As we wait....

As we wait...this is the hardest part. Our son is at the transition home in Kinshasa waiting for us to come and bring him home. We are getting updated pictures from families traveling but my heart aches to hold my son and bring him home to his family. Our life goes on here but Kai is missing. The empty chair at the dinner table, the second toddler bed that sits empty in Keane and Kai's room, three little boys wrestling on the beach instead of four....he needs to be here. We need him to be here with us. Praying that all of our paperwork gets back to our agency soon so we can go ahead and file our 1600. Praying I can stay sane these next few weeks.

Kai took his first plane ride today.

Kai took his very first plane ride today. We received an email from our caseworker that he arrived safely in Kinshasa. He is now out of the orphanage in our agency's transition home!! When I read the email I just cried. Out of mixed emotions of happiness that we are that much closer to bringing him home and I felt a sadness for him. Everything he has ever known for the last two years of has been the orphanage. I felt sad for him that he is probably scared and confused and has no idea what is going on. He did travel with a few other children so I hope that was comforting to him and that he will have a couple familier faces with him at the transition home. The really good things is he is safe, he is secure, he is getting three meals a day, medical care and love from the nannies that are there. We've seen pictures from the children that are there. They are all smiling. Another adoptive mom referred to the transition home as a "summer camp" before we go to pick up our kids. I pray that Kai will have fun with the other kids, I hope to see a smile on his face. I'm thankful that he is now somewhere safe. The other really awesome thing is while we wait families who are traveling ahead of us to pick up their children have offered to take pictures of all the kids who are waiting for their families!! I'm so excited we will get to see more pictures of our handsome boy (I hope to get a shoe size) and when we travel we will be returning the favor for other families! Where does this put us on the timeline for bringing him home now? I'm estimating 2-3 months...but I really can't say for sure. We are filing our 1600 stateside and we still have to pray the birth parent interview goes smoothly (as in arranging flights, etc). The embassy is requiring all birth parents to fly to Kinshasa for a face to face interview. I understand why. They want to make sure the adoption has been done in an ethical way. Tonight we went out and bought Kai a couple more outfits to send to him in the transition home. I've only ever seen him in 1 outfit at the orphanage which was all pink (shorts, shirt) and red shoes. We went out and got him some plaid:) Also some cars and suckers to share with the other kiddos. The Elmo birthday card...he turns 2 on October 25th!! Happy Birthday to our son..we love you so much and are counting down the days till we get that call that says, "you can book your plane tickets."

The judge signed...it's official...he's ours!

Today we woke up to celebrate my 2nd oldest sons birthday. Keegan turned 5 today!! He requested Krispy Kream doughnuts and we had a great breakfast:) I checked my email while eating and WHAM subject line "Judgment Update"!! We have the judge's signed approval that Kai is our son!!! We are in our 30 day wait, and during this time the typed adoption documents will be gathered (the original judgment is handwritten). I believe he will be able to move to our agency's transition home, out of the orphanage, after the 30 day wait. We were so very excited to receive this news. Within the past week a few other families have received the judges written approval as well, and a few families went to pick up their children in DRCongo. It has been a great week for good news! We are one step closer to having our son home forever. My heart aches to hold that little guy. Every night at the dinner table Keane (3) prays for Daddy, Mommy, Kaiden, Keegan, and to bring Malakai home at the airport. He also reminds me daily that Kai is his brother...."He's my brother mom, Kai is my brother..."

Updated photos of our son!

We received some updated photos of Kai last night!!! We were informed last Friday by our case worker that all of the families would be getting new photos of all the children that are in Kai's region. I opened that email to three pictures and the most beautiful almond shaped big brown eyes staring at me. My son..I have so much love for this child already. He looks so beautiful and he looks two! Our referral photos were of him much younger. I'm so glad that I have photos from him 12-20months of age. Those are so special to me to have. He is in the same pink outfit that he was in a few months ago in his referral photos and no smile as of yet. He looks sad and maybe scared that somebody is in his face with a camera. I just want to hold that boy and tell him everything is going to be okay. I can't wait to see his smile for the first time ever. I imagine him sometimes smiling, laughing and chasing his three brothers at the playground, just having fun being a kid. Having no cares in the world but legos and Lightning Mcqueen, bedtime prayers, and chocolate chip/banana waffles on Saturday mornings with daddy. It's getting so close until we have Kai home forever in our family, but it is still so far away. Right now we have no new updates. We are waiting for our court date and praying it comes soon. Our dossier has been in the DRC since July. After the judge signs, we go through the 30 days wait, Kai will officially become a Cameron! Then he will be moved to our agencies beautiful transition home where he will be very well cared for while we are awaiting his birth certificate, passport, and embassy date, and we will get loads of pictures of him while he is there. We are praying for a December travel date. Please be December...if not then I need you all to pray harder for God to give me patience. I would hop on a plane right now if I could!! Here are the photos of our beautiful Kai. I will be be able to post full pictures of him after we officially pass court.

Give1Save1 Africa family of the week!

Hola! We are the Give1Save1 Africa family of the week! We couldn't be more then excited and I'm praying God blesses this in a big way and we can get some funds to bring home our son. We are currently in need of raising funds for our travel to the DRC this December. How this works is we made a video below about our adoption journey to Kai. We posted it to face book, and on here, and we ask that people will share share share our video and donate a dollar or more to our travel fund. We thank you so much and we are so much closer to having Kai in our arms forever. blessings, Scott, Brittany, Kaiden, Keegan, Keane, & Kai :)

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.

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.