Welcome to 2009 (and then some)!

Well, I want to first apologize for the long delay in posting. I'm not very good at this blog thing as you have seen. When things slowed down I had meant to write about other things but kind of failed at that. I'll try to get back to that, but here is some new somewhat random info.

On the adoption front ...
The end of the year was slow in Russia for a few main reasons. The first is due to the holidays at the end of the year. They take off extra time for it and actually didn't end their holiday time until just last week. This was for pretty much every region over there. The second reason was that they wanted to somewhat promote domestic adoption and fewer international adoptions makes the numbers 'look better'. The problem is that many parts of Russia are pretty poor compared to over here, so it's not easy to spend extra money on adopting a child.

We are getting back into things, working on finishing up the paperwork that we can do ahead of time. We have to go over an online training thing to familiarize us with the various steps in the process and how the travel goes. It gets you familiar with the culture differences and what to expect during the trip. We have even been looking at a minivan of all things. I'll post the picture if we buy it and I get some rims on it and fuzzy dice.


On the non-adoption front ...

George went to the vet last week for a follow-up blood test. His 'numbers' had increased, but the vet was more worried about his weight loss. He was down to 6.8 pounds which is a few less than his last trip in November. It seems like it is a cycle with not doing well then not eating then it making him worse, etc. The vet wants us to change to other foods to get him to eat more, including things like canned tuna. He certainly likes that and has been eating it more so we'll see how his weight goes.

I just got back from a hockey weekend in Georgia. I'm playing on a sort of travel elite inline hockey team. There are two teams, the 'major' team of older more experienced players, and a 'minor' team of younger players who can then move up to the other team. I had played on the major team last year and we did pretty good, but the way the did the schedule has us playing a single team during each weekend. This year they have a 'festival' where 4 or 5 teams show up to play each other. We were in Georgia so took a bus down there Saturday morning and got back Sunday night. We won our 4 games and now lead our division with 12 wins and 4 losses. I feel tired and sore but it was fun. I'm the oldest which is funny. I think that the next youngest player is 24, with most on the major team being about 19. The minor team is 16-17, so I'm the old man on the team.

That's about all for now, although probably not much that is very interesting. Post comments if you don't like to hear this random stuff I might post and I'll try to adjust the content.