Update Time

Why, hello there….soooooo… as you can see this post is about 6 months over due….Life has been so busy, it’s wonderful and crazy and I wouldn’t have it any other way!! In my last post I talked about going to court and being named parents to our little girl “Baby C”…Well good news we passed court on August 14th and brought out sweet girl home September 4th!!! I know I had promised a name announcement for “Baby C” so without further waiting here is:

Madeline Amelia Chellson

This little girl is awesome!!!….She has grown so much since being home and continues to show us what she's got on a daily basis. She is sitting up, army crawling like nobodies business, and working on pulling to a stand, as well as, wrapping us around her little fingers on a daily basis. She has learned how to fake cry for attention, which makes me laugh every time she does it, she is talking up a storm and we will hopefully have some speech therapy going in the next few weeks….The last few months have been filled with lots and lots of family time for us and in the new year we’ll be working on getting her to meet more of our friends but for right now we are adjusting and enjoying our family of 5!! 

I would love to write this long recap of our last few months but honestly I’m not sure I can totally remember…I can say life is good and my heart is filled with loads of love, laughter and happiness on a daily basis. In exchange for a not so lengthy recap, here are some pictures of our little family over the last few months…Happy looking and have a great week!!! 

Love, 

Melissa

 They love each other so much!!

~My average weekend nap partners~

 Misha lost his first tooth in the past few months!

 ~Ryan & Misha's First day of 4th Grade and Kindergarten~

 Date night with my favorite guy!!

 ~Madeline's 1st pumpkin patch visit~

 ~I ran my 4th 1/2 marathon~

 ~Ryan loves his sister~

 ~Working on their sharing and play skills~

 ~Mommy-Son date to watch the Oregon Ducks Play~

 Someone can get herself into the sitting position without help!!!

 ~First trip to Disneyland~

Happy Holidays~ Love, The Chellson's

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