -kind of.

Lesson learned.  Next time I need to pay attention to the straight lines AND the order of the letters...  that, or just let the kids make my shirt!

Be looking for our Babara blue shirts on June 13th at the Chick Fil A in Viera, when we have our next fundraiser for Ruuska Village and Sam!