What I'm bringing for the trip

I'm packed already and ready to go.  I just have a bunch of last minute things to do.

I thought people might be wondering what we're bringing, and our plans when we see the girls.

We will get to see them for 3 days, pretty much all day.  They live not too far away from Sofia, and so we'll go by car every day.

Here is what I'm bringing.  I may not unload all these things because I don't want to overwhelm them.  I told myself I was going to keep it simple, but you know how that goes when you're excited.  And it is better to have too much than too little

• 3 outfits, mostly play clothes, 1 dress with a jackets, nothing fancy but cute
• 2 pairs of summer shoes
• bows for hair
• pink sparkly nail polish to do their nails
• glow in the dark bracelets 
• monogrammed backpacks

Craft and game things:

• beading set to make jewelry
• coloring books with crayons, markers, glitter glue
• blank paper tablet for their own creations
• jax set
• string (to make Jacob's ladder)
• Old Maid card game
• jump rope
• bubbles
• Wooly Willy magnetic toy (you know where you give them a beard and hair)
• 2 electronic V-Tech toys to learn the English Alphabet
• sidewalk chalk
• stamping stuff
• blow up baloons  

• Also got a recordable book singing nursery rhymes, like Old MacDonald (we still have to record)
• a photo album of our home (that we still have to put some pics in)
• Various snacks
• disposable camera where they can take pictures (will add pics to the photo album at end of trip

Anton is working on making some pictures for the girls.  I had to tell him that it can't be of Les Miserables.  (I don't want to freak these little girls out with such a dramatic story)  Well, he forgot.  He just asked me how to spell Jean Val Jean and had to remind him what I said.  So now he's drawing pictures of firefighters and the cats, but he really wanted to use this occasion to write and draw a complete story of some sort.

I'm bringing with me some books to read to the girls and my cool talking pen that reads both English and Bulgarian from these bilingual books I purchased. I have some young children's books that have no words, or very few words.  I also may show them a DVD of Anton's favorite cartoons that he liked to watch when he was their age, Little Bear  (they are so family-oriented and comforting).  But not sure if I'll bring that out.

We also plan on asking them a lot of questions, "What is your favorite..."  and "What makes you happy..."

I have it all packed and didn't think to take pictures of it first to post.

We will also be deciding on their names on this trip.  We don't know if they have nicknames.  We are pretty sure we will keep their first names as they are.  We might make their middle names after our mothers, but we'll decide at the end of the trip.

Gotta go.