We have been busy here. Ryan had a 5 day hospital stay. He had RSV and pneumonia. He is home now and doing very well. It will be fun trying to keep him healthy and out of the hospital for the rest of the Fall/Winter. This Tuesday he will be turning 1 year old. We had a fun day for Patti's B-Day. We went hiking up in the mountains, there was a waterfall there. Nathan wanted to go off the trail- that would have been bad. Enjoy the pictures.

More pictures

Aunt Wendy telling the kids a story. Nathan 12 hours after surgery. Ashley took a great picture of the Temple.

Temple

We had an amazing day at the Temple. Our good friends The Marx were there, Sister Bauer (who Steve has known all his life), and our Lawyer Ray, and family of course.Thanks for coming everyone. Ryan was a bit fussy but he was tired and hungry.

busy week

This is what Nathan thinks of his surgery.

Our Lawyer Ray holding Ryan, with Kelly Stohl our adoption case worker.

So Wednesday we went up to Westminster and spent the night at La Quinta Inn. The next morning bright and early we went to Adam's County Court for the finalization of Ryan's adoption. Came home Thursday evening, the next morning was Nathan's surgery. Came home around 4 p.m. Nathan did not sleep well until after midnight. Then we where up bright and early again to go to the Temple, this was earlier today to have Ryan sealed. Nathan was in a fairly good mood. We are all very tired but happy.

This was Spring Break, we had fun!

Ryan 6 months old

Well in two weeks Ryan will officially be a Ricks. He is getting so big, as are the other kids. I am still new to the blog world, I hope I can figure everything out.

We're home, and so is Ryan

It has been a while since we posted anything here, but the reason is really good news - having a baby in the house takes up all of our time.

So here's the short story - we scrambled to come up with the required funding and also to get the interstate paperwork done so that we could legally take our new baby from Georgia to Colorado. The paperwork came in just in time for us to make travel arrangements before Thanksgiving. The funding fell in to place as well (a sincere thank you to all who helped in this endeavor) . We flew to Atlanta on Tuesday, Nov 24. We had dinner that evening with the family who has been caring for Ryan (his name is Ryan Samuel Patrick Ricks) since he was discharged from the hospital. They are a wonderful family and we stayed rather late talking with them.

We got up Wednesday morning (Nov 25) and were at the adoption agency for a 9:00 AM appointment. The foster family brought Ryan to the agency at that same time. They dropped him off and then left to travel to extended family for Thanksgiving. We signed the papers, paid the money, and left the agency. The adoptive placement was now official. We had a lot of time before our return flight, and we spent the last two hours of that waiting at the terminal. Our flight landed at 8:30 PM and we were home by 11:00 PM.

Everything went very smoothly, and we all had so much to be thankful for on Thursday.

Here are some photos from placement day: