What Christmas is all about...

New video of Anton

Apostilling we will go Appostilling we will go...

Kenya and I took a trip to Austin on Monday to get some more things apostilled for our adoption. She was so excited to get some alone time with Mommy and I loved getting to hang out with just her for 2 days.

The first part of the road trip was AWFUL! It was raining and there were times when I couldn't even see the road. Ms. Kenya slept the first half of the trip which was nice because I was trying really hard to focus on driving and nothing else.

I tried to take a short cut to get to the highway which ended up adding at least 30 minutes to our trip. Then our GPS took us the wrong way and then had us do a u-turn at the next exit which added about an hour to our trip because there was so much traffic.

Once it had stopped raining and traffic cleared up the rest of the trip was nice and easy.

We stopped at Rudy's BBQ  about 2 hours out and I just have to say I LOVE their food. It is by far my favorite BBQ ever!

Here we are enjoying our meal (sorry about the lighting I am still learning how to shoot in manual).

And here is our food. Loaded baked potato with meat YUM, corn on the cob, turkey and 2 root beers!

This church is pretty close to the Secretary of State's office and I think it is beautiful!

We were in the office for maybe 5 minutes they called us up printed the apostilles, stapled them to our paperwork and we were off. 

Her face cracks me up in this picture! 

Kenya took this picture and did a pretty good job I thought.

Our photo shoot in front of the capital did not go well. The pictures were turning out awful then I realized Kenya was standing in the shade and the capital was in the sun so once I moved her into the sun it helped the lighting a lot. At that point though she was done taking pictures so this is the best we got ha.

Kenya was so excited to get to see her family in Austin! This is Uncle Toe Toe and one of her cousins Anisa. 

And here is a shirt I got for our soon to be (well maybe sometime next year) Texas Cowboy!

Over all it was a great trip. I loved spending time with Kenya and visiting with family in Austin. 

Still here and waiting...

There is not a whole lot going on right now with the adoption. We are just counting down the days until we can go meet our boy for the first time!!! 

November 11th was Melody and Madison's third birthday and although we miss them so much we are so thankful for the time that God gave us with them! 

I wish I had more to say but there really isn't a whole lot to report.

 I hope you are all having a great week! 

SO way beyond excited!

I have some very exciting news.... WE RECEIVED OUR TRAVEL DATES for our first trip!!!!! Now before you get too excited let me explain what this trip is. When we go to Eastern Europe this time it will be to meet Baby A and officially commit to his adoption in Eastern Europe. We will not have court this trip and we will not be bringing him home this trip. But I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to know we are going to finally get to meet our BOY!!!!  I have thought  about this day non-stop for almost 9 months I can't wait to love on Baby A! We are not going to be sharing our travel dates but I will say we will be going before the end of the year!

After this trip we will come home then we will have to wait two or three months for a court date. Once we get a court date we will go back to Eastern Europe to adopt Baby A. Once we are approved in court there is a ten day waiting period before we can take Baby A home. We still have a long way to go but we are getting so much closer!!!

Please be praying for a safe trip for us and that Baby A will not be freaked out by us being there. I am so hoping to get some amazing cuddle time with our boy but I know the reality is he might not want a whole lot to do with us. Either way I just can't wait to be in the same room with him!!! Please also be praying for some paperwork that we are trying to get for court. The wording has to be done a certain way but so far it hasn't been done exactly right so please be praying we could get this taken care of quickly.

More exciting news!!!

I found out that our dossier is  translated and will be submitted to the Ministry of Education soon!!! I am so excited and I will update y'all once it's submitted!!!

AHHHHH SO EXCITED!!! Adoption Update!!!!

I just found out the office that accepts dossiers is back open!!!! As soon as our dossier is finished being translated (I thought they were done with it) then it will be submitted and we should get a travel date not too long after that. I will not even try to guess timing on this because I have been wrong every time but I am so excited right now we can move forward again!!! WOO HOO! God is so so good! 

Giveaway has ended... Kindle Fire Giveaway for Anton!

The giveaway has ended. Thank you guys so much for all of the love, prayers and donations! Your support means the world to us! 


Congratulations Tony D. we will be contacting you by email

-----------------------
We are giving away a KINDLE FIRE!

Participate in this fun ‘givaway’ for a Kindle Fire and help bring Baby A home!!  

Don’t need a Kindle for yourself?  Participate anyway, and consider this as a wonderful Christmas gift for a loved one!!  Think about how far a $5.00 donation can go… one less Starbuck’s coffee, one less happy meal,  that is it!!!!

WHAT IS A KINDLE FIRE?
Coming November 15, 2011.

Details (from Amazon):
Full color 7'' multi-touch display, with wi-fi

18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books Thousands of popular apps and games Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle Fast, powerful dual-core processor A video demo!

(For more product information, click HERE!)

HOW TO ENTER:

- For every $5.00 you donate, your name will be entered. ($20 = 4 chances)

- All proceeds to Baby A's adoption fund!

- Tweet about the giveaway and you will be entered in the giveaway (make sure you leave a comment letting us know you did this)

-Share the giveaway on FB (make sure you leave a comment to let us know you did this)

-Post a blog about the giveaway and you will be entered  (make sure you leave a comment to let us know you did this)

- The winner will be chosen by Random.org.  The winner will be contacted through their PayPal email address. If the winner does not respond within THREE days, a new winner will be chosen.

- You may submit entries until November 18, 2011.

- You must be a United States resident to be eligible for the Kindle Fire.

Don’t Miss Out On This Opportunity!  Spread the Word- FACEBOOK IT! TWEET IT! BLOG IT!
Or any other way you can spread the word for Baby A!!! Thank you so much for your help!

Remember, you have until November 18th!

Video of Anton

This video was taken right after they transferred Anton to the better hospital I'm thinking he was about 11 months old. The lady holding him is his nanny and the only Mommy he has ever known.

Our Boy

Having to make this blog private is kind of bitter sweet. I am totally bummed out I can't share it with all the people who have followed Anton's story for so long but I am so excited I can now post pictures since it's private. With that being said PLEASE NEVER NEVER take any content off this blog and post it anywhere else.

This is Anton somewhere between eight and ten months old. This is when he was in the first hospital. They didn't know how to care for him so they swaddled him all day and as far as we know never really interacted with him. He had pneumonia several times and the doctors have said they don't know how he survived. What amazes me it despite all that he is still smiling.

This is Anton around 11 months. He had been transferred to a different hospital where they love him and take amazing care of him. He has a nanny that lives at the hospital with him and all the staff really care about him. They are all super excited that he is coming home to us but are also really going to miss him.

Here he is at about 19 months old. He is doing so good and is getting so big. I long for the day when I get to hold our boy and kiss those cheeks!

Our dossier is in Anton's country and is translated but the Ministry of Education is still closed down and we can't move forward until they reopen. It was getting really hard to wait not knowing why the Ministry of Education was closed down and not really knowing how long they were going to be closed I was getting super frustrated but then I was reading the Book Respectable Sins (confronting the sins we tolerate) and it said this "If I complain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty and goodness of God and tempt my listener to do the same." I was so convicted by this statement. I will say all day long that God is sovereign and I trust Him but when it comes down to it if I am complaining and saying I want to be in Anton's country NOW and I wont be happy until that happens then I am not trusting that God is sovereign. I am wanting my way and my way now. I have repented for doing this and I pray you will forgive me if by my complaining I have cause you to doubt the goodness or sovereignty of God.

If you don't mind praying for us we would love that. Please be praying that we would glorify God through this process and that in His perfect timing we would be able to go get our boy.


Trust in the LORD with all your heart
         And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
         And He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

Sorry if I scared you.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to start out by saying I am so sorry if I scared some of you by making this blog private. A few days ago we were advised to make our adoption blog private due to some issues going on in Baby A's country (nothing major it's just a precaution). It is very important that we are not linked to Baby A online at any point in this adoption until he is legally made our son on that amazing day in court. We have decided to make this blog private and just put updates on our family blog. They won't be super detailed but I will make sure and post the important stuff like when our dossier is submitted to his country, when we get a date to go meet him, when we get a court date... all the important stuff. I will be very careful and be very vague about who we are adopting but don't worry Baby A is still our boy.

We can't wait to bring him home and the way I look at it is I can either post way too much information on here (posting pictures and sharing information about who we are adopting) and risk losing our referral or I can keep quite for a few months, bring our boy home and share him with you all the time. I choose option number two...

I know so many of you have invested your time, money, prayers and love into this adoption and I can not tell you how amazing you have all been. I hope you are not hurt by this but again we have to do what's best for Baby A and our family.

I will leave the blog public for a week in hopes that everyone will get this update. You can still follow us on our family blog but PLEASE PLEASE don't post anywhere online (until after court) our blog link and say we are Baby A's family. If that happens I will have to make our family blog private too. You can also email me at any point if you have any questions vkdelgado@hotmail.com

Thank you again for everything!

Good news and bad news

Good news... our dossier arrived safely in Eastern Europe and has been translated.
Bad news... the Ministry of Education has closed down for an unknown reason and for an unknown amount of time. Our dossier can't be submitted until they reopen.
Please be praying they reopen quickly. There are a lot of families whose adoptions can't move forward until they reopen.
I will keep yall updated.

Letter to Baby A

My sweet baby boy it seems like it has taken forever to get to this point in the adoption but at the same time I feels like everything has gone by so fast. Our dossier has arrived in Eastern Europe so it is just a matter of time to get it translated and submitted to your country so they can invite us to come meet you. I can not wait to hold you for the first time and tell you I am your Momma and that I loved for from the moment I saw your picture.

I want you to know you are loved and wanted. Your big sister Kenya tells everyone about you she can not wait to have you home! Your brother Judah says Bubba every time he sees your picture. I pray y'all will always be best friends. 

Your Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and cousins can't wait to meet you. Our family always talks about you, about how excited they are to meet you! Our friends can't wait to love on you too!

 We can not wait to bring you home and introduce you to your family you are going to love them sweet boy. Thinking about bringing you home floods me with so many emotions. I am so excited to get to be your Mom and do whatever I can to take care of you. I can't wait to read to you and play cars with you. I can't wait to take you to the museum and the Zoo. I can't wait to tell you all about our great God and savior Jesus Christ! I can't wait to tell you that God is the only who formed you in your Mothers womb and that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. I am sad to tell you how your story started but I will tell you one thing sweet boy we will always assume the best about your birth parents. I am not sure why they didn't take you home from the hospital and do whatever they could to take care of you but Anton we will trust in God's sovereignty and now that he will use all of these things in your life for His glory and your good. I am so sad when I read about how hard your life was for the first ten months but I am blessed beyond works when I read how well you are being taken care of. 

Baby A you have a nanny that is with you twenty four hours a day seven days a week. She is the only Momma you have ever know and she loves you so much. She lives at the hospital with you and you are her pride and joy I am sure of it. She watches you so closely and makes sure they you don't get any unnecessary new boo boo's. You are very attached to her and you really only want to eat and go to sleep for her. It breaks my heart to think about taking you away from her. I know it is going to be so hard on both of you. I hate that for you and for her. I hope to always keep in contact with her and give her update on you as you grow up and Lord willing one day I would love for y'all to meet again.

Baby A the hospital you are in has taken such good care of you! I am so thankful for them. They love you and I know that they are excited for you to have a family but they will be a little sad when you leave them. We will send them pictures and tell them how you are doing as you grow up! 

There are so many people all over the world who love you more then you will ever know. They can't wait to see you come home to your family. There have been so many people praying for you and helping raise money for your adoption. 

Our church family has been amazing. They helped us raise money for your adoption and they are all looking forward to loving on you. 

My sweet boy I know you will have a lot of changes coming up in your life soon but I want you to know your Daddy and I are going to do whatever we can to make it easier on you. We love you sweet baby boy you are  a special special part of our family! 

Love,

 Your Momma! 

We are so blessed.

A few months ago I got an email from someone who had found out about Baby A through a mutual friend, she instantly fell in love and wanted to help raise money for his adoption. She told me her daughters first birthday was coming up and instead of asking for gifts they were going to ask for donations for Baby A's adoption. I was so blessed by her email and so excited to know how many people wanted to see our boy come home.

Her daughter Sydney had her birthday party on the 10th and we received the package from her birthday party today. We were so excited as we opened the box and looked through everything that was inside.

All of the gifts were so thoughtful! They sent several books to help Baby A learn English.

We got a Target gift card which will come in handy. They also took donations and sent us a check with all the money they had collected. We are so so blessed!

Baby A's  whole body will be covered in Aquaphor before we bandage him and we will go through about 3 tubs a week.We were very blessed by all the Aquaphor they sent us. 

There were several tubs of Aquaphor in the package and these little ones. I was so excited when I saw these because they are perfect for the diaper bag. 

I was so excited when I saw this little dino in the package. When I was pregnant with Judah Kenya picked out a bear dressed in a dino outfit for her baby brother (even though we didn't know what we were having). It has now become his favorite toy and he sleeps with it every night. I was hoping to find a dino for Baby A too but couldn't find one I liked. When I saw the dino they sent I got so excited because it was perfect! It is so cute and so soft I know Baby A is going to love it.

Ms. Sydney thank you so much for giving up gifts on your very first birthday to help bring Baby A home. We are so thankful for your life and we pray you would use your life to glorify God in all that you do. Amanda and Blake thank you guys so much for helping us bring our boy home you have blessed us more then you will ever know! We also want to say thank you to all of Sydney's friends who donated to Baby A's adoption in honor of her first birthday.

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY SWEET GIRL!

And off it goes.. UPDATED

UPDATE: OUR DOSSIER ARRIVED IN BABY A'S COUNTRY ON AUGUST 31st!!!!


This is me getting ready to mail off the last little bit of our dossier to our agency in America on July 23rd.
They had to create a list of documents and prepare our dossier to be sent to Eastern Europe all of this took about a month.


I am overjoyed to let you all know that our agency mailed off our dossier today and it is on it's way to Baby A's country!!! It will take about a month to get there and get translated then it will be submitted to the government in Eastern Europe and we will wait for a travel date. I am hoping we will get to travel for the first time at the end of October to meet our sweet boy! That is just a guess though we wont know for sure until they give us a date :). Please be praying that our dossier gets there quickly and we are submitted as fast as humanly possible. We are so so thankful for God's faithfulness to our family we can't wait to go meet our baby boy!

More exciting news!!!

We just heard from our agency and our dossier is PERFECT!!!! We don't have to redo anything. I am so so so excited about this!!! All of our hard work has paid off and for now we can just sit back and wait for a travel date. We are still several weeks away from that point but it is so nice not have to do anything right now!!!!

I am just rejoicing and praising the Lord!!!

Exciting news while we wait...

Our completed dossier is still at our agency in America and as far as I know our agency hasn't gotten a chance to look at it yet. I am a little bummed out about this but I know they have to work in the order in which they receive the paperwork. I know a lot of families are using our agency and some of their children and living in horrible conditions waiting until their families can go save them. I want to be able to meet Baby A LIKE NOW and bring him home soon but I can rest knowing he is being taken care of by people who love him and want what's best for him. His nanny is the only Mommy he has ever know and she takes such good care of him. It is so nice to be able to move forward with the adoption and not have to worry about our boy.

 And now for the exciting news... We received a check in the mail for $4,000!!! That means we only need to raise $9,000 more and we will be fully funded. We are just rejoicing and praising God for His faithfulness! Although $9,000 may sound like a lot I am just excited to be under the $10,000 mark. We are getting close!!!

Thank you again to everyone who has donated money, done fundraisers and prayed for us. We are so so blessed!!!

Fundraisers for Baby A

Hi everyone, I wanted to let y'all know that Baby A's fundraising blog is in full swing so go check it out!

Right now there is Thirty-One gifts fundraiser and several different kinds of Starbucks Coffee up for bid.

Go check it out HERE and check back often for more items up for bid.

Thanks!

And it's off

I just wanted to let everyone know we mailed our dossier to our agency last week!!!! It takes a few weeks for our agency to create their documents then they will mail it off to Eastern Europe. Once it is in Eastern Europe our agency there has to translate our dossier and create some more documents which can take a few weeks to get done. The lady at our agency in Eastern Europe is going to be on vacation for a few weeks this month so that might slow us down a little bit.

My guess and this is just a guess is that we might be traveling for the first time in September to meet Baby A and officially commit to his adoption in Eastern Europe. Then we have to come home and wait for two to three months for a court date. After that we will go back to adopt him and bring him home! So maybe in November or December depending on how long it takes to get a court date.

We are excited to be getting so much closer!!! We know that God's timing is perfect and we are just trusting Him to work out all the details.

I may not have any updates for awhile because now we just wait but if anything new happens I will update you all.

Road Trip!!!

I finally got everything together for the dossier so my little sister Destinee and I decided to drive four hours away and hand deliver the dossier to be apostilled. Everything for our dossier had to be notarized then apostilled which just means the state of Texas made it an official document and put a gold sticker on it. Well I was hoping it was going to be a gold sticker turns out it is just an orange star on the paper (lame). Anyway Destinee and I had  a great time hanging out on the 3 or 4 hour drive there. I'm not exactly sure how long it took???

Once we got there we parked kinda far away from where we needed to go so we used me handy dandy GPS to help us find the building. The only problem is I didn't put it on the "walking GPS" so it took us a super long was cause it thought we were in a car and there were a lot of one way streets. Once we got there and realized we parked a block away not 5 we couldn't help but laugh.  

We made it! 

Destinee took this picture and I thought she did a great job :)

While we were waiting for the apostilles to get done we asked where the Capitol was and it turned out to be across the street from where we were. We were super excited to go check it out. Oh and everything went well with the apostilles I need to redo a few notaries and send them back in but I should be finished with those things tomorrow! 

Here I am in front of the Capitol! 

We gave ourselves a little tour of the building. This was a super cool door hinge. 

This heart reminded me of Melody and Madison.

This is the first time I have been inside of the Capitol Building and it was beautiful! 

This little stair case at the top was so neat and so randomly placed.

I have no clue what is done in this room because we didn't want to wait for the tour guide but whatever it is I'm sure it is important. 

We had a great time and I was so excited to get most of our apostilles done. We did this on Friday the 15th then I mailed then to our agency on Saturday the 16th and guess what we got in the mail on Saturday??? OUR FBI BACKGROUND CHECKS!!!! I was so excited it was the moment we had been waiting for! Those have to be federally apostilled so a friend is getting those done for me this week!

What does it all mean? Hopefully by next week our agency will have our WHOLE dossier. I can't wait to say this part is over. It has been hard but Baby A is so so worth it!

I will keep you all updated! 

Praise God the dossier prep fees are now paid for!

I am soooooooo excited to tell you all we have more than we needed for the dossier prep fees!!!

Here is how it all went down:
I couldn't wait to start getting everything ready for the garage sale so when my friend Taylore brought over a van full of donations 2 weeks before the sale I was so excited! We packed it all into our garage and I loved looking in the garage knowing it would be used to raise money to bring our boy home.

Fast forward to Friday the day before the garage sale we had several friends help us for HOURS going to pick up items that people were donating then taking them to our church. We had a TON of stuff and there was still more coming. After church we had a lot of help so we went ahead and set up all the stuff for the garage sale in the church parking lot.

 We are a fairly new church so we don't have a building yet and we meet at Grace Church when they are not having service. Their church has been such a blessing to us and we were so excited they were going to let us do the garage sale there. They even donated items for our garage sale.

Jason and two of our friends volunteered to stay all night and guard the stuff. We started moving stuff out at about 9:30pm and didn't get done until about 12:30am. During that time we made $300 from people pulling up and wanting to buy stuff while we were setting up. It was crazy but exciting. I think I finally went home around 2am and fell asleep at 3am. My alarm went off at 5:45am and at that moment of my life I was not at all excited about the sale ha. Once I woke up though I was super excited. I got donuts and headed to the church. I got there around 6am and from about 6 till 11:30am we had steady traffic. It was really neat the way the Lord worked it out because just when we were getting tired a new volunteer would show up to help us. I can not believe how many people helped us I can not thank them enough.

We put up tons of signs.




The sky was so beautiful!




We had a ton of stuff this picture doesn't do it justice. Thank you to everyone who donated items to our garage sale. On Friday night a family came to donate stuff they had read Patrice's blog for a long time and found us through her. It was so great to meet her and her husband!

We set up a donation box with Baby A's picture on it and we had a lot of people donate that way.

This is my dear friend Shannon and her kiddos Eli and Jadyn. It was so neat to have so many of our friends come out and support the adoption. We also handed out fliers with Baby A's story and and link to our blog so people knew what they were donating to and could follow our story. 

Everything went really really well once we were finished with the sale we started packing everything up and it started to rain. It was kinda refreshing because it got kinda hot toward the end of the sale but then it got so humid. We were rushing trying to get the TV's out of the rain.

I met Angela when I was staying with Patrice her family was going to be moving to Texas very soon and very close to us. We were so excited to get to spend time with them once they got here. Well they have only been here for a week and they came at the end of our garage sale to help us pack everything up and to clean the church. I was so blessed they were able to help. 

The garage sale went amazingly well. We were so tired and we are all still so so sore but I am so thankful we were able to do it.

 I can not thank everyone enough for all of their help! It was so neat to see the Lord use tons of different people to help get us one step closer to bringing our boy home. 

Thank you so much to everyone who donated stuff, picked up donated items, set up until 1:30am Friday, stayed at the church to guard everything ALL NIGHT LONG, helped run the garage sale, bought stuff, and helped clean up. It went really really well! It was so neat to see the body of Christ working together to bring sweet Baby A home. I also want to thank everyone who donated through our chip in and who gave us money to go toward the dossier fees we have exactly what we needed! 

To God be the glory!

GARAGE SALE IS ON!!!

WE GOT LOTS AND LOTS OF STUFF!

This wedding dress is in great condition.... no stains:

We got baby stuff (cloths, toys, jumpers, strollers, and much much more)

TVs:

Lots of clothes:

Baby/toddler bed, co-sleeper

Stove in great condition (very clean, looks new)

Bikes, fold out bed couch, etc...

Lots of shoes of alot of different styles:

It is a beautiful morning out right now so come visit us and help with our adoption fees :)

We are at: