Spending Time Together

This week has been much of what we expected. Visits each day with the children and their friends. A few quick runs for chasing down documents and dinner with Jenya twice. Once at McDonalds and this evening Jenya came to the apartment. Tonight we had a Southern dinner of oven baked chicken, green beans with potatoes, Ms. Adelaide's macaroni and cheese pie and brownies with ice cream. He had never tasted green beans before, but then, we had never had McShrimps before either. Instead of Chicken Nuggets they have Shrimp Nuggets here.


For guessing on some of the ingredients...like which cheese might be most like cheddar...it all turned out OK. At least good enough Jenya ate seconds and took some home for later! Then again, my mama always said, "It doesn't have to be real good there just has to be plenty of it." We made a second macaroni for the kids to have tomorrow.

The older children all left Camp Victoria today and went back to Internot #4. School will start on Tuesday with First Bell. We hope to be there for the event that morning.

Monday morning at 10 am (our time) we have to meet with the regional director of #4 for a final interview to obtain her stamp of approval on our documents. Afterward, everything will be forwarded to Kiev central SDA office again for their final approval (that should take 5 business days) and we will have court as soon as possible after that. We are hoping and praying it will take place the second week of September. We will let you know as soon as we find out.

The children are all doing well and are all excited to be coming home with us. The older ones are opening up more and we've been enjoying our "picnics" this week. Andrei learned the word "obey" today. He also learned to ask for permission before he starts digging through our bags. It says something though that he feels more freedom to try to push the limits.

FINDING THE RIGHT WORDS
ANDREI'S BEST BUD

PLAYING GO FISH
LYONYA CARD HOUSE IS THE BIGGEST
All in all, it's been a good week. Carol had a 24-hour something on Wednesday but, after prayer and an all afternoon nap, was fine the next day. There are several changes going on as far as residents in the apartment where we are staying. Pray we move to the next location at the right time.

Steve goes tomorrow for a haircut...we will see if they can do flat tops here or if he ends up with a new look. Pictures tomorrow, unless it needs to grow out first!

Tomorrow is our wedding anniversary. (28 years) We considered going to Moscow for our 25th, so glad we waited to come to Odessa for such a time as this!

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday.

Blessings,

ANDREI'S DRAWING OF THE THREE OF US