And now a family of 6!

At 5:35pm central time yesterday, we received the phone call we've been waiting for.....We have been approved to become parents of the most beautiful five-year old little boy from Ethiopia! We're over the moon with excitement! Brad said he knew it was going to happen, but I didn't want to believe it until it was official.

Now, we have to get going on the rest of the paperwork for our dossier, but at least we have this little man's picture in our hearts, so hopefully it will make everything go a little easier. I wish we could share his picture with everyone, but for now we can only talk about him. We need to wait to pass court in order to post his beautiful face.

We thank God for all of his blessings he has given us!

Happy Birthday Jordan

Today is your 11th birthday~WOW, how time flies. We celebrated your special day on Sunday with the family and a party with lots of presents. Today, you rode your horse, went out to lunch at Channel Cats, ate ice cream cake, and picked up your cheerleading uniform. It was a pretty good day overall, except for your pouting at horse lessons. Oh well, a mere perfect day for the princess!

Where the Story Begins....

I'm no computer genius and I never will be. I've tried creating this blog for a few months now and I'm FINALLY making my first post. Hopefully, it won't take me so long from now on.

I wanted to start this blog to keep a journal of our day-to-day life in our Rucks' family happenings. I also wanted to keep this blog about our journey to international adoption and bringing home our son from Ethiopia. We've been on a rollercoaster ride since our Christmas vacation in 2008. We started out looking at adopting and then turned things over to foster care. We were licensed for foster care on March 9, 2009. After some heartache of getting ready QUICK for 3-year old twin boys and not getting them, I turned my efforts over to adopting from another country. It took a LOT of talking and researching, and talking some more, that Brad and I decided to adopt from Ethiopia. We decided on CHSFS out of Minnesota for our international agency. After going through TONS of paperwork and being only 2 appointments away from our home study being completed, we decided to jump ship and sign on with Holt International out of Oregon. This means we had to change our home study agency too. UGH! LOTS more paperwork.

On Wedneday, 07/08/09, I had a webinar with CHSFS and found out the wait for a 3 to 6 year old boy from Ethiopia would be 12 to 18 months. I had been told before that it wouldn't be so long, so I was totally disappointed. So, like I do so well, I started doing more research on the internet. I checked out Holt's website and their waiting children's listing, and found some boys in that age range and couldn't believe it. So within an hour after my webinar with CHSFS, I was calling Holt to inquire about their Ethiopia program and their waiting child program.

This was a huge turning point for us. By Friday, we inquired about 3 boys and fell in love with one little guy. He's absolutely adorable!! We told Holt on Monday, 07/13/09, that we were very interested in this little boy. We completed 4 more worksheets of information for them and waited. On Wednesday, 07/15/09, we found out that we were the only family going to committee for this little guy and we were elated. We met with our new home study agency on Friday, 07/17/09, and also had a conference call with Holt that evening. We will find out on Thursday, 07/23/09, if we are chosen for this adorable little boy. We're so excited!!

In the meantime, we're working on more paperwork for the home study and waiting for a phone call. Of course, we also have horse lessons, dog project, little league, 4-H projects, back-to-school shopping, cleaning, and tons of laundry. Time is moving so fast this summer. It hasn't really felt like summer because the weather has been so cool. Not too much swimming at the lake this summer, so far. Bummer!

This is our last week to sleep in too. Jordan and Noah will be going to summer school starting next Monday. I'm hoping to head onto my classroom and start setting everything up. I have so much to do during the month of August that it would be nice to get started.

Well, here's the first post complete and hopefully many more to come in the future!