Thank goodness one of my kids likes Shake & Bake Chicken! :)

I'm sure if Olga ever had dreams of having her very own family it probably included a mother who could actually cook.  That wouldn't be me.  I'm a terrible cook.  I can bake the pants off just about anyone, but cooking is not something I have ever done well.  I have a handful of dishes that I make that are, if I do say so myself, great!  And I will be making every single one of those dishes for Christmas dinner.  What I lack during the entire year in dinner making skills I make up for at one dinner.  But I digress.  Olga was introduced to two American staples today.  Kraft Mac & Cheese and Shake & Bake Chicken.  And no.  Not at the same sitting.  The Mac & Cheese was part of her lunch, which she really liked.  The Shake & Bake was for dinner tonight.  She poked at it and asked what it was with a worried look on her face.  She started in on the broccoli first.  Then the rice.  Finally she took a little nibble of the chicken.  And we have a winner!  Wheh!  You can probably figure out from the title of this post that R&M aren't too fond of Shake and Bake Chicken.  Seriously, though.  How many times can one eat spaghetti or grilled cheese for dinner?

Currently Olga and Jeff are out taking advantage of the late mall hours-open till 10:00 this week!  It will be interesting to see what they come home with as Jeff has a really, really hard time saying "no" to her!  I'm not great at it either, but I am able to do it when absolutely needed.  I have a feeling Olga is going to learn very quickly that Daddy should always be with us when shopping.  :)  The sad thing with them going shopping together is that R really wanted to go.  They were going to actually get him a specific toy for Christmas so he really couldn't go.  Jeff told him that Olga wanted to go shopping to buy both R&M gifts, so Rhys accepted that he couldn't go graciously, but he is very, very sad now.  :(

We have 26 days left with Olga here and 39 days until Jeff and I will be traveling to Ukraine!  While I had originally been hoping for an SDA appointment at the same time that Olga went back I can honestly say now that I am going to need those two weeks to finish getting ready to travel.  I am getting pretty much nothing accomplished these days.  :)  There is still that pesky moratorium vote that is scheduled for this week.  You remember, the one that may or may not stop adoptions for an undisclosed period of time.  Add that into the fact that the Ukraine Parliament just passed a new budget and decided to move the SDA under new management and have closed (or will close very soon) the SDA for the time being with no real timeframe for reopening and I guess you could say that nothing is written in stone.  There is nothing we can do but move forward and pray that 1) the moratorium vote does not pass and 2) the SDA (or whatever it will be called under the "new management") will reopen quickly without disrupting our appointment of January 31.  We actually have two sets of friends that have appointments during that time frame so we are all hoping and praying for this outcome!

That's all for now!  Thanks for checking in on us!

S~