HAPPY EASTER!!!

I love this song!  I was singing it over and over again in my head this morning as we walked to the orphanage.  It has been hard to not be home over Easter.  Todd mentioned this morning how hard this would have been if we would have traveled over Thanksgiving or Christmas...oh man, very difficult.  We started watching, Jesus of Nazareth, last night but fell asleep just as Jesus was born.  It's a 6 1/2 hour movie but we really want to watch it as we celebrate Christ's birth, life, and resurrection.  Tomorrow we are going to watch LBC via podcast but I really, really wish the worship music was aired too!!  Oh well…youtube and my MP3 player will have to doJ



This is a lamb cake my mom baked for us before we left for Ukraine.  This is a tradition in our house...to have a lamb cake every Easter after church, lunch, and an Easter Egg Hunt.  I ate the ears off of him before we left and Todd ate the head.  We froze the rest of it for when we return:)



This is the Ukrainian cake tradition.  We aren't sure what it is called, but as you can see, it's HUGE!  We nibbled on it a bit last night and it's basically a dry raisin bread with icing on top:)

This morning with "Bo Peep"...

We decided to walk to and from the orphanage today because the taxi is running us $40-60 per day.  We are running out of money!!  It's about a 30 minute walk one way and it is beautiful!  Since we are moving tomorrow to a different apartment, we are going to gauge the time to see if we can do this each day as long as it's not raining.  If anything, we will get a ride to the orphanage in the morning, then walk to the mall with Internet for the afternoon "down time" and have the taxi pick us up after the evening session. 

This morning we were greeted with a little woman who was not happy to see us!  She burst into tears when she saw us then ran the other way...  We quickly put on her "outside clothes" and carried her to a play area out back.  She cried and cried as Todd held her for about 10 minutes, then I started blowing bubbles with my gum.  "Bo Peep" really liked this and became interested in this instead of missing her friends. 
We mostly played in the sand box and she mimicked the different ways we filled buckets and emptied buckets.  She was not at all interested in the hard-boiled egg we brought her.  We took 2 dozen eggs to the children today in honor of Easter and "Bo Peep" didn't seem to like them.  She did love the Banana Puffs again:)  As we said our good-byes, she gladly ran our passports to us, waved, then blew us kisses good-bye!


This afternoon with "Bo Peep"...
We had a MUCH different reaction today with little woman!  She came to us in her pink, Winnie the Pooh shirt and two poofy white pigtails!  We dressed her for playing outside and played with ALL the toys I brought.  We listened to Disney songs on my MP3 player...she didn't seem to care about them at all but Todd had his first dance with her:)  We played more in the sandbox then we read books together.  She is so smart!  "Bo Peep" maneuvered a monkey on a zipper, opened and closed a velcro toy box, and laced a shoelace through a hole.  She also matched every picture with the correct button and was able to pick them out in a mixed page of all the pictures.  She enjoyed an entire, mushy banana, some Veggie Puffs, AND some Banana Puffs.  She completely mastered the stacking cups and liked building another tower.  We had a fun day together! 

Thank you for your continued prayers, encouraging notes, and support!  We are going to the doctor on Tuesday to learn more about her health and I hope to learn more about the extent of her cleft palate.