Travel Dates!

The moment we have waited for over a year for will be here in 11 days!!! We leave for Eastern Europe in 11 days to finally meet our son.  I am excited, nervous, anxious and scared all at once. I have so many thoughts running while that it's almost overwhelming! But I can't wait to finally hug him and see his beautiful smile! We will be in country for almost 2 weeks, I will try and update as much as possible while we as there. I think the hardest part will be having to say see you later to him and hope he knows we will be coming back to bring him home. I have a bag full of things to do with him while we are there, I also have some stuffed animals for him and a photo album that we can hopefully leave with him. My 6 year old asks me almost everyday "are you going to get brother tomorrow?" And I have to say "no baby maybe by Christmas he will be home." We all feel like this is taking so long, but we know that it's all in HIS time. For now we must be patient and trust in HIM.

In time

We received verbal referral almost three weeks, which means our dossier has been approved and we are just waiting on the minster of justice to sign it and issue our first set of travel dates!! It usually take three weeks for this to happen and this Wednesday will be 3 weeks!!!This wait is  killing me, last year on Easter is when we knew "Kyle" had to be a part of our family!! That was one year ago and we have yet to meet this little boy that has our heart. Hopefully by mid to end of May we will be in Europe holding him for the very first time!!!!!! Everything we do already involves him, this weekend we went to Seaworld and we talked about our little guy the whole time an we got him a souvenir for when he come homes. It wouldn't feel right if we hadn't done that, he is our son even if he isn't here. Its like when you are pregnant you start buying items for your baby to have once they make there arrival in this world, its no different to me. I buy things for him every chance I  have so he can have things he hasn't had in his 10 years of life. I know it's all material items, but he already has my heart! So i have started packing a bag with items I plan on taking on our first trip for him to play with and we will hopefully get to leave him a photo album with pictures of his family and new home. Once we visit him we have to leave him and come home for 4-6 months while our adoption is finalized, so we leave him to photo album in the mean time, then we will travel one last time to bring him home! This can't happen soon enough. I know this is all in Gods time, but the wait is still very hard.

Coming together

A lot has happened since my last update. Ryan "Kyle" on RR turned double digits this month!! I also had a birthday this month. Lots of sick kids and parents this month with this weird weather. So our deadline to submit our dossier was this month an we were still short around $1200, but a anonymous donor donated the full $5500 to our adoption agency which we needed to submit our dossier!!!! Praise The Lord!!!! We are still in shock over this and are happy to say our dossier is in Eastern Europe going through translation and will hopefully be officially submitted this upcoming week. Once it is submitted we wait for approval then referral and travel dates. So hopefully by the beginning of this summer we will finally meet our son!! It has been one year since I saw his picture and felt the instant attachment and need to bring him home. It's incredible to think one year ago I inquired about him and received his medical information and pictures and cried every day thinking about this little boy who had just turned 9 living in a institute all his life, this little boy who had yet to experience the love of a family. Here we are now, one year later and he has spent his 10th birthday in that institution, which will be his last birthday there!!! How I wish he knew he has a family doing whatever is necessary to bring him home. Soon we will get to hold him and tell him just how much we love him and have prayed for him and are so happy to call him our son. Every day I think about the moment I get to see him, hold him, hug him, and bring him home to his brother and sisters. Our daughter who is 6 talks about him every day almost has if she knew him from birth, everything includes him!! Brings joy to my heart knowing they think of him as their brother. Soon Ryan you will be right here with us and all this will be a blur all the pain and sadness you have endured will be in the past. I know whatever you have gone through will be unforgettable but we will do our best to love you and help you move forward in our family. We are ready son!!!

USCIS!!!

We received an amazing email that said our USCIS application was approved!!! Which means that once we get that in the mail we will send it to the state capital to get apostilled the we can send it to our adoption agency. Which will then send it to Europe with the rest of our dossier! Unfortunately it's not that easy, in order for us to submit our dossier we have to send $5500!! In December we were given a 3 month extension to finish our dossier, which will expire in March. If we don't have our dossier in country by March we will be forced to release our son and our adoption journey will end, and our son will be stuck an orphan! Just the thought of that makes me suck to my stomach. We are so close!  I hear a song on the radio almost every day and it keeps me going "Don't quit don't give in you're an overcomes!"  By Mandisa Overcomer. I'm staying in this until the final round! 

Another step forward

Last weekend we were out looking for a new vehicle we spent all day at the car dealership with our 4 kids and had no luck. I was feeling really down about it since we are needing a vehicle with more space soon. We got home around 8:30 pm Saturday night and I checked the mail, guess what was there?!! Yes our biometrics appointment for USCIS!!! I thanked god it's like he knew that was going to make everything better and it did!!! The stress of that day flew out the window. We are getting the last few documents apostilled for our dossier and then we will send that to our child's country to be translated and the only thing that will be left is our USCIS approval which we pray we will soon get. Which means we will hopefully be traveling to meet him the end of April or beginning of May. We are so grateful for everyone that has prayed and donTed to our family to help us bring our son home. This journey has been full of stress and tears but it will all be worth it. We are all anxiously waiting the day he walks into our home and life's forever.

New Church... Faith growing

We attended a new church December 22nd, 2013 and we truly feel welcomed. We have only attended 2 services but everyone is so nice and friendly and the service is great! They have a great band and sing Christian songs, songs we have never heard before. It could be because we have not actually look for Christian music, but either way they are amazing songs that just seem to fit exactly how you feel. They played a few songs that touched me, one says "Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders

Let me walk upon the waters

Wherever You would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

And my faith will be made stronger

In the presence of my Savior"      This song just makes me think of how we have jumped into our adoption with no questions asked. Yes in the beginning our big fear was coming up with the funds we will need but we soon started getting signs that this was meant to be. This is our SON that has waited so long for us to find him!!! My faith is growing every day!! At the end of this Sundays service we received a personal prayer specifically for our adoption which made my husband and I feel an indescribable way, almost like gods reassurance that he was with us through this and it will be fine. God will not lead us this far and fail us, he has a plan and we are following it. With that being said we have sent off our USCIS application, which takes about 90 days, at the most, to receive approval. We pray it goes a lot faster and that we can raise the funds to submit our dossier as soon as we can. We appreciate all the prayers for our family and our son that is oceans away! We are also selling silver plated book marks for $5 they are made by my daughter and myself. If you are interested just send me an email mrzanzaldua@gmail.com. Thank you!!

One Less

Update..... Since my last post we received our finalized home study got it apostilled and sent it to our adoption agency and we got it to Eastern Europe just in time! What I mean by that is that we had 6 months from the time we committed to "Kyle" to at least have the home study part of our dossier done and we got it there the week it was due!! I would be lying if I said I didn't have an anxiety attack at the post office when the gentleman said it wouldn't get to my case worker until Monday (which it needed to be in Europe by Tuesday). But somehow someway we got it there on time. So now we have sent a few final documents to be apostilled for our dossier and the next step is our I 800a application which is over $500. But we have been blessed and an awesome women I have never personally met has sent us a donation to pay for our I 800a application!!!! She is an amazing advocate for these children and is also the same persons that helped raise a large amount of the funds in his grant through Reece's Rainbow, which we will get to use for his adoption once we get our travel dates. This is a very long stressful process but I know it will be worth it in the end when we get to bring our son home. I did some calculations this weekend, added up the total cost we have paid so far and we really don't know how we have done it!! But we thank everyone for their donations, support and prayers! I am truly amazed at what this process has done for my children also, everything they talk about includes their Brother! Every little penny they find goes to his jar they try to figure out different ways we can raise or save money! It really shows me that we are doing something amazing and my children are learning from this experience.