Celebrations galore

Writing from Bengalooru. Getting completely pampered and can get so used to this. On a three week trip back home, we spent the first week with the inlaws in Hyderabad and will spend the rest at my place in Bengalooru. Will post separately on the Hyderabad week, but highlights were - my sis in law was visting at the same time and the girls had an absolute blast with her, so much so that A was walking around at night looking for 'Bua'; a lovely visit to the Hyderabad Zoo (we saw so many animals!), catching up with an old friend, Mission Impossible 4, and some fun time for the kids at GVK Mall Fun Zone.

We reached Bengalooru day before night. My parents had planned a surprise party for us last night. The surprise element was kind of ruined as one of my cousins mentioned to me that I'll be seeing you on Sunday when i spoke to her earlier, and I had planned to catch up with a friend on Sunday night in B'lore and when i told my mom about this she asked me for her number to speak to her and that immediately made me suspicious. But it still remained quite a surprise as i expected only one of my cousins to land up and some uncles and aunts but so many landed up! My mom had called most of my cousins in B'lore and friends of my cousins whom we knew!

Thank you dear Mummy and Daddy for the lovely surprise. I had an amazing time catching up with everyone and the kids enjoyed playing with their cousins!

My parents had bought Diwali crackers and diyas and stored them for us, so we lit the diyas on the balcony in the evening. Then as the party started we burst crackers. S enjoyed the hand sparklers and kept asking for more. She also liked lighting the flower pots and chakras and wanted to keep on bursting crackers!

Many of the younger kids were quite adventurous walking around with sparklers in their hand , so most of the time we had to make sure no one was setting themselves or anyone else on fire!

After the crackers, i relaxed for some time with my cousins, gossipping over wine and making them promise that they would visit us in Zurich soon! Then the kids started getting a bit restless so we took them inside the house (the party was in the garden outside) and they played with bubbles, all the toys from upstairs and generally went beserk. The younger kids (including A) took turns in screaming for their mama/papa but the older ones were pretty busy among themselves.

S bonded with her cousin M who is a year older and the two were like glue during the party, except for a brief meltdown from S when M refused to return the Hello Kitty bag S insists on wearing around all the time! If you look carefully in the crackers picture above you'll find her wearing it even while bursting crackers!

The hubby and I were quite embaressed to cut a cake celebratting our 10 year anniversary but the kids made us feel more at ease by more or less attacking and demolishing the cake before we got to cut it :)

The food was a mix of catering and home made food, and I hogged on Goldcoin and spring rolls. Am sure i'm going to be putting on at least a couple of kilos on this vacation.

We had a great time and as usual at the end of it i wished i was back in India with family and not so many miles away. But I guess living in Bombay and working and fretting about the work deadlines and whether the maids are looking after the kids properly is very different from holidaying at home ! Thank you again dear Mummy and Daddy for taking such a lot of effort, and putting together such a grand party, we really enjoyed it and so did S and A!

New Years resolutions

It's been a long time since i made New years resolutions, but this year I feel there are so many things which are in my control and which need changing that it merited some resolutions on my side

1. To spend more time doing activities/playing with the kids. Too much time is going in housework now. My target is to spend at last one hour in quality time with the kids daily, which does not include dropping them/picking them from school. Earlier when it used to be bright till 9 pm I would take them daily to the park in the evening. But now it gets dark by 4:30 pm so that activity is gone, and in the evenings i just end up doing some housework while the children play by themselves.

2. Exercise at least 4 times a week. I've more or less managed to do this in the last few months, and have to stick with it.

3. Read at least 1 book a month. I very ambitiously joined a book club, but so far I've not read even one of the books or attended any of the meetings. As a start i want to read at least the book club book for the month plus any others i can manage.

4. Try to sleep by 11:30 every night, and get the kids to bed by a reasonable time. The both are linked to each other. The kids take a long siesta in the afternoon and are unable to sleep before 10:30/11 in the night. After that i need a couple of hours of me time to watch TV/surf the net etc and i end up sleeping only around 1 am. And we all have to get up at 7 am for school so all are exhausted. Need to shift this back by at least 11/2 hours and have the kids asleep by 9 pm and me in bed by 11:30-12 max.

5. Cook one new dish a week. I'm only sticking to the staples and what's the point of having to cook if at the end of it the onyl thing you can show for your efforts is making rasam and sambhar. So one new dish a week is my target. Doesn't matter if no one eats it!. Baking is also included in this.

So that's my list. What's your list of 5?

A very homemade birthday celebration

Last week was the hubby's birthday (he now officially enters middle age!) and we celebrated it quite differently from how we usually celebrate birthdays. The girls made cards for their Daddy. S made it all by herself- she loves drawing and playing with the glitter glue and stickers, - and wouldn't let me help (even to put the stickers the right way up). I mostly made A's card - she doodled all over it and stuck the stickers, but the glitter glue and design was all mine (wicked glint in eye). It was fun making the cards, think I'm going to get the girls to make cards for all occasions now.

I baked a lemon cake. Ok, it was a ready mix from the shop, but the mixing of the eggs, butter and water into it was all my work, so let me take credit for it. The cake didn't turn out looking that great (the tip said to cut a small line in the middle about 15 mins into the baking so that it fluffs up well, the cake ended up looking quite funny with a large split in the middle after baking as it puffed up quite a bit). Still it tasted yum!

The cake and the cards...

During the day, I took the hubby for his first ice skating lesson. I don't really know how to teach ice skating so we just held hands and skated along. Not so romantic though- more like he clung on to my hand, and i pulled him along! But it was good fun. The kids were at school and it felt like we were sneaking out for a date! And not a cheap birthday present i might add. The teachers here are so expensive, that if I charged for the class I'm sure I would've earned quite a bit!

So all in all quite a homemade birthday celebration.

At night we went to this restaurant called Crazy Cow for dinner. It was recommended by a friend who said it was a kid friendly place. But we got lot of strange looks as we walked in with the kids at 9:30 pm (kids are usually asleep by 8 pm here), but we just ignored them and went about our dinner. The kids were busy with balloons and colouring, and apart from an incident where A threw her balloon at the hubby which led to his beer spillling all over him, it was fine (and quite funny i might add).