Yo's gift to himself...

... this afternoon from Kohls was a pair of roller skates (and associated gear).

Mother's Day

Ranjit and the kids gave me a very special mom's day. I got cards, flowers, a Chris Tomlin CD and a beautiful new Bible with a lime-green carrying case. Thank you, family! (I have to confess that I looove underlining and writing in a new Bible. Hope the high lasts a while!!)
We went out for brunch to a fancy golf club restaurant with a mega spread of pastries and everything yummy. Of course, like all our other meals at restaurants, we spent our time wiping faces and hands, telling the kids not to yell, and hoping that there would be no apple juice spills! Wouldn't have wanted to celebrate Mother's Day any other way!

  

  

Boys and girls

The other day Susan captured a very rare boy/girl moment - for the most part, both kiddos are into whatever older brother is into, which does not include dolls.

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Words with Mika

Mika's stringing together 3-4 words at a time now, and generally becoming more chatty than she used to. She's still not too interested in being read to - certainly nowhere near her brother's level of interest, but she'll "read" a book on her own: basically flip through a few pages, loudly proclaim "The End", and close the book with a definitive thump. She's also learning to say all our names, with her own unique pronunciation, of course.

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California Part 2

This video should have been a part of the previous post. A thousand apologies.

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California!

One first-grader, two preshoolers, one toddler and one baby. One house packed with non-stop activity and noise for one week. When the Narjalas visit the Thomases, it's like taking a ferris wheel and putting it on an airport conveyor belt. Day in and day out, round and round for one week we were spinning at a frenetic pace. I guess we needed two weeks recovery time to get started on the blog.

For Yohan and Mika, the one week was like an extended playdate. The boy could have cared two hoots about mamma and dada. All he wanted were Josh and "Jephan achacha" and little bouts of "cutie-pie". The girl, on the other hand, kind of had a mamma fixation that week, but was quite fascinated with the "baby" and liked getting spoiled by "cha-cha".

Pia-mai managed to pack all of us in her mini-van for quite a few activties. We went out for icecream trips, to downtown Pleasanton for some window shopping and cupcake eating, to an indoor play area (Super Franks), parks, Joshy's swim lesson, Costco trip, Zoo trips.... Over the weekend, when the dads were around, we went to downtown SFO on the Bart. We also celebrated Zephan's 7th and Josh's 4th birthdays. Phew!

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