Just Another Wednesday Post....

Hello, Hello, Hello Everyone!!! I hope this blog finds you all doing well. The last few weeks have been kind of crazy since we were not able to visit with ‘Baby C’…well I have exciting news!!! On Monday we started our visits with our Little Miss!! Monday we visited for about 2 hours at the hospital because really two weeks of being told “tomorrow she’ll be back at the orphanage” was enough!! While at our visit we were informed that our girl would be headed back to orphanage in the morning and we would be visiting there tomorrow. So for the least 3 days we have been falling so in love with our little girl!! I love my boys more then anything but there is something so magical about getting to add this little lady to our family. She is beautiful, sweet and silly. Tomorrow we have court and we officially announce her name as well post her picture!! Right now we are trying to keep everything low key but tomorrow once we pass court I will post away!!! So what’s next you may ask….Well Saturday we fly home to get our boys back in the school routine and then I head back the following Saturday to finish up the process and bring our girl home!! Hopefully by Labor Day weekend we will be home with our daughter and enjoying our family of 5!! :)) 

So now that I’ve brought you up to speed I’ve got a quick little fundraiser for you….About a week ago I was asked by a sweet young adoption advocate if we needed any more funding and I thought we were good. BUT then I realized when I calculated our funding I left out some of the fees (i.e. Visa and medical appointment) we have to pay when I come back to finish our paperwork to bring ‘Baby C’ home. So we are about $500 dollar short….This same advocate has offered up doing a small matching grant to help us get to being totally funded….So here is the fundraiser: For every $5 you donate your name will be entered into a drawing for a $25 gift card of the winners choice!!  We are running this fundraiser between tonight and Sunday evening OR once we reach $150…whichever comes first!! If you donate please comment here OR on Facebook (once I post it there) and I'll add your name to the drawing!! Here's the link to donate: http://reecesrainbow.org/70626/sponsorchellson-2

I hope you all are having a wonderful week!! 

Love,

Melissa

Time for an update

Happy Saturday Everyone!!! I hope this post finds you all doing well. I want to first apologize for my lack of blogging…Things have been a little crazy and sitting and writing hasn’t come to me like it did in our last adoption travels. In my last post I wrote about an Instagram auction and the fact that we have got our travel date. So as you can guess we are currently in country finalizing the process of adopting Baby ‘C’…We got here on the 23rd of July and have been going ever since. We had our appointment to get her referral on the 24th, which went well, and went back to pick up the referral on the 25th. Unfortunately we weren’t able to go over to the orphanage that afternoon because the director was on vacation and wouldn’t be back until Monday…so we played tourist all weekend (I’ll post pictures below) with another family and had so much fun!! Monday came and we were picked up around noon and went off to the notary office to have some papers made up and then headed to the orphanage. Here’s where it gets a little wild….When we arrived at the orphanage we were told we’d be going over to the hospital since Baby ‘C’ had been taken there that morning for “rash” caused by her dermatitis/eczema. Before we went to the hospital we met with the director, social worker and our facilitator…we were given all her medical information which overall is good. She’s had heart surgery, has dermatitis/eczema, and few other minor needs….she weighs around 17lbs. and has some serious meat on her bones. Which makes this mommy’s heart happy. After we found out all the family and medical history we were whisked off to the hospital to meet her. Y’all (yes, I’m using my southern twang here…haha) we are soo in love with this girl it’s not even funny!!! They brought her our and she was more amazing then I could have ever imagined!!! She has SUPER blonde hair, and big blue eyes and just beautiful. We cuddled with her for about 10/15 minutes before we had to give her back to the nurse and we gave the absolute YES we are for sure adopting her!!! The only downer to all of this is we can not visit until she is out of the hospital…she will be back to the orphanage sometime this weekend and we’ll hopefully get the go ahead to visit monday morning. :)) Over the last week we’ve been exploring and enjoying this amazing city 2 of our 3 children are from and I am falling more in love with this place then I did in our first adoption. Thursday we met with our facilitator to sign some papers and were given a run down of what was going on….our facilitator is trying to get the same judge we had for our first adoption BUT she is going on Vacation on August 11th….so this means if she says yes we could have court as early as FRIDAY!!!! The only iffy part is the paperwork they submit to the Ministry or Adoption (I’m not totally sure if that’s what it’s called…but it works(: ) typically takes TWO weeks to finish…IF we have court friday we would need the Ministry to finish our papers in ONE WEEK AND TWO DAYS!!!!! This would make us the fastest adoption ever to be done here in this city and would cut a HUGE amount of time off our finalization process!! So, if you have a second please say a prayer, send good vibes, think happy thoughts or whatever you may do to allow this to all happen fast and easy!! We’d be forever grateful and thankful if this played out the way we’ve been told. 

So now you’re all caught up to speed!!! Once we start visiting I’ll have more to write about and once we find out some news I’ll update!! We hope you all have a fabulous weekend!!! 

Love,

Melissa

Pictures from our outings...

The remaining encampment from the recent revolution.

 One our favorite places to eat.

 The entrance to the SCARIEST elevator ride I've ever taken at our first apartment.

 Our favorite crepe place.

 "Lady on a Stick" as she is know around here..

 St. Andrews Cathedral...so beautiful!!

BIG NEWS!!!!!!

HAPPY SUNDAY!!!!! I  hope this post finds you all doing well!!!! We are doing amazing!! Do you wanna know why we are doing amazing?!?!! Welllll….we have a date!!! That’s right, we’ve got a date to travel and go meet our girl!!!!! How awesome is that?1?!! We are super excited and running around like crazy trying to get everything ready to go. We are also making a big push to raise our final funds. We have saved and raised and are still little bit short on being funded. We are having a Instagram Auction until tomorrow morning to hopefully help take care of some the funds we need!! Stop by and take a peek here: http://instagram.com/bringingbabychome I promise you will love the items we have!! We hope you’re having a great weekend and the count down has begin…

ONLY 

 DAYS!!!!

~Fun T-Shirt Fundraiser~

Hey, Hey everyone!!! We are at it again with another fun shirt fundraiser!!:)) Since our last one was a huge success and we’ve had some people ask about ordering them we thought we’d take another go at it!! :)) The shirts will say "Keep Calm Its Only An Extra Chromosome" and will come in two colors Deep Marine and Sapphire blue with yellow writing...we figured it will pull together the colors for Down syndrome Awareness AND it fits with the country colors from which we are adopting from. There will be adult sizes (XS-XL) and kids sizes (XS - XL)...the price per shirt will be $14.00 once we sell 280 shirts the price will drop!! $5 from every shirt will go toward our adoption and bring home our sweet baby girl!! This fundraiser starts Thursday June 26 and runs until Friday July 11th at 6pm PST. 

Here is a preview of the colors...(we are working on getting shirts made up for you all to see.)

Ordering Details: Email: keepcalmdsshirts@gmail.com to order and specify size (Youth sizes XS to L ~OR~ Adult sizes XS to XL) and color (Deep Marine OR Sapphire Blue)....Each shirt is $14 and an invoice will be sent within 24 hours of ordering and payment needs to be made by Friday July 11th, 2014 at 6pm PST. 

*If you have any questions feel free to email me at: keepcalmdsshirts@gmail.com and I'll be more then happy to answer your questions!!*

CHECK IT OUT!!!

Happy Friday everyone!! We hope you have a wonderful day and weekend BUT first check this out 

That's right everyone our paperwork was submitted yesterday and now we wait. What do we wait for you ask…we are waiting for a date to go meet our baby girl!!!! That's right folks in a few short weeks we will be given a date and then it's off to Eastern Europe to go meet and bring home our sweet Baby C!!!! This also means we have to do a huge push to finish up our fundraising…we are close to being funded but still need some help. I'll be posting about another Instagram auction next week and I still have some puzzle pieces left to sell…I'll post all about that stuff later this weekend but for now we are soaking in the fact that we are so close to bringing home our baby girl!!!

In other exciting news we officially have a 4th grader and a kindergartener in the house!!! Ryan finished out 3rd grade on a great note and I think this was his best school year yet!! He’s looking forward to a summer filled with bowling, baseball, swimming and relaxing. Misha worked hard this year at our local special ed. preschool and has come so far and is headed to Kindergarten next year. He has learned tons of new signs and is saying a few words and has his modified PECS system down!! This summer will be filled with working on potty training, mastering Misha’s PECS system even more, and lots of swimming!!! Both boys will also enjoy sleeping in (and so will this mommy!!). This school school year flew by so quickly but you know they say “time flies when your having fun”...and this last year has been filled with loads and loads of fun!!

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Type to you soon, 

Melissa

~WooHoo...Happy Wednesday~

HAPPY WEDNESDAY!!!!! Today has been a awesome day so far and you all are about to find out why!!! So I posted the other day about our fundraiser and how we were waiting on one more piece of paper well it arrived sometime this morning and will be headed with a family to Eastern Europe this weekend!!! I can't even begin to say how excited I am….it's like the freaking out with happiness excitement!! This also mean fundraising will be in over drive for the next few weeks until we have hit our fully funded mark!!! We are so close to bringing home our baby girl that I can't even believe it. :)))

I hope you are all having great week!!

Write to you soon,

Melissa

~A Quick Post After The Long Weekend~

Happy Memorial Day Everyone!!! This three day weekend was much need after our big fundraiser...We kicked this weekend off with a bang with our fundraiser on Friday night. The fundraiser was a success and we enjoyed the evening surrounded with people who are just as excited as we are to bring our little lady home. The evening also brought us a HUGE step closer to being full funded!! We still have a little bit of fundraising left to do but I’m still riding cloud nine and feeling thankful for the support we had on Friday night. Now I would love to post pictures from the evening buuuut I didn’t take one single picture with my phone or camera. I know some friends took some with their phones which I’m thankful for but I feel so lame for missing out on pictures but at least I have the memories. :)) 

So now where do we go from here you ask?... Well we have one last paper that should be coming in this week and hopefully we’ll be submitted next week (fingers crossed for that) and then we wait for a date. And now its a push to finish our fundraising...we are working on setting up another Instagram auction which was a HUGE success when we did back in January. Our friends have plans to hold another fundraiser for us towards the end of June and hopefully these things can get us to our goal in time to travel. 

So other then that news it’s still the same old craziness around here. Baseball is finally winding down and we are in playoff mode for Ryan’s team...I have signed up to play softball for the next few tuesday’s which has been fun and a reminder of just how old I am getting. LoL We are also just 10 short days away from the school year being finished and then we all get to sleep in again!!! Yay for sleep!!!! :))) This week we have some special littles coming to visit while their mommy and daddy travel to meet their new brothers and I can’t wait to hang out with them!!

I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday weekend and remember to thank those who gave all so we could live free!! 

Write To You Soon,

Melissa

~Just A Little Something For Your Thursday~

Why hello...long time no type. I hope this blog post finds you all doing well. Our house is in full blown busy mode...baseball season started in February for Ryan and we have been go, go, go since day one. And when we are not doing baseball related things we are doing therapy for Misha and when we are not doing that we’re plugging along at finishing up our adoption paperwork. So life is keeping us busy but in the best possible way. :))

So a little update for everyone. Our dossier is DONE...and off to Baby C’s country!!! I am still in a little bit of shock at how fast it all went....when we adopted Misha is took 3 months for our home study and about 4 months to complete our dossier papers, that's a total of 7 months!!!....this time it took just 2 months to finish everything this time around!!!! It’s amazing what a little experience and help can get you accomplished. Sooo now we wait and fundraise!! :))

Paperwork finished and sealed with a kiss and off the Baby C's country!!

Speaking of fundraising, we are gearing up for a pretty amazing evening of celebrating Baby C while enjoying the company of our amazing support network of family and friends on Friday May 23rd. We are calling Cinco De-Laney it is going to AMAZING!!! It’s going to be a fiesta filled evening with great food, cool drinks and great friends, along with raffles, auctions and so much more!! Tickets are on pre-sale for $25 (includes 2 drink tickets) and will be $30 at the door (and include 2 drink tickets). 

We can't wait to celebrate with everyone!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and thank you for stopping by to read our update!

Love,

Melissa

It's A Date

Hey, Hey, Hey Everyone!!! I hope you all are having a wonderful week, I know we sure are!! I have VERY exciting news for you all!! WE HAVE A VENUE FOR OUR FUNDRAISER (and a NEW date)!!! "Cinco De-Laney" will be on FRIDAY MAY 23rd at the Saturday Club of Vacaville…we are super excited to have a place to hold our big event and can't wait to see everyone come out enjoy a little fiesta time while raising money to bring our sweet Baby C home!!! Tickets will be $30 and each ticket includes 2 drink tickets. We will have a delicious Taco bar, chips~n~salsa, and all the other fiesta fixings!! We will also have a bar with Margaritas & Beer…along with non-alcoholic beverages. Their will be a silent auction with gift baskets, 2 one week vacations to surprise locations (locations will be reveled at our event), and may other wonderful items!! We hope to see you there for ALL the fun!!!  

~THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU~ Oh, and an update!!

Well hello there...So it’s been a while and I apologize for my absence...but I am back to write a AWESOME post about some great news and an update!! 

I’m sure most of you remember the awesome shirt fundraiser we had going on...well, we sold OVER 500 shirts!!!! How awesome is that?!?!! I want to send a BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC thank you to Shannon for doing this fundraiser for our family!! And another BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC thank you to ALL of you who participated...you all have brought us a lot closer to bringing home our sweet Baby C!! I can’t even begin to tell you all how blessed we feel by your generosity and support. Not only have you helped us become closer to getting our baby girl home but you are also willing to raise awareness about Down syndrome!!! We are sending you a big hug and thank you for all that you have done to help us make this fundraiser successful!!! 

Now I get to follow that exciting news with a happy update!! We have sent our paperwork in for our home-study update and should hopefully have that finished by the end of next week!! I will also be sending sending off the first part of our dossier in the next week and will be working super hard to get that finished and hopefully sent off by beginning April!!! I can’t believe how faster this process goes the second time around!! 


So that’s about it for tonight's update...again a BIG, HUGE, GIGANTIC thank you to everyone who bought a shirt and helped us get closer bringing our baby girl home!!!

Just a Little Bit of Awesomeness!!

Hey Everyone! I hope you all are having a great weekend!! I just wanted to pop in real quick and give an AWESOME update to our shirt fundraiser!! I received an email today letting my know we have sold almost 250 shirts!!!! How awesome is that!?!?! Our goal was to sell 100 and he have clearly knocked that number way out of the park!! I’m wondering if we could sell 321 (in honor of World Down syndrome Day) or maybe even hit the 400 mark?!?!!! What do you think? OH and I almost forgot the best part, now that we have sold 100+ shirts the price goes down to $12 per shirt!! So what are you waiting for? Send and email to 321awareness@gmail.com with your order information or any questions you may have. Thank you again for helping us get closer getting our sweet Baby C home!! 

Love, 

Melissa

Here is a peek at what the shirts look like...

To order email: 321awareness@gmail.com and specify your size (2T, 4T, 5/6, YS, YM, YL. Adult: XS, S, M, L, XL AND XXL) and color (Grey - as shown, Purple w/dark purple print, Pink w/dark pink print, Blue w/dark blue print, Green w/dark green print). The shirt are $20 a piece BUT once we’ve sold 100 shirts (which I’m guessing we'll knock this number out of the park!!!) the price will drop.....$5 of every shirt will go towards our adoption of our sweet Baby C and the adoption of the other family bringing home a sweet little boy with Down syndrome from Hong Kong. When ordering PLEASE leave your name, address and whether you will be paying through PayPal or by check. ALL ORDERS HAVE TO BE MADE BY FEBRUARY 25TH. Invoices will be emailed after your order is received!! :)

~An Exciting T-Shirt Fundraiser~

Hey, Hey, Hey Everyone!!! So I’m popping in quickly to tell you about an awesome fundraisers that an amazing lady is doing for us!! 

A few days ago a few friends voted for us to be part of a t-shirt fundraiser an amazing lady named Shannon was wanting to do for an adopting family. And lucky enough she picked us and another family to do the fundraiser for!! We are again so humbled and excited about this fundraiser. The t-shirt is not only helping us raise money for us and the other families adoption but bringing awareness to World Down syndrome Day!! I’m guessing you’d like to see a picture of the super amazing t-shirts...well, here you go!! :)

Now that we’ve seen these super amazing t-shirts here’s the ordering information: 
To order email: 321awareness@gmail.com and specify your size (2T, 4T, 5/6, YS, YM, YL. Adult: XS, S, M, L, XL AND XXL) and color (Grey - as shown, Purple w/dark purple print, Pink w/dark pink print, Blue w/dark blue print, Green w/dark green print). The shirt are $20 a piece BUT once we’ve sold 100 shirts (which I’m guessing we'll knock this number out of the park!!!) the price will drop.....$5 of every shirt will go towards our adoption of our sweet Baby C and the adoption of the other family bringing home a sweet little boy with Down syndrome from Hong Kong. When ordering PLEASE leave your name, address and whether you will be paying through PayPal or by check. ALL ORDERS HAVE TO BE MADE BY FEBRUARY 25TH. Invoices will be emailed out after we hit 100 orders!! :)

A little Update…

Hey Everyone!!! I hope this post finds you all doing well. We've had a VERY busy last couple of weeks and I’m excited to share with all of you!!

A few weeks ago I wrote about some fundraisers we had coming up and let me tell you they are/were amazing!! Our dear friend Shelly started a puzzle fundraiser and it is going great. The wonderful part to this fundraiser will be the awesome picture puzzle of Baby C we’ll have to hang up in her room as a great reminder of all the wonderful people who helped us bring her home!! I also talked about our online auction that my friend Beth was putting together for us. Well, we started it on a Saturday and closed it on a Monday morning and it brought in over $1600!!!! This far exceeded our expectations and we are so extremely humbled by the support of everyone who participated!! I am still in awe of the complete kindness we have received from complete strangers...We are working hard on nailing down a place for our big fundraiser and should have that ironed out next week!! We really can’t wait to celebrate Baby C!!

The other week we also celebrated David and Misha’s Birthday!!! It’s crazy to think our sweet Misha is 5 already!! He has blossomed and grown so much over the last, almost, two years and next school year he’ll be in Kindergarten!!! I can’t believe the little boy we brought home from Ukraine is getting ready to head to off to big kid school!! We decided to keep birthdays low-key this year and do a joint birthday dinner and cake for Daddy and Misha, which worked our perfectly for us. During this time we also found out our oldest son, Ryan, made the minors division for little league. We are so proud of him and can not wait for this baseball season to start...only a little over 5 weeks until opening ceremonies and games starting...but who’s keeping track, right?! ;) 

Other then that we are hard at work with adoption papers and planing our big fundraiser!! Oh wait , I almost forgot...Something else that happened of the last few weeks is we were finally talked about in a anti-adoption forum ran by trolls!! Hahahaha...I’m sure some of you are thinking “What the hell, how can you laugh at this” but I can it’s almost like a right of passage when adopting..we had some trolls leave nasty comments during our adoption of Misha and I am expecting many more this time around. And to be honest the things they say are so far from the truth it’s hard not to laugh...I welcome them talking about us because all it’s doing is getting the word out about our adoption...And just in case the trolls swing in to read this post I have to let them know, our adopted son DID NOT damage/ruin/hurt our family in any way, if fact he has made us closer as a family, he has brought the best out in all of us and has blossomed into the most amazingly wonderful little boy....I’m not sure what went wrong in your lives that you have to bash others but just remember Karma is “B” and she’ll find you in time!!...And here’s something I’ll leave the wonderfully lovely trolls with: William Shakespeare once said~ “Love me or hate me, both are in my favor...If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart...If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.” So to you trolls, thank you for reading and giving us a good chuckle!! 

I hope you all are having an amazing week!! I’m off to work on our home-study and dossier papers!! 

Love Ya,

  Melissa

It's Fiesta Time!!

WHO’S READY TO PAAARRRTTTYYY????? 

GREAT NEWs….We have a date for our BIG, HUGE, AMAZING fundraiser!!! Save the date for MAY 10th 2014!! We will be having a “Cinco De-Laney” themed fundraiser...we have plans for a taco bar, chips~n~salsa, margaritas & beer (along with non-alcoholic beverages), and loads of fun to be had....tickets will be $30 and include 2 drink tickets. We are planing a wonderful silent auction filled with lovely gift baskets, week vacation to a surprise location, and may other wonderful items!! We are still working a location and will hopefully be decided on one within the next week or two...Tickets will be on sale soon and if you’re local to the sacramento area we’d love to see at our fiesta to celebrating bring home Baby C!!

A little something about some AWESOME fundraisers!!!

Hey, Hey, Hey Everyone!!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week, I know we sure are!! I also hope that if you reading this from one of the states that is dealing with the crazy cold weather that you are staying warm and cozy and out of the cold!! This week has been a busy one...the boys started back to school and David started some of his “honey do” projects that we’ve been talking about getting done. But that’s not what I writing about tonight...this past week I have seen the true kindness, generosity and support come in from complete strangers and some of my closest friends and I blown away by it all...If you are new to the adoption world the first thing you should know is most adoptions are funded through fundraisers...some are financially able to adopted without raising funds but we are not one of those lucky few...our reality is we do not have 20 or so thousand dollars sitting in our back pocket just waiting to be used...we need help to bring our sweet Baby C home and this is why we have to fundraise. This past week, two of my dearest friends have begun to start and plan some seriously awesome fundraisers for us. And these ladies are so amazing for taking the time out of their busy lives to help us get our girl home!!

So here is the FIRST actual fundraiser of our adoption....One of my dearest friends Shelly Ray (whom some know is the reason we adopted Misha) has started a puzzle fundraiser...$5 dollars buys you a piece to a puzzle she has had made up for us and she will write any message on the back of the piece from you to our sweet Baby C....once it is completed and placed in Baby C’s room we will have a beautiful reminder of how much love was put into her coming home!! :)) If you would like to participate in this fundraiser here’s what you do: FIRST click here--> Our FSP (it links you to our Reece’s Rainbow page where you can donate)… Second click here--> Shelly's Facebook and send Shelly a quick note that you donated to our FSP (the link from Reece’s Rainbow) and whatever message you want on the puzzle piece. Thank you in advance for helping us...it means more then words can express that we have your support!! 

Our SECOND fundraiser is being put together by Beth Herrington (whom most will remember was my partner in crime while we finalized our adoptions in Ukraine together and is family to us.). This auction is set to begin next Saturday the 18th @ 9am...it will be an online auction (via Instagram) and has some seriously AMAZING handmade/made with love items...For example a wonderful lady has made and donated fabulous scarves, hats, dresses for girls and outfits for boys, and the list of her goodies goes on...and I literally just received a text from Beth of a photo from another amazing lady who is making a hand-stitched sign with one of my favorite sayings (*hint..it has to do with Ohana). The way this auction will work is we will post pictures to a specific profile on instagram and each picture will be listed with a starting bid and it will be a bidding war until the auction closes 48 hours after it starts!! Once the auction closes we will send invoices to all the winners and once the invoices have been paid the item will be sent to you. I will post the link to the auction here on the blog aaannnddd on my facebook page here --> My Facebook     . 

The THIRD fundraiser we are working on is going to be a BIG one....our plans are in the beginning stages still buuuut clear a space you calendar for the BEST Cinco De Mayo party you’ve ever experienced!!! Our plan is to hold it on either the first (5/2 or 5/3) or second (5/9 or 5/10) weekend in May. We have ideas of a taco bar, a bar filled with beer and margaritas, chips-n-salsa, and all things Cinco De Mayo related!!! Definitely stay tuned for more details in the next few weeks!!! 

I want to thank you all for taking a few minutes out of your night/day to read this and a BIG thank you to anyone who participates in our fundraisers... your help can not just be summed up with a simple thank you, it means so much to us to have family, friends, and complete strangers helping us get our sweet Baby C home to her family who is very excited for her arrival!! Your generosity truly is wonderful!! 

Love, 

Melissa

Happy New Year….and a kinda big announcement!!

HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! We hope you had a wonderful time ringing in the new year, as well as, a wonderful Christmas!! We hope that 2014 is full of happiness, love and good-times for you and yours!!

Our Christmas was very relaxing and spent with both our families. The boys enjoyed being spoiled by the grandparents and David and I enjoyed just relaxing and of course eating!! David and I brought in the New Year with a date night to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary, a great way to close out 2013!! A big thank to you my in-laws who gave up their night to watch the boys who had so much fun playing games and watching movies!! 

Now that 2014 is upon us David and I are looking forward to the excitement that is ahead of us. Misha will be turning 5 in a few weeks, Ryan will be turning 9 in a few months (his last year in the single digits), lots of little league games coming this spring and summer fun to be had!! I am so looking forward to the fun times 2014 has in store for us!! 

OK...Are you ready for the kinda big announcement??...Are you sure??...Ok, here it is:

David, The Boys and I have someone VERY important we’d like you all to meet. For right now I’ll refer to her as Baby C (until we decided on a name)...her listing name on Reece’s Rainbow is “Chava” but that is not going to be her forever name. Baby C is 4 months old and has Down Syndrome and is currently stuck in an orphanage in Eastern Europe. And the BEST part is she is going to be joining our family sometime this summer!!!! We are super excited to be adding another child to our family and I am excited to bringing a girl into my world full of boys!! 

We hope you all will join us on our exciting journey to bringing her home...I know we sure are excited to get the adventures of 2014 started!!!! Happy New Year Everyone!!!