I thought you were coming back!?

Yeah...so maybe I lied a little bit. I said I'd re-activate this blog, did a HUGE "what happened in the past year" update...and then disappeared again! Sorry about that!

I think instead of catching up again over the past month or so, I'm just going to write about what's going on right now and take it from there!

Right now...nothing is going on haha!

Well, we are still working on our Russian adoption. The most recent news on that front is that the judge who was supposed to set our court date decided to reject us instead. Our agency has been trying to get some more paperwork together to re-submit to the courts (hopefully in the next week or so) and we'll see where it goes from there. But right now, we're in limbo. Everything is uncertain. At this point, even after waiting for a year and a half, we could be told that we'll never be able to be Alexander's parents. That would be horrible and devastating and I try not to think about it. On the other hand, they could come back and say "oh this new paperwork is great! Come on over! You can have him now!" We just have no idea. It's hard because we really can't make any plans - we've actually been struggling with that since January, which is why we really haven't traveled much this year. It seems like we're always in this situation: "Well, we could be going to Russia in like 3 weeks...so we better not make any travel plans!" But then Russia never lets us come...so we just don't travel anywhere at all unless it's super close or, in the case of Tuscany earlier this year, super cheap even last minute. So yeah, that's where we stand with that business.

This coming weekend, we're driving down to Paris for JAPAN EXPO!! I'm super excited!! I haven't been to an anime convention since we moved here and my last one was Otakon 2009, so that was just about 2 years ago. That's...insane. This will be my 25th anime convention! I'd love to have a little party or celebrate that milestone...but it's just me and Regan. So I guess I'll wait and have a con-party for my 30th! Hopefully that will be a con in the states and I can be there with some friends and family. I'm really curious to see the difference between this con and the cons I've been to in the states. I won't be able to make any blanket statements about "European" cons in general until I go to a few more (I'd love to go to a German one and an English one before we move, but we'll see), but it will still be interesting! I've already noticed a few differences in how they run things just based on their website! I'm not cosplaying (so neither is Regan haha), but I am working on making some new clothes to wear. Just a couple of cute skirts - I'll be going for a "fairy kei" kind of vibe! Regan will be going with a "everyday clothes" kind of vibe haha.

In other news, I think I have a stress fracture in the top of my foot. It hurts pretty bad today, but usually it's just a dull ache when I bend my foot a certain way. It started a few weeks ago after a particularly hard run on the treadmill and has been sore ever since. I was worried it COULD be a stress fracture, so I haven't run in a few weeks. Yesterday I decided to just walk on the treadmill for a while, and today I'm feeling the effects. I think it's because I put the incline really high yesterday. I don't know what else could be the problem because I've been on my feet a lot lately and it hasn't caused any problems. Anyway, I hope I'm feeling better by this weekend. It would be a real bummer to have a hurt foot at Japan Expo.

And that's all the updates for now! I'll post a convention report after we get back from Japan Expo!