Happy New Year....and an exciting little update!:)

Happy New Year Everyone!! I know I am few hours early but I can honestly say I’m not sure if I’ll make it to midnight….so I’m saying it a little early!:) I am amazed at how fast this past year has gone and I am even more excited about what 2012 holds for our family. We have been truly blessed with all the support of our friends and family during our adoption process so far and I hope it continues long after our sweet boy is home.

With that note I want to update all of you on our current adoption status! We were able get over a HUGE road bump this past week and got our much need county assessor letter done! WooooHoooo!! This has by far been one of the hardest pieces to get for our adoption. I have taken a couple of trips to the assessors office and made many phone calls and each time I was told they can’t make a letter up for us and if we need it we should look into getting a lawyer to help us get this letter! Yes, I’m totally serious they said we needed a lawyer! Well little did these people know that when I really want something I will do whatever it takes to get it and being told no just made me soo much determined to get it done!! After spending two plus hours in the county building going up and down to three different floors, visiting four different departments, talking to seven different people, shedding a few tears and bribing my son with treats if he can wait nicely, I am proud to say we have our letter done!!! It has been approved by our state-side helper and by the team in the country we are adopting from! I feel so proud of myself and wanted to walk back in to the assessors office and show all the people who told me no what this girl can get accomplished!! But I didn’t…I thought about it but after two plus hours in the county building I just wanted out!! So now that that is done all that’s left is redoing our medical paperwork…again…and getting David’s employment letters done! We have some other paperwork that requires just or signatures and that is it! So I am pretty sure that I can honestly say that we should be finished with our dossier within the next 10 days!! That’s right everyone…I said 10 DAYS!!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOO….we are so close to finishing our dossier I can’t believe it!! Our BIG hope is to have everything apostilled and headed over seas in about 2 weeks!! It’s crazy to think that just 7 months ago we were thinking and just looking into adopting and now we are soo close to getting our boy home I can barely stand it!! It’s all so exciting and scary but soooooo worth every second of every emotion we have felt over the last 7 months!!:)

Thank you again to everyone who has shown us love and support throughout this process, we hope it will continue into the New Year!! And we would like wish all our readers a very Happy New Year and we hope that 2012 brings you love and happiness all through the year!:)

What a difference a year makes!

“What a difference a year can make.” This is a saying I have said many of times but this time I am truly amazed about what a difference a year has made for us. This time last year we were looking into expanding our family with help the of fertility treatments. We experienced much heartache during that time and questions of why? Why us, why could we have one child but now we can’t have another, why aren’t these treatments working? Adoption had always been talked about between David and I and had never really been much more then just talk; but after a few months of unsuccessful tries with fertility treatments I thought maybe I should look further into adoption. And after doing some digging and TONS of research we knew exactly that a new addition to our family would be coming via adoption! We didn’t start the process until late spring/early summer and have been hard at work trying to bring our boy home ever since! So that brings us to today, its three days until Christmas and we are amazed at what a difference a year can make. These last few months have been stressful and amazing all at once and everyday we keep getting closer to bringing our sweet boy home. I’m sure we will be repeating our words next year at this time when we have our son home and celebrating his first Christmas with his us. But for now we are really amazed at how much our year has changed us from then to now!

Now for a little preholiday adoption update! We were hoping to have our dossier done and off to Aaron’s country by now. But that is not the case, we’ve hit a little road bump with some paperwork but we hope to have it fixed and put behind us next week sometime!:) Which means (fingers crossed tightly) that we hope to have our dossier done within the first few weeks of January!! So please say an extra little prayer that we can get over this road bump next week, so we can finally say we are in the home stretch to getting our boy home!!:)

We wish you all the happiest of holidays and hope that your 2012 is filled with as much joy and love as ours promises to be filled with!!

Stopping by to say HI!

Hi everyone! I just want to stop in and say Hi! Things are CRAZY busy around our house. I am in the thick of finals and won’t be able to take a breather until Thursday evening after my geology final! So for the next four days we will be putting adoption paperwork on hold and I will begin working on it again on Friday. So I will fill you in with all things adoption next weekend once the craziness of finals is over! However real quick I wanted to remind you to PLEASE check out our fundraiser page. We have many fundraisers going on right now and need all the help we can get to bring our little guy home!!

Hope you all have a great week and will update you as soon as finals are over!!:)

No clever title today.....just hope you enjoy the post!:)

   Happy (early) Thanksgiving Everyone! I have been trying to figure out what to say in this blog post. I have honestly started it about four or five times and erased everything each time. We have had a crazy two weeks since my last post and we are still digesting the outcome from it. As I am typing I am reminded of all the things we have to be thankful for and reminded that patience is a true virtue. That saying “Good things come to those who wait,” keeps running through my head. This adoption process has made us feel emotions we didn’t think it would. For the most part it has been super easy and not to many bumps…..but there are times when things don’t always go the way we thought they would and that is ok, we simply learn from it and move forward. And we just keep reminding ourselves that patience is a virtue and everything will work out just the way it should! So on that note let me fill you in on the last few weeks.

          Two weeks ago we started the home stretch to our big fundraiser Aaron’s Harvest Hoedown. We had spent these last two weeks busy rushing to gather the last of what we needed and to tie up all loose ends. When the 19^th rolled around it was game time! We woke up early and started our looooong day of setting up and preparing for the evenings event. As we put on the finishing touches, I felt relieved and had hopes it would turn out great. As guest started to arrive my hopes keep rising. I am SO very thankful for everyone who came out and showed us their support and got us a few steps closer to bringing home our boy. We are still a long way from the goal we had hoped to raise that night but it was evening I would not change for anything! The goal was just that, a goal, and not always do you reach it with the first try and that is why we don’t feel disappointed or anything like that. We spent the night surrounded by family and friends who really care about us and want to see us succeed in bringing our boy home! We are thankful for our wonderful family and friends who did show up and made the night special. Aaron is going to be one lucky boy, I know we feel loved and he will two when he gets to meet everyone who helped bring him home! So again thank to those who came out and made our night soooo special! We love each of you and couldn’t do this without all your support!

          Now I have been saving this for the end. If you’re my friend on facebook you have already heard the news but if not here’s the latest most up to date and exciting news about our adoption! We have received our I-171H also know as the “Golden Ticket” and are approved to adopt through the USCIS!!! WOOOHOOO!!!!!! This is so exciting because it means that we will for sure have our dossier finished by the end of the month!!!! Today or tomorrow I am headed to the state capital to have our first piece of paperwork apostilled and send it off to Eastern Europe! We are headed into the home stretch and I can honestly say we are feeling a little bit of everything! I personally am ready to be a busy mommy of two kids and can’t wait to have another wild boy running around the house! So please say an extra prayer for us and keep spreading the word about our adoption to anyone and everyone who wants to hear about it! We need to get funds raised so we can get our little guy home! I can’t believe the end is in sight and the best Christmas present we could ask for will arrive a little late but will be sooooo worth the wait..because good things come to those who wait!!!:)

          I just want to give a quick thank you to all of you who follow our blog and to all of you who stop by from outside links to read our newest posts. You all are reason I write and are the ones passing our story along to you friends and family! So Thank You and we wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!

~Oh and just one last thing before I go is please go check out our fundraiser page. We have some new fundraisers going!! Please stop by and check them out, who knows you find a great Christmas present for someone special!:)~

Thankful

Hi everyone! I just wanted to write and give a quick update on our adoption and talk about something that was brought to my attention last night!

          First an update on our adoption, we are still hard at work compiling our dossier and hope to have all the paperwork together and finished before Thanksgiving!!:) I know some of you may think this is crazy and quick but we have a GREAT notary who is available whenever we need her and the paperwork that will take a little longer to get done has already been taken care of and will be finished within the next week or so!! So our next big wait will be for our “Golden Ticket.” We go in on Tuesday for our fingerprints and then the wait begins for that! Hopefully it won’t be a long wait but we are prepared to wait. This will be the final piece to our dossier; which is exciting and scary all at the same time!! When this is done our final stage of this process will be right at our finger tips….which means traveling to get our boy and becoming a mommy and daddy of 2 kids instead of 1!! So with all this excitement going on we still have to fundraise to get our little guy home. While I have been busy with our dossier I have been working even harder to get ready for our big fundraiser, Aaron’s Harvest Hoedown, it is in just 13 short days!! Which the planning and preparing for the Hoedown have been more stressful on us then the actual adoption process!! We are hoping and praying it will turn out well and bring us the much needed help to get our boy home!! Please check out our fundraising page for more information on the hoedown and keep an eye out for the Christmas ornament fundraiser we will be starting around Thanksgiving.

          Now onto the eye opener I had last night. As most people know David and I have struggled for a number of years trying to have another child of our own. And after a few failed tries with fertility treatments we then realized that if medical intervention wasn’t going to work then it was time to look into other ways to expand our family. We know that some people would most likely live with the fact that they can not have more children and some, like us, would look for others ways to expand their family. With that said, I had my eyes opened up to the side that would not be ok with adopting last night. While at my mom’s house running a Thirty-One party for her, I was explaining why I started selling Thirty-One and how all my profit goes towards our adoption. After explaining everything I was stopped and asked about our adoption and the reason we chose to adopt and after explaining it several different times to these wonderful ladies it hit me. One of them said that they too had thought about adoption, but their husband said “No, I could never love a child that didn’t come from me.” Now I have to tell you this comment does not offend me in any way at all, adoption is not for everyone and I totally understand that. However it was with this comment that I realized, how truly lucky I am. I have a wonderful husband who loves with everything he has. He has never once said no when talks of adoption came up, and then when it was time to make our decision about adopting he was more then ready to go down this road. The money factor scared him a little bit but his fears are slowly being put to rest with every fundraising effort we do!! So my eye opener was one that reminded me to be thankful to have a husband who can love without limits and is willing to walk hand in hand with me down this road!! I love you David and thank you for making me one lucky girl!!:)

Feeling a little emotional....

   As I start this blog post, I realized I’m filled many emotions tonight, from excitement to nervousness to worry to stress. Excitement kicked in today because we received our appointment letter in the mail to go get our fingerprints done for the USCIS!!! This is great news, since most of the blog posts I have read from other adopting families it took awhile for them to receive their letter and then once they did receive their appointments they were about a month or so away....ours however is in 2 weeks!! This is so great and exciting!! We are going to try and walk in to see if we can get them done sooner but if not 2 weeks from today we will be getting that done!!:)  Along with the excitement I am feeling a little stressed, this part of our process is going by VERY fast and I just hope and pray we are going to be ready to go when the time comes. I hope to finish compiling our dossier in the next 2 or 3 weeks so that once we get our “golden ticket” we can put it in the box and send it off to Aaron’s country! This is where the worry kicks in, as most of you know adopting a child is VERY expensive and I am really worried about not raising enough funds to get to our boy. I am truly praying that our Harvest Hoedown fundraiser can bring in the funds we need to cover the last part of our adoption; which is the most expensive part! So please if you get a second can you say a little prayer for us? We’ll take all the prayers we can get!:) The nervousness is from reality setting in; in just a few short months (hopefully in January) we will be traveling to a far away country to get our little boy. And the unknown is really making me nervous, from the language barrier we’ll face to riding the metro to living in a different country for 4 to 6 weeks…..don’t get me wrong I’m super excited to get to our boy and bring him home but no matter how much information the families before us give to us, the unknown still makes me a little nervous. But the biggest emotion I am feeling is excitement, excitement over meeting our son, excitement to finally get to hold him in my arms and of course the excitement to let him know his mommy and daddy are here and we are not going anywhere!! I just wish there was a way to let him know we are coming and will be there soon! I hope he feels our love for him even though we are thousands of miles away…..

As this blog comes to and end, I wanted to share this song I have loved since Ryan was born and I think about every night as I go to sleep and can’t wait to sing it to our little man once we get to him…..I have posted it below, please enjoy it!:)

Godspeed (Sweet Dreams) By the Dixie Chicks with lyrics

Just a quick little HELLO!!

Hello everyone, I just wanted to write a quick little post for everybody! Nothing has really changed since my last post, which is good. We are still working on compiling our dossier and will hopefully be getting our first piece of it finished this week!! We hope to get everything else done and completed quickly. We have a great person who will be doing our notary and is available whenever we need her…so hopefully we can get this done quickly!!:) I have tried to check on our USCIS status already and for those of you that know me well, know this is no surprise. I have a very hard time with waiting and this part of our process is going to kill me, I’m sure. However when I did call and talked to the people at USCIS they said one way to check to see if our packet of paperwork had been accepted was to call the bank and see if the cashiers check had been cashed…..so I called the bank and guess what it has been cashed!!!!!!! WoooHooo!! I know this is a small step but it’s still a relief to know that our paperwork was accepted and is getting processed! This means its time to buckle down and work on getting our boy home!! With that being said PLEASE check out our fundraising page and see all the fundraisers we have going! The finished paperwork won’t mean anything if we don’t have the money to get to Aaron and bring him home! So anything helps, no matter how small or big we are sooo grateful for all the support you have already shown and hope that it continues while we get through this process!!:)

It's actually happening!!

Hi everyone! Just wanted to make a quick post and update everyone on our process in the adoption!! We have FINALLY finished our home-study!!!:) We received the big packet in the mail on September 30th! I can honestly say it was such an awesome feeling to come home and find it sitting on our doorstep. It has also made this whole process soooo… much more real! I know I have said that exact statement in the past but now there is no going back, we are doing this and we will have our boy home with his family in the next couple of months!!! It’s so exciting, crazy, scary, and joyous all at the same time! On Friday 10/7/11 we sent in our packet to the USCIS!!!!!!! For most of you, you may not understand but USCIS stands for “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” and this is where our “golden ticket” comes from. They are the ones who give us the approval to adopt our little boy!! So while we wait for this to be approved we are now working with all systems going. We are preparing our dossier and getting all the needed documents together for that, as well as planning our big fundraiser! On my last post I had talked about our Halloween Costume Ball fundraiser, and unfortunately we have had some changes to that. We were going to hold the fundraiser at our house when we realized that we could not accommodate the large number of people we would be having at the event.... So we have changed everything about the fundraiser! We are now having Aaron’s Harvest Hoedown on November 19^th and have new venue to hold our event at! David’s National Guard unit has been so very supportive and kind in allowing us to use their facility; which is WAY bigger then our house and allows us to accommodate everyone!  Soooooo…..if you’re in the mood for hoedown you show join us on November 19^th from 6-11. I promise you won’t be disappointed!!

And finally I am working on the fundraiser page. Who knew it would be so hard to figure out! If you are interested in coming to our fundraiser email me at: chellsonfamily@gmail.com and I will get all the information to you. If you are my friend on facebook you should have received and event invite on there which has all the details. I am working on some homework for school after I post this and then I will be back to working on the fundraising page…so be on the look out for the fundraiser page in the next day or two!!:)

Our Crazy Busy Life

             Well I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post!! I am soo... sorry I haven’t been keeping this updated like I should. But I have a VERY good excuse; life has been sooo… crazy busy over the last month!! So here is a quick recap of our last month and an update on our adoption process!!

             August started with David starting his new position as Open-Space Deputy, which he loves! He is getting to be out hiking in the hills and patrolling the open space of Marin County now and he loves the change of pace from being on patrol on the streets. I started back to school full time and am hoping that this is my last fall semester at our local community college! Hopefully if all goes well I will be at Sac State in the fall of 2012 and only a few semesters away from graduating with my degree so I can FINALLY start teaching!! Ryan also started school in August; he is officially a big kid now that he is in 1^st grade! I have to be honest and say that watching him go off for his first day of school was much harder this year then it was last year in Kindergarten. I did really well until I got to the car and cried a little bit. My baby isn’t a baby anymore and that hit me like a ton of bricks that day! Ryan has also been very busy with baseball over the last several months and every game he getting better and better! So between David working, Ryan and I in school and Ryan’s baseball schedule…..life in our house has been a little crazy but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

            Not only are we busy with just general life stuff but we are super busy with all aspects of our adoption process!! We had our last home visit for our home-study in August and it has become our little hang up in this process as we are STILL waiting to make our edits and to finalize of our home study. But I’m crossing my fingers and hoping we can do all that by the end of this week!! Other then this little issue we are going full force with all other aspects of our process. We will be starting on our dossier paperwork in the next few weeks, which makes me nervous and stressed all at once but I know it will be done quickly and ready to go when it’s time to send in everything!! We are also planning and currently selling tickets for our first big fundraiser. We are having a Halloween costume ball at our house on October 29, 2011!! Tickets are $25 dollars and all adults are welcome to join us if you are in the area and want something to do around Halloween you should come and join us!!:) We will be having a raffle, silent auction and costume contests…I promise you will have a blast and enjoy the evening helping us raise money to bring our little boy home!! We are also in the works of a couple other small fundraisers that we are planning to hold in November and December! And please don’t forget we are still holding “Aaron’s Lucky Stars” fundraiser, this will be one that we do up until we actually leave to go get our little man and bring him home!!

            Again I promise not to go so long without posting again and if you have any questions about our up coming fundraiser please feel free to send me an email at chellsonfamily@gmail.com. If you would like to purchase tickets you can pay using our chip-in and then email with how many tickets you bought and I will get them to you, if you want to pay with cash or check email me and we can work out all the details!! I am trying to get a page up and going for our fundraisers and the information on them, so be on the look out for a link to our fundraiser page on our blog!

Thank you for stopping by and reading our blog and I promise not to be a stranger anymore!!

What a busy 2 weeks we've had!!

   I have just noticed that it has been two and half weeks since my last post and what a CRAZY two and a half weeks they have been!!! Three weeks ago I announced the start of our fundraising with a candle fundraiser and Aaron’s Lucky Stars! I am happy to announce that we have finished the candle fundraiser and made over $250 dollars from it this is added to the $210 we have earned from Aaron’s Lucky Stars!! It’s a great way to start out our fundraising and puts us with $460 more dollars then we started with!!:) We have many fundraisers planned for the next couple of months ranging from a yard-sale, to a poker party, to a give away, to a Chevy’s fundraiser and many more ideas in the works!! Also don’t forget we still have Aaron’s Lucky Stars going on until the days before we have to actually leave to get him!!  So keep your eyes out for the next announcement of our next fundraiser!! Also in the excitement of our first two fundraisers I have started a business to help with our adoption. I am now a consultant for Thirty-One Gifts!! I am so excited about all the products they have and can’t wait to get out there and sell, sell, sell!! If you want to check out the fall catalog you can go to www.mythirtyone.com/70745. All my earnings will go towards getting Aaron home to us!!!

    Now onto some more exciting news!! We have our final visit with our social worker on Tuesday and hopefully will have the final copy of our home study by the end of the week or the beginning of the following week!! I am so excited to be moving onto the next step of our adoption process. It will mean even more paperwork and stress and running around but it will be oh soooo worth it in the end!! Our goal is to have our little boy home by January. However there is a little chance that it may just work out where if we can get the funds and paperwork in order that he may just be home in time for Christmas!!!!! How absolutely amazing would that be?! I can say it would truly be the BEST Christmas ever for our family! It is all a VERY big maybe but it’s something worth praying for!!! It also all depends on how fast we can make things work for us. So please keep your fingers crossed and please spread the word to anyone and everyone!!

     Well I think that is enough exciting news for tonight, and am going to keep this post short and sweet!! I’ll post again after our visit with our social worker next week!! Also before I go I want to thank everyone who bought a candle from our fundraiser, we are so truly grateful for all the support! If you missed out this time around their will be more chances to help us!! Thank you all so much for your support, it really means the world to us!!!

A Nervous Nelly Kind Of Day!!

   Nervous is the only word I can use to describe today. Today was the day we had our first home visit with our social worker, and both David and I had no clue what to expect, which made us both nervous nellys!! So as one o’clock rolled around our social worker arrived and was the most wonderful and easy going person!! She made us at ease instantly and the visit was wonderful. We went through the paper work I have finished and the paper work I need to finish, which surprisingly isn’t to much!!:) Our next visit with her is in 3 weeks and I will have everything put together and ready to go. Which means our home-study will be completed within the next month and then it’s onto the next step in getting our little boy home!!!! So as I look at the checklist we have to get done I see I am going to have a very busy three weeks to make sure everything is finished in time!! Please send your prayers our way that I can get everything completed in time!!:)

   Now onto some exciting news…..I posted about our fundraisers on Wednesday  July 13 for Aaron’s Lucky Stars and for our candle fundraiser. In just 4 short days we have raised $120 dollars for Aaron’s Stars and have sold 12 candles so far!! So I have to make 60 stars tonight and will post a picture of them in the jar once I am done making the stars. This fundraiser is going to keep going until we have to leave to get Aaron. And we need to sell at least 98 more jars of candles by  July 29th!!! Sooo please keep spreading the word, I know we can meet our goal with the candles and would LOVE to exceed it. So please share with anybody and everybody you know! We are truly grateful for all the help and support so far and can’t wait to see our little boy home with us!!

Give me a F…U…N…D…R…A…I…S…E…R…what does it spell??? FUNDRAISER!!!!!

Who’s ready for some fundraisers??? I sure hope you are! We have two different fundraisers planned to start tomorrow! And we couldn’t be more excited about them!!




The first is “Aaron’s Lucky Stars” we have a jar to fill with Chinese lucky stars that I will make every time someone buys a star. Each start costs $2 dollars and there are different patterns to make stars from. You can donate through the chip-in on our blog or through the Reece’s Rainbow link on the blog and then email me at chellsonfamily@gmail.com with how many stars you bought and which patterns you would like your stars to be. This will be an ongoing fundraiser. We want to fill the jar up and keep it in Aaron’s room for us to remember all the wonderful people who helped us bring him home!!:)

Here is the different paper patterns and our jar we hope to fill!

This is what the stars will look like when the are done!!:)



The second fundraiser starts Thursday July 15^th and runs through Friday July 29^th. David and I have a dear friend who sells Gold Canyon Candles and they are simply wonderful! There are 3 different sizes (26oz/16oz/8oz) to purchase and 15 scents to choose from!! We own a number of these candles and we LOVE them. They last forever and make you house smell amazing!! Our goal is raise $1000 dollars and to sell about 110 candles. I am postting a picture of the candle sizes, scents you can choose from as well as who to make the checks out to. For this fundraiser you CAN NOT use the chip-in or donate through the Reece's Rainbow link. The money come directly to us and when the fundraiser is over David and I will write one large check to Gold Caanyon Candles when we order the candles. For more information about scents and cost please email me at chellsonfamily@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance for your support and helping bring our little boy home!!

The wait is over.....It's Official!!:)

             As I start to write this blog, I find myself at a loss for where to start since I have so much I want to write about. First for some of our friends and family who are out there that haven’t heard the word. David and I are adopting the cutest little boy named Aaron!! He was born with Down syndrome in a country that does not look kindly towards children who are born with Down syndrome or anything which makes them “different” in there eyes! But all we see is an adorable little boy who needs a forever family to give him love and support to help him blossom into what will surely be nothing short of amazing!!:)

            The last week and a half has been very looong but sooo amazing! I have learned that the adventure we are on there will be a LOT of hurry up and waiting. Which for a person like me is going to be hard, I just have to keep my eyes on what’s important!! So to recap the last week and a half this is how it went: As of Tuesday June 21 we were approved to start our home-study. Then the waiting kicked in on Wednesday 6/22 and lasted until Tuesday 6/28. And on Tuesday June 28 we were officially committed to Aaron!! There is no better way to start your day then to find out that our commitment to this adorable little boy has become official! We are just sitting on cloud 9 with this exciting news, which is why I have waited to write this blog, I needed a day to process this exciting news! We can’t believe that this is actually happening for us, we are so thankful to everyone who has given their words of encouragement to us. It means the world to us to know that we have support out there already! I have been lucky enough to meet a family who is currently in country getting ready to bring their son home and they have been able to tell us a little extra about our little guy which is a HUGE blessing for us. Most families who start this process typically only have the photo and information from Reece’s Rainbow to go off of. Which I think it would be complete torture for any person going through this process. So we are truly blessed to have a little extra info!:)

            Since we have started this process we have heard it referred to as a “paper pregnancy” many time. And the further we get into the adoption I find this to be so true. It maybe longer or shorter (hopefully shorter) than a regular pregnancy and there will be WAY more paper work to fill out and many more ups and downs then you would with a regular pregnancy. But we have already learned it is going to be soooo worth every paper filled out, every up and every down we go through. Aaron is being welcomed into our family with arms open wide and hearts full of love to give! We have found it amazing how much we love this little guy even though we haven’t met him yet! It’s awesome to have this feeling inside of us knowing that we were meant to be his mommy and daddy. I never knew I could love like this and it’s absolutely amazing and wonderful to be finding this out with the two people I love more then anything in the world. I am so privileged and honored to be doing this with my husband and son by my side and we are so excited to see what this road holds for us!

P.S. Keep your eyes out for some of our fundraisers coming up. We can use all the help we can get in getting our little guy home to us!!:)

What a week!

    Well it’s been a week since my last post and what a week it has been!!! All week David and I have been working on getting all our paperwork together to send in, to start our adoption process. Who knew that filling out papers would take so much time!! But the most exciting news of the week is we sent in all the paperwork for our home-study and made our commitment to an adorable little boy!! We are sooooo…. very excited to be doing this and can’t wait to really get this amazing adventure started! I know that some of you will want to know more about our soon to be kiddo but I can’t say much until its official with Reece’s Rainbow. So hopefully by the end of the coming up week we’ll be able to make it official!!!

   It is amazing to think that just a month ago we were talking about adoption and now we are getting ready to embark on an amazing adventure! Also in that short time we have made some wonderful new friends that will be forever friendships! And we know this process isn’t going to be easy and that there are people out there who will be against us. But as long as David and I walk hand in hand down this road together nothing can get us down! I couldn’t ask for a better partner to be doing this with!:)

    So I hope you all stay tuned for official announcement from us! As soon as we can I’ll post a picture of our little cutie! Until then have a great weekend and to all the dad’s out there I wish you a VERY Happy Father’s Day!!:)

The Weekend Review

   Well the weekend is over and tomorrow it’s back to business! We had a wonderful weekend with family! Friday my beautiful niece Hannah flew in from Minnesota and I can’t believe how much she has grown in the last year. Also my brother James and sister-in-law Brett welcomed a beautiful baby boy named Max in the world!! David and I are so excited to be an auntie and uncle again, and Ryan is happy to have another BOY cousin!! Saturday Ryan and I saw Mary Poppins the play with my Mom and Lizzy. And I must say it was AMAZING!! We had such a good time and Lizzy kept us laughing with her need to dance. She told my mom that the music was in her bones and she just feels it!! Oh how I love that girl!:) And today Ryan and I had a semi lazy day at home since the weather outside is so lousy! Who would have thought that it would be so cold and rainy in June. I pray we see the sun again soon and hopefully it starts feeling like summer!

   I want to thank Beth for putting me in touch with another wonderful family who is currently in country preparing to return home with their wonderful new addition. They have given us some great insight into the process and how things work while you are there. Other then that we don’t really have any new news on the adoption front. I took a little break this weekend and spent time with the family. I'll start my mission again tomorrow! However I did try to find fun and easy ways to fundraise. I found a few I really like but if anyone out there has ideas or ways to help please let me know what they are, I’m open to trying anything to help us bring a child home to us!!

   I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and have a great week!!

~Melissa~

What a day...now time to spill the beans!!

    Hi everyone!! Well it has been a very long and wonderful day. Today was the day my baby sister, Lizzy, graduated from 8^th grade!! I can not believe that she is headed to high school!! How crazy is that! It seems like yesterday we were at the hospital waiting to meet her. It’s amazing how fast time flies and its days like today that makes me reflect on the last 14 years of my life. I can’t believe all the things I have accomplished as a teenager, a young adult, a married woman and as a mother! I have truly been blessed with an amazing family and friends. To top off my morning I had the honor of meeting an amazing family who has beautiful baby girl with Down Syndrome. This family is amazing in every way, they have 5 children and are currently in the process of adopting another baby with Down Syndrome. All I can say is AMAZING!!! So on that note I guess it’s time to spill the beans….
   As most of you know David and I have been trying to have another baby and had no success. We have tried a couple fertility procedures and had no luck with them. We have found ourselves at point were big choices need to be made. We’ll that choice has been made; we have decided to adopt a baby. We are not going to be adopting just any baby we have decided on a baby with Down Syndrome. Now I know some of you will be shocked and hopefully excited for us! This is a HUGE adventure our family is beginning and we can’t wait to give updates on the process. We are so excited to expanding our family and saving the life of child. I know that some of you may be thinking we are crazy for doing this but I think that the last 14 years with Lizzy has prepared me and given me the strength and courage to do this with David and Ryan. We know that there will be lots of up and a few downs in this process and we are ready to take it all on! We know that we have hearts big enough to love another child along with Ryan and in the end we will have a much stronger family foundation!
   Well it’s off to bed to get some rest for another busy day tomorrow…..I hope you have enjoyed our exciting news and please feel free to leave any comments or questions you may have for us!!

Goodnight and sweet dreams,
      Melissa

Getting Started

Welcome to the Chellson family blog. I wanted to start a blog to keep our family and close friends up-to-date on what's new in our lives. Right now we are gearing up for a summer full of fun with good friends and family!! I'm going to keep this first post short and sweet. So thank you for following us and we can't wait for you to read about all the fun and exciting news we have ahead of us!!!:)