Crater Lake trip

Last weekend Uncle Sam joined us from Seattle (after battling flat tires and traffic), and all of us headed down south. First stop was the Wildlife Safari in Winston, followed by a pleasant evening in the Rogue River National Forest. This was as close to camping as the urban Narjalas+Sam were going to get, but it was great to get out and experience a bit of nature. Having a yum roadside BBQ didn't hurt either. The next morning we headed up to Crater Lake; the kids didn't seem to think it was anything special, though, and requested they be driven home so they could watch Mickey Mouse on TV. The rest of us, though, were able to appreciate the splendor somewhat more.

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Gampa and Gama are here!

They arrived about 2 1/2 weeks ago, and the kids are having a blast with their 24 hour playmates. They are a constant source of book-reading, car and train sets get set up, pretend camps have new visitors, and we even have hopes that they will pick up some piano skills :) And from a parental unit point of view, not having to wake up at the crack of dawn with the munchkins is a blessing we are making full use of!

  

  

Seaside

A couple years ago we went to Seaside on Jul 4th, and heard about the fireworks on the beach; we couldn't catch it then since we had a little kid in tow (and one in the oven), and it would have been too late in the night to stay back. Since then we've been wanting to get a beachfront room to watch the fireworks from, and this year it somehow worked out. We spent a couple nice days in Seaside over the Jul 4 weekend, and to the kids' great joy Annika also came over for a day. Between playing on the beach, all the ice-creams, the parade, the food (a must-try: Lil' Bayou), splashing in the pool, the bumper cars and the carousel on the promenade, and the fireworks, a good time was certainly had by all.

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Jaya - A Small Tribute

Jaya. She was quite the institution in the George household. She may have started at our home as a cook who could whip up the best mutton biriyani and beef cutlets ever. But over the 28 years that we knew her she became so much more.
Some of my earliest memories of her include waking her up at night so she could walk scaredy-cat me to amma-appa's room in the middle of the night. I remember her affectionately calling me, "velai poonai." I remember her rescuing injured birds and force-feeding them, feeding stray kittens that we didn't quite want in our house. I remember getting annoyed with her for asking my friends embarrassing questions: no kids yet? not married yet? (!!).
No one who visited our home could leave without paying proper homage to JAYA. Appa often joked that she was the one person amma was scared of. She had a big, big heart. And let's not get started on her food: ladoos at Christmas time, roast chicken, celery beef, vegetable pickle, pork vindaloo. Jaya's food was legendary. Compliments from hundreds of guests at the George's dining table made their way to the back of the house where Jaya, after she had worked her magic with the meal, would be stretched out in front of Tamil soaps.
She had a larger than life personality and we're going to miss her.
I'm so grateful to the Lord that she got to meet and hold and kiss Yohan and Malaika.

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Books of the Bible

Susan has been teaching the kiddos a little song about the books of the Bible. Yo started off learning the first few names, and of course his shadow Mika had to do exactly the same.

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Chatting with Mika

The little girl has quite the vocabulary now, though dada sometimes needs the translation services of mamma or Yo to help decipher her words of wisdom. She's also stringing quite a few words together now, and conversations with anna are getting less one-sided.

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Thomas Train

Thomas the train was in town for couple weeks. Being the suckers that we are, Ranjit and I joined the throngs of other over-enthu parents conned into driving an hour and half to buy $18 tickets to stand in line to get on a choo-choo that had an engine made to look like the moody British cartoon train. We were joined on our adventure by Yohan's buddy Nikita and her parents. The kids had a great time except Yohan was quite stunned that Thomas' mouth was closed and that he was not actually talking. I don't know if he bought Ranjit's sore throat explanation!

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