I haven't been as good about writing and updating the blog this time around. That might have something to do with having a very energetic, medically complex five-year-old this time.  But, I thought this important update deserved a full post! We are matched with the sweetest little 18 month old girl in India. We can't give a lot of information until she's officially ours, but we are all in love! Ruthanne looks at her pictures everyday and talks about all the things they are going to do together.  Some common questions we've gotten... 1. She does also have medical needs, but not the same diagnosis as Ruthanne. So, we will be navigating a new disability, specialists, etc with this little one! 2. Yes, this adoption has gone A LOT faster than Ruthanne's, but we really have no way of knowing how quickly the rest will go. No pandemic should hopefully help this time around though! 3. Why? We have a heart for children who need families. There is a staggering number of kids i

 That's right, here we go again! We are so excited to announce that we are starting the process to bring another sweet child from India into our family.  Ruthanne is so excited to be a big sister. 

Finally -- We booked our flights! We're heading to India on Monday, February 21st!  We still don't have information about Ruthanne's passport appointment, but we decided to step out in faith and go be with our girl. Since they haven't applied for her passport, that means we have one-way tickets with no return date. We are hoping the timing will work out and we'll only be there for three weeks, but we know that everything is unpredictable and we could be there much longer. Either way, we'll be together. Our whole family together and complete for the first time in three years.  I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm terrified. "Go with the flow", "spontaneous", or "laid back" would never ever come up in a list of things to describe me. Being in a foreign country for an unknown amount of time during a pandemic is scary and it almost stopped us a few times from deciding to go ahead and go. Thankfully, my husband is the exact

  One year ago today, on February 2, 2021, we saw the face of our daughter for the first time. She was wearing a green dress and had the most precious little smile. We instantly knew she was going to be in our family.  A whole year has passed since this precious child has been ours in our hearts. Now, she is, as of January 18th, 2022, legally our daughter as well. She is Ruthanne Vishakha Ramage. She is a daughter. She is loved. She is wanted.  We have spent everyday of the last year praying for her. Praying for her health. Praying to be with her soon. Praying she knows that she is loved so much. Praying for the tough transition she will face leaving all she has ever known to come into our family.  We have had the great privilege of getting to video chat with her regularly over the last year. This isn't very common with international adoptions so we don't take this honor lightly! We are so glad we've gotten the chance to get to know each other, even for just an hour or so a

  We are registered in court! It's been seven weeks since we got our No Objection Certificate. Every day of the last seven weeks, I have checked the Indian courts app for Ruthanne's state to see if our case had appeared yet. Finally, this morning, there we were! Our first court hearing will be next week on December 23 (while we sleep on 12/22 in the US).  Over the last three years of our adoption process, Christmastime has always been the most difficult. Seeing little girls in big red hair bows and hearing stories of kids visiting Santa just made me long for our child even more. This season has been the hardest of them all so far. Now, we know our daughter and wish more than anything she could be here experiencing it all with us.  When we matched in February, we really thought that having her home by Christmas was realistic. And usually it would be, but if you've been following our journey for any amount of time, you know we've encountered a delay at pretty much every s

We got NOC! Finally, an update! After four months, we have an update to share. This morning, as I was heading into work, I got an email from our agency saying we had received our No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CARA (India's national government adoption authority). We needed this document from CARA in order to be registered for court. We applied on June 23, so we had been waiting for this one approval for four months.  Honestly, I think this last month has been the hardest of the whole three year adoption process for us. We celebrated our daughter's 3rd birthday 9,000 miles away from her. Ruthanne was sick and we couldn't be there to comfort her or even know if she was ok. Plus, we were still waiting on this approval with no end in sight. We prayed fervently. Our friends and family prayed, but it felt like we were going nowhere. A couple of weeks ago, CARA had asked for an updated document from Ruthanne's orphanage in order to issue the NOC and after that request, w

 Worry If you know me, you know I'm a professional worrier about pretty much everything. Going through an international adoption during a global pandemic hasn't helped that.  We're at almost nine weeks of waiting for our No Objection Certificate (NOC) from CARA (India's adoption authority). This is the last document we need before we can be registered for court in India. At week 8, we heard that CARA wanted some additional information and documents from us. While it wasn't the news we wanted to hear, at least it was something! Then, I began thinking (re: worrying), "what if what we provide isn't good enough?", "what if they don't think we are fit to be her parents?"  There are also staffing shortages within CARA and changes to the court process happening right now. All things that can affect our process and timeline greatly. That doesn't even begin to mention the awful second wave of COVID that has been going through India the last fe