I still can’t believe that at this time two years ago we had just found out that we had guardianship of our sweet Rani and were preparing to take the trip to India to get her.  What a road it has been since that time.  It has been a rollercoaster of emotions, both good and bad, both happy and sad.  And here we have come full circle and it’s like we never began but have always been.  Rani is vivacious, lithe, beautiful, spunky, and just plain wonderful.  We are so grateful to the Lord for guiding us to her…she is a sweet blessing in our lives. On the 31st she will be celebrating two years home and five years on this earth.

In honor of Rani’s fifth birthday and second “gotcha day” I have created this slideshow.  It has almost all the pictures we have of Rani as a baby in the orphanage up until this week.  Thank you so much to Shelba for the song idea…it’s just perfect. (it’s a Windows Media file so you might need Windows Media Player to play it)

Rani’s Slideshow

We have made the decision that I will stay in Africa no matter how long it takes and not leave our new children.  I just can’t feel right about leaving my kids there while we wait for their visas.  I know it will be hard on my family and on the babysitters.  We will probably have to do some juggling of children…but I just don’t feel right about leaving my babies!  It will be a good opportunity for me to get to know the new children before arriving home and to start breastfeeding the baby(if there is a baby for us).  It will be good for Finn to get to know his new sister too, with nothing else pressing that has to get done. 

It sure would be nice if the US embassy in Nairobi just let us on through instead of putting us through weeks and weeks of waiting.

I’ve narrowed it down to two names.

Sylvia(Sylvie) which means “out of the forest”
and Adela(Adelle) which means “sweet and noble”

I hope the Lord has two girls in mind for us!