Gotcha Day!!

I can't believe a year ago on March 24th the judge in Ukraine made Tetyana legally ours forever. Each morning leading to this day I would remind everyone at breakfast what we all had been doing the year before..."Today we landed in Kyiv." or "Today we had our SDA appointment" or "Today we met for the very first time." But on the anniversary of our court day I said nothing to the kids. I wanted to surprise them with a fun dinner out (can you tell I like surprises?) for some Japanese food. Tetyana has never tried it and I knew she would have a blast watching the chef prepare her food right in front of her while he did some tricks.

We had the best chef we have ever had! He entertained us the entire time and made some excellent food. After the knife slinging he did the normal tricks with the egg but then started flinging egg at us to try to catch in our mouths. At first I thought he would just try the kids but he did everyone at the table. It was a riot! I think only 2 out of 9 of us caught the egg. We wore most of it! I guess we should have brought our poncho's!

He lit the grill on fire which Tetyana could not believe! See her in background of the picture below? She loved the volcano too!

Luke usually orders shrimp and Tetyana swears she hates fish. I guess they served some pretty bad fish in the orphanage. She tells us it had bones and the eyes still in it! This I can believe. I have served her tuna casserole and she loves it. So we told her she and Luke were going to share shrimp and chicken. We can still pull the wool over her eyes! Again, she loved it. Next thing I am going to try is halibut on the grill. We had to tell her to stop eating because she was going to make herself sick. I should have taken before and after pictures of her plate! This girl can eat!!

We have decided that hibachi table cooking will be how we celebrate each year.