Archive for February, 2017

  • 28 Days of Hearts

    Date: 2017.02.25 | Category: Uncategorized

    I was asked to share out story on the 28 Days of Heart blog.  It has been a pleasure to share our story during the past years.  Our story has changed a lot from 2013 to now.

    This blog shares the hearts of parents who have adopted children from China with heart defects.  They share the ups, the downs, the blessings, and trials.  Your heart will be moved by reading these beautiful stories.

    Here is ours…

    28 Days of Hearts

  • Big Family – Big Dreams – Big Story

    Date: 2017.02.16 | Category: Uncategorized

    Group story time at the Ellsbury’s can result in some enthusiastic and sweet stories from our wonderful children. One of these stories is below, and highlights the sweetness of our babies and how loving they are to others.

    Super powers of the Super Middles and Super Littles:

    Elyse – power of invisibility, and can fly on a good day

    Gracie – can make things invisible and can make any baby stop crying

    Jasmine – can wrap up people in yarn super fast and can make baby blankets super fast

    Hopey – can do super scary makeup that makes people faint

    JJ – can fly and sing people to sleep

    Max – touches people’s heads and they can’t hear for 24 hours

    Ben – super fast and has super long arms

    Eli – super strong and has super long arms

    Liam – makes people forget to remember

    Maisey – can turn into cute animals

    Evie – can instantly paint the walls in a room and talk really, really fast

    Lainey – can turn anything into a baby bottle

    Mom – has extra arms to feed lots of babies and always has lots of extra love, never sleeps

    Dad – super doctor who loves babies and does anything a baby tells him to do


    One day the Super Littles and Super Middles realized they couldn’t adopt any more, but they still wanted to.  They started devising a plan to be spies and figure out how many kids they could get home and fit in their new house.

    Eli had already started building a big beautiful castle with 777 bedrooms to house all their new brothers and sisters.  Eli was super strong and really fast so the castle was almost done.   Evie had started to paint all the rooms.  She painted them orange, yellow, green, blue, red, purple, and pink just like the kids’ special colors.

    The house was amazing. There were huge rooms for everyone to sit and watch a movie.  There were tables that were super long and super big where everyone could eat.  The table was a special machine invented by Zach and Reece that could make food in large quantities.  Codey had a giant table full of Kindles for all the kids to play with.  Cassie and Stephanie helped decorate the house and ran a special store where we could get all our supplies.  The store was in our front yard and everything was free.

    The middles had been devising a plan to make an invisible jet to secretly fly across the ocean to their orphanages to adopt more brothers and sisters.  They had been practicing taking care of babies and they were sure they could do it.  They each remembered kids that they wanted to bring home to be their brothers and sisters.  Some kids were little and some kids were older just like them.

    Maisey reminded them that they all needed “to work together”.   She gave them a very special pep talk. She wasn’t kidding.

    Elyse and Gracie became invisible and snuck JJ and Liam into the building so JJ could fly around and sing everyone to sleep and Liam could make them forget so they wouldn’t come after the super heroes.  Ben and Eli were super fast and picked up the kiddos in their super long arms and started putting them into the airplane that was invisible because Gracie touched it.   Max made it so people couldn’t hear them so they wouldn’t be caught.

    In the jet, Maisey became a really, really cute bunny that could talk to make all the little kids feel safe and happy.   Lainey made bottles for all the babies.  JJ sang to the babies so they would go to sleep.  Daddy looked over everyone and made sure they were doing ok.

    We flew home to our rainbow house that lights up and plays the song “We are Family” really loud as we drive in the driveway.   Mema was there to meet everyone and she fainted when she realized she had 777 more grandchildren.

    If anyone bad tried to bother us in our new house, Hopey would put on zombie makeup to scare them, Jasmine would wrap them up in yarn, and Eli would make the bad guys do tricks like backflips and make them wear big mustaches.  Maisey was always a cute little bunny but if someone was mean she would turn into a crocodile and scare them.   Evie would talk, and talk, and talk, and talk until the bad guys ran away.  (Not sure why we have bad guys visiting but it seems we do.)

    Every day we all sit in a giant room with a ton of computers where everyone plays Minecraft together and goes to school together.  We are happy all the time all day long.   Mama is so happy that she gets to love everyone and teach them.  The house is a magic house like in Beauty and the Beast and it cleans itself.  And we have lots of chickens so we can all have spicy chicken feet! Yum!

    We have a giant superbus that is really long and two levels.  Steph and Cassie have super powers and can do the girl’s hair fast (542 girls – so they have to braid FAST).  Everyone is very happy to have a family and we celebrate together because….

    “All our dreams came true.  We have a big, happy family!”

    THE END