Between my last blog post and today, we've cruised through a bunch of milestones. First and foremost, today we celebrate Zoe's gotcha day; 4 years ago today we met our big girl. Who knew what an adventure we'd have? I am having issues accessing our photo drive right now, so can't give the whole "that was then, this is now" thing, but amazingly, Zoe has grown up! A couple weeks ago we signed Zoe up for kindergarten...talk about milestones. I can hardly imagine we're embarking on the beginning of her school career. The program at our local public school is 4 days per week which I think will work out nicely for Zoe. On that same day, we had our final meeting with the social worker from our adoption agency for Phoebe's adoption. While there is no legal requirement attached to it, China likes to get updates on the children at 6 months and 12 months post-adoption. So our social worker comes over, asks how things are going, goes over some developmental stuff, and that's about it. But as she was leaving she made mention of "it was great to work with you all these years", and I realized we've been seeing this same social worker every 6-9 months for the last 5 years. From the time we started Zoe's adoption, the post-adoption follow ups, starting Phoebe's adoption, and on from there, we have had plenty of inspection into our parenting abilities. It's nice to have that era behind us...

 

It's with great sadness and a very heavy heart that I share another milestone, the news of our lab Blue...we put him to sleep early this afternoon after a brief and brutal fight with hemangiosarcoma (a nasty and aggressive cancer of the blood vessels that is basically incurable). It started with seizures on Phoebe's gotcha day, evolved into a bleeding tumor in his mouth which moved to his sinus cavity and brain, and ended with his passing on Zoe's gotcha day; without going in to the (literally) gory details, I'll just say the last 3 weeks have been filled with a lot of blood and a lot of tears. We wouldn't have chosen to do it on Zoe's day, but last night he took a sharp turn for the worse. We chose to intervene before the disease itself killed him, an unpleasant scenario where a tumor ruptures and they bleed to death. While Blue wasn't always a model dog, he was 100% loyal and we loved him so much. I'm sad, so it's hard to get motivated to write anything clever here; the house is quiet, so I am off to remember the best times with our friend and be thankful for having his love in my life.