long promised pictures...(updated)

Okay, so I'm putting words with the pictures, and a few more pictures! 

First, for those of you reading for the first time, Thea is officially ours!  Unless something changes in the next few hours, we will leave for home on April 24 and I will come back on May 9 and have "gotcha" day on May 11, which is also her first birthday!  We wish she could just come home with us, but that seems unlikely to happen.  Still, we are so glad that it's official, and we are the parents of 3 little girls!

We decided to celebrate Easter this week with everyone else here, instead on the usual day of Easter at home.  Because of the area where we live, we are not supposed to go out at night.  Easter services begin here at 11 pm on Saturday and go all night until 6 am.  So, there wasn't a way for C to go...so we rented an apartment in town for one night!  It was pretty amazing to have wifi and be within a very short walk to a grocery store and restaurants.  We don't have any restaurants nearby and anything we do want to go to from our house is about a 20 minute walk each way.  So, a nice break!

I made Pascha bread using Martha Stewart's chocolate babka recipe.  It was ridiculous, but nice to do some insane cooking for a little while!  It calls for 2 and a half pounds of chopped chocolate, but when there are no chocolate chips or food processors, it means chopping 2 1/2 pounds of chocolate by hand.  It also calls for using a heavy duty mixer with a paddle for ten minutes...so I mixed by hand for 20.  Even so, it was a big hit and fun to do.

We got together our Pascha basket, which had butter with cloves in it in the shape of a cross, hard boiled eggs, salt, the bread I made, and a candle, and we covered it with a special cloth.  Then we went to church around 8 and had it blessed, which meant a priest used something similar to a small mop to throw water over us and the basket in the shape of a cross.  It was startling, but really neat.  I enjoyed the experience a lot.  E drew and cut out a tiny priest with a giant smiley face sticker head, so I guess she enjoyed it too.  Chris did go to church from 11-1:30, but we decided not to make the girls go for that!

Playing at the orphanage

 Little girl is very much like her biggest sister-she loves the swing but is serious about it.  Do not try to take her out though!

 The girls and I went to a playground that was very nice, and you paid to get in. 

E with the bunny cake

Making insane pascha bread

The girls helped decorate it (thanks Beth Davis for the book!  We used it constantly and will return it soon!)

Pat, pat, pat on mama's face

Thea has had a cold and doesn't always feel well for long

We found a great pizza place...finally!  A lot of the time their pizza is sweet and has onions and dill.  Gross.  I say finally-this was the third time we've attempted since we got to Kiev.  M wouldn't eat it, of course, since it isn't Little Caesar's, but she did manage to finish and wear a chocolate waffle from a street vendor.

Orphanage playground

Laughing at sisters

E is very proud that she can make herself go very high on swings now

The playground the girls and I went to also had a bouncy house, which was their favorite!

I have another post to load, but it's the middle of the night, so I guess I'll stop now!  (I did sleep and get up and will try to go back to sleep...I have trouble staying asleep all night here.)