Thank You Cards

The kid's birthdays have come and gone without even a mention of it here on the blog. I do have pictures of the events and maybe I will get around to writing up a little something, eventually.

After Priya's party, I asked her to sit down and write "Thank You" cards for the gifts she received. I just gave her some blank cards and let her go to town. Afterwards, when I had to address them I was impressed with her creativity and thoughtfulness, so I thought I should record it here. I especially like her honesty about the coloring book in the first card. Also, in the second one, she has learned to use the dash for continuation of a word at the end of a line, but I see she hasn't figured out that it should be used between syllables. (as always, click the image to enlarge)





In stark contrast to Priya's eloquent cards, Sanjay's contained gross overuse of the word "awesome". He dictated and I transcribed the following Thank You's for his friends:

• The moon sand is awesome, and I can't wait to play with it.
• It was so cool because if you pull this thing off, the "prellers" on the plane spin.
• I love the car wash; it was so great. I even used it a couple of times already.
• It was so awesome because one time me and Priya played the Horseshoe game.
• It was awesome the Bakugan. One time we put together the Bakugan and when it was together it was awesome.

Farewell to Amma

As of this post, Amma has safely traveled halfway across the world to her home in India. She reached in tact, however some of her belongings never left our home. While converting Sanjay's room from a guest room back to his own, we discovered a huge bag of items in the closet which didn't make it into her suitcases. Ooops! Looks like starting the packing more than a week before her departure didn't seem to help. So, now we must find out how to get those items into the flat-rate box which already contains 12 lbs of the excess baggage and is bulging at the seams. I'm gonna let Bartee sort all this out.

Her presence is missed and the cooking has significantly decreased in quality... but we will eventually slip back into our old routine.

I put together some videos (Part 1 and Part 2) of the visit as a souvenir DVD for her, which I thought at least some of you might be interested in viewing. Some of you are even featured, so keep your eyes peeled. For some reason, YouTube thought my "Part 1" video was a copyright infringement, so they cut out the audio. But as they say "pictures are worth a thousand words", so the message will still be conveyed. They are both roughly 5 minutes long. Enjoy!

Update: I just went to the blog site and tried the "Part 1" video and to my surprise, the original audio is there. Hopefully, you get the same thing. I did try some funky audio swap tool from YouTube which didn't seem to work. Looks like it resulted in a bug that let my original audio come through. :)





And, just to entice you to visit Colorado... as I'm always begging you all to do... I've thrown in a Colorado Scenery video which I made as well. I apologize for the abrupt ending. I was planning on going back to change that, but didn't get around to it before she left. Perhaps one day I will finish what I started.

Dinosaur Ridge

In an effort to do some last-minute tourism, we took Amma to Denver to see Dinosaur Ridge and the Hammond's Candy Factory tour. Dinosaur Ridge was really interesting as we were able to see and touch fossilized dinosaur bones in their natural environment. Sanjay and Priya are both fascinated with these creatures, so they were glued to the tour guide the whole time. They even had some facts to add to his story and he was a willing listener. It was a personal tour as the five of us were the only ones crazy enough to do this in the winter time. :)

Highlights of Amma's Trip

Amma will be leaving in just 2 weeks... the time has gone by too fast. She's been here with us since the end of August and we will miss her a lot when she goes home. There are so many friends and family back in India waiting for her return, so we must let her go. During her visit we have run the gamut from spending lazy days at home to shopping all the local thrift stores to sight-seeing out of state.

She visited New Mexico, Niagara Falls, Denver and the Rocky Mountains. She reached the summit of Pikes Peak by train and immensely enjoyed the view from 14,000 ft. She met and became close with several Indian families from our town. She engaged herself in a few heated, but fun political debate sessions with one of our close friends. She ensured that we celebrated all the Hindu festivals properly... which sadly we do not do when she is not around to help us. She entertained three groups of my friends by teaching them Indian cooking, making them laugh and quizzing them afterwards. She invited and has been invited to several dinners with a variety of friends, each time wowing them with her fabulous cooking. Although she had a lot of fun with all these activities, they are not among the top entries in her most memorable experiences.

On Monday night this week, my neighbor took her finally to a place which she'd been asking to see since her arrival. Unfortunately, I had something else going on so I could not join them, so imagine my disappointment when she came home talking about what a great time she had and how it was her favorite thing from the past 4 months. They went downtown to the local soup kitchen to feed the homeless. My mother-in-law, who really cannot stand the smell or even the sight of any meat, served pasta with beef in it to those in great need. She asked a lot of questions of my neighbor about the shelter and I can only imagine she was as curious as a child with her eyes wide open observing the whole night closely. She is in her element when she is helping people. It is her passion and it's very inspirational to me and everyone around her. Luckily, she traveled with her camera and we have a couple of pictures from the night. Thanks again Laura for helping make these memories for Amma!





Turns out that this morning I had the good fortune of being with her when she added another thing to her list of "most memorable moments". Together we worked out the details of a slideshow on Indian culture and she presented it to a classroom full of first graders. The kids called her Paatti and were thrilled to have a real visitor from India joining them. Amma talked for almost an hour and the kids were engaged the whole time... of course, she'd promised them a yummy Indian sweet after the lecture. :)



I really admire Amma for stepping out of her comfort zone and making these fun plans during her visit this time. She really knows how to keep herself busy... one thing for sure, Amma doesn't have a lazy bone in her body.

Happy Holidays

Still haven't put together a holiday card, but I did squeeze out this video last night. It's more fun than addressing and stamping all those envelopes. :)

First Weekend of December

Wow, it's been so long since I've posted that I actually had to log in this time. Geez, I gotta make more time for this. Anyway, there are some older things to post, but I'll get to that later.

Saturday was filled with all things Christmas. First, we went to a museum where the kids made far too many ornaments to add to our family tree. One of the stations with foam cut-outs was so irresistible, that I even had to make one myself. They spent a lot of time there working on several masterpieces. Some of them turned out fantastic and others, well, they fell apart before they even reached home. While the kids were busy writing letters to Santa and making ornaments, some adults were dressed up in silly costumes and putting on performances in the main lobby.



After the museum event, we headed over for the Festival of Lights parade. We should probably make this an annual family tradition, but there are some years where the weather just doesn't cooperate. It looked like it would be warm this year, but actually it was quite frigid and a bit windy. Amma managed well considering the circumstances. Because of street closures and the crowd, we had to walk about 2 blocks to get to our special viewing area, conveniently located just outside a nice Mexican restaurant downtown. Luckily, we grabbed a table inside that we used as "base" during the parade. Every once in a while, we peeked outside to see the various high school bands and lighted floats passing by.

Waiting for a table in the restaurant, Amma is keeping all the winter gear on because people are continuously coming and going through the front doors letting all the cold air inside. It doesn't look like she's having fun, but that's because she is still thawing out from the long walk to get here.



Most of my parade pictures turned out like this:



But I did manage to get a fun video of one of my favorite entries, the Transportation Department of one of the local school districts:

Birthday Morning

While delivering the kids to school this morning we avoided a couple of times ending up in a fender bender. The roads here are treacherous before the sun has a chance to start melting it. I'm convinced that the only thing that can effectively melt snow is salt and it makes up such a small percentage of what they dump on the roads here. Therefore, we get a lot of practice driving on ice, and let me tell you... the minivan doesn't do well on that stuff.

After dropping Priya, this conversation ensued:

Sanjay: Mom, how many years are you today?
Me: Thirty-nine
Sanjay: Well, we can just put 5 candles on your cake then.
Me: Why 5?
Sanjay: Because thirteen is way too much.

To an almost five year old, I guess thirteen does seem like a big number. However, I draw another conclusion from this and that is that Sanjay has the listening skills of his Daddy. Poor fellow.