Monday, July 16, 2012

Sending some goodies to Africa!

Now that we have received our official referral for "K" we can send him a care package once a month! It's very exciting to pick out some goodies that we can squeeze into a gallon size zip lock baggie to send to him once a month. Hopefully we don't have to send him too many of these. We'd much rather have him home in our arms and we are praying and hopeful that it won't be much longer.
These are all of the goodies that we fit into the gallon sized ziplock bag. Two outfits,flip flops, gummy vitamins, family photo book, elmo, squeezable fruit, gummy bear packs.
Of course Keane picked out this Elmo for his baby brother tonight. They will be exactly one year apart..they both have birthdays in October....they are sharing a room...Keane carries around "K's" picture a lot. They are not only going to be brothers but good friends:)
And we made it happen!!! Everything fit! Now it's off to the post office tomorrow to send off to our agency who will then send it on to the Congo...which will then be taken to the orphanage where our son is currently staying. I told my husband tonight...this is probably the first material possessions "K" has ever owned/received. He is almost two year's old. And what will most likely happen to the items we are sending him is they will be shared throughout the whole orphanage...which is great. I remember when all my boys had their first and 2nd birthdays and we had celebrations for them and they received so many gifts just for their birthdays from family and friends...too many gifts... It's hard to think about. I think we should start giving less for birthday's and Christmas and start giving more to others that have literally nothing at no fault of their own....just the fact that they were born on a different continent where it's hard to survive. Our over abundance of material possessions is not so great when their are families who can't feed their own children. So until we can actually book our tickets and fly to Africa to bring home "K"...this is as close as we can get to him right now. Through our once a month care package and we are squeezing all the love in that we can.

Monday, July 9, 2012

July 4th..Happy Referral Day!!!

July 4th.....we weren't going to spend this one with fire works and a cookout with good friends and family. Not here in Puerto Rico anyways. I was feeling a little down that day. Just being away from the States. Holidays feel different here and well independence day is not celebrated here the same as we celebrate it in the states. We went to the rainforest.
We got home around 8:30pm....I didn't think to check my email all day. I wasn't expecting to hear anything from our agency on the 4th of July. At 11:30pm I just happened to check my email on my phone real quick and there I see it...Your Referral of Seraphin!!!! My heart skipped a beat and I did a double take...what?! really?! This is really it?! I called to my husband to grab the laptop so we could open the referral and see a very beautiful almost two year old boy staring back at us with big brown eyes and sporting an all pink outfit! Oh how our boy has grown! He is a handsome little toddler now and no longer the one year old boy we had been staring at for the past couple of months. We love him so much already and we really would love to travel to Africa TOMORROW to bring him home. Until we can go get him our dossier will be sent to the Congo and we will wait patiently for a court date. Until then we will be able to send a monthly care package to him. We will try to squeeze in all the love we can manage to fit into that care package until we can actually hop on a plane and go and bring him home. Our adoption fees are paid in full. We sent the remainder of the agency fee's today!! The only amount we need to raise is for our travel. We will be having another fundraiser...more to come about this in another post! We also have a name for our little guy. We are naming him Malakai and I'm sure he will have a nick named shortened to Kai (as his older brothers are already calling him this). Malakai means angel of God in Hebrew. This is the name that we wanted to name our next child if we were to have a boy. Turns out God knew who our little angel was by sending us Seraphin. Which is also a name that means angel. His birthday is also right after Keane's...another October baby. Some of you know all of our boys birthdays are ten days apart. Kai's is twelve days after Keane's. So we will be having one big fall birthday celebration for all the boys. We hope to actually be able to travel to the Congo by Christmas to bring him home. Keep reading our blog and I will update you along the way. Thank you to all of our friends and family who have been so supportive!!!! We are so so blessed, and please keep praying for Malakai.