Josh, this was an above average income woman, in that she was the widow of a well-known author who wrote many books after the collapse of communism. Make no mistake: Bulgaria has a lot of history, but it's an entirely modern country. Nearly everybody has appliances... well some appliances, anyway. Every washing machine I saw was front-loading and in the kitchen. Nobody has dryers. Everybody has at least one balcony, and they line dry their clothes. This is true of both city and country folk. I didn't see a single dishwasher while I was there. Also, I experienced very little AC, which was uncomfortable only in that we were experiencing record highs (100+ F)... this accounts for us spending so much time in the (cooler!) mountains! Here's a picture of a backyard in the next city we went to. Notice the satellite dish? When we left Irena, she asked if we would copy our pics to CD and send it with Vesko on his next trip by. Concerned about compatible file formats, I asked (through my interpreter) if she wouldn't prefer prints. She laughed and said "No, I have a TV, a DVD player, a computer, and more. Your file formats won't be a problem." One last thing about Kovachevitsa, its designation makes its property very desirable... especially to people from other EU nations looking to snap up bargains. Irena told us property has been selling in this village at the heretofore unheard of rate of 1,000 Euros per square metre ($147 US per square foot?) Sometimes we change things the most when we try to keep things exactly as they were! After Kovachevitsa, we went to Leshten. Lots to see here. There are beautiful gardens attached to restaurants, and some very charming old buildings have been converted to hotels. There are only two official residents of Leshten. It was dark, but Vesko knocked on their gate and asked them to let us in to meet them. They were in the middle of milking their goats (!) but they obliged. She's 76 and he's 81. Five times they begged us to drink rakia with them, but we were reticent to continue our interruption so late at night. They could not have been friendlier or more charming. By this point I was understanding a surprising amount of what was being said. Certain phrases amused me though... One was "Dah Bah Dah" which was interjected quickly in a conversation when the listener agreed with the speaker ("Dah" means yes). To me, it always sounded like "Yabadaba-doo!" and would always make me giggle. Well Vesko had a surprise for us at the very top of this hill. He called it the "Yabadaba-doo house" for obvious reasons. Vesko found the power and we turned on the porch lights and enjoyed a fantastic view. He said he knew the owner and had always wanted to stay here (no one was when we were there). He said the house had satellite and wifi. I wondered why anyone would go to what seemed to me to be the end of the earth to plug in. We walked back to the car (much easier to negotiate those cobblestone hills when one is sober and wearing proper footwear) and drove back to our hotel in Ognoyanovo. We wanted to eat dinner on the patio by the pool, but there were no free tables, so Vesko got the waiters to carry an indoor table outside to accommodate us. Vesko had told us he had a surprise for us and asked us to wear our swimsuits and cover-ups to dinner. After dinner, he strapped a spelunking light to his head, took us off the hotel grounds, walked us across a narrow and precarious suspension bridge (daylight pics don't do it justice), and up the road for about five minutes to a geyser-fed hot spring mineral bath that's been operational since Roman times. The moon was bright and barely waning, the air was clean, cool and fresh, and the water was bath-tub warm. My friend is a very driven woman. She's a serious scientist with lots of business responsibilities... and we learned about then that she's also a hopeless "city girl." The whole way up she was terrified of encountering snakes or bears... and even frogs! After we had soaked for a good long time, we went back to the hotel grounds, sat in a circle, and drank Vesko's pear rakia until the call of sleep finally became louder than the chorus of crickets. Steve took these pics the next morning... they don't do the experience justice. And thus ended our fifth day, and second with Vesko...

Well, I'm sitting here eating your cookies, Roselin, and have to say thank you for a delicious new recipe. These are really delightful, crispy, great flavor and texture. They're sure to become a standard in our house. I wondered as I was shopping for ingredients what would happen with substituting regular oatmeal or as Lorna mentioned, Irish oatmeal. Have you tried other oatmeals or does the cooking in butter require the texture of the instant? I have an entire box of regular sitting in the cupboard and it looks so forlorn. Sue

You are 100% right! While you have been more than accommodating in helping with his parental responsibilities, these are his and his ex's children, not yours. In a perfect world, all parenting would be done by him and his ex, leaving you to be find your place with them somewhere between a friend and a parent. But life is not perfect and of course in the real world, if you live with him, occasionally you will probably need to "fill-in" in a parental roll. But I think that should be it, filling-in in a pinch. Him and his ex should figure out a plan that does not rely on your help on a daily basis. My GF of five years and I have always been very aware of this (she has one son, I have daughter and son). Granted, we don't live together, since we didn't want to "blend" families, but when we are all together, we are very aware of who has the parenting responsibility for who. For example, discipline is not to be dished out by the step-parent or BF/GF....it should be the responsibility of the parent. Of course it's easier said than done, and it takes work to figure out how to handle certain situations, but it's the general idea that is important. He and his ex need to figure this out. Tell them you will be there to help out in a pinch, but they cannot rely on you to do their job on a daily basis.....ESPECIALLY if their girl is not nice to you when you are helping out!

No Costco in my state but I might peruse Aldi. Don't know about their quality. I just got the paper cups in tonight for the toast. Hubs says drinking champagne out of paper cups is tacky but I am not doing plastic, no way. Initially I was going to buy glass and give them out as wedding favors but the costs of these two weddings are setting me back about 1/4 of my yearly salary already. So I guess this is one of those "conventional or not?" dilemmas.