Cousin heaven

The cousins (and their parents) made their way up here after a long drive, and the kiddos were besides themselves with excitement at the thought of a week with their buds. S and I were unfortunately taking turns being sick, so there wasn't a whole lot of outdoorsy activities with the troupe. The kids pretty much entertained themselves through the week, and had a gala time with the tons of gifts they got, both at home and from their grand-uncle and aunt (who will be most pleased to hear them being described that way :).

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T-N Productions: Winter Performance

The troupe regrouped for their winter season, producing not one but two stellar performances.

 

Christmas Party 2013

Last weekend we hosted our annual Christmas party at home. Susan masterfully and single-handedly prepared a delicious meal for the 30 guests that we had - and we had tons of leftovers. And this year we switched to a new Santa, since the kids were getting all too familiar with the regular one - Kartik - after all these years. This year when Rahul showed up as Santa and Kartik was still very much around, there was a good amount of confused looks till the presents took over. All-in-all was the usual galata.

And since this is being posted on Christmas day, here's wishing everyone a very blessed Christmas, and a special year ahead.

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Christmas at School

The kiddos got dressed up for their Christmas event at school last week. Yo's class did a performance as well. One of their favorite numbers was "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth".

   

 

Orange Belt

It's almost been a year of Taekwondo, and our man has been slowly progressing up the levels. The belt collection so far:
- white
- white with red stripe
- white with green stripe
- yellow with orange stripe
And at the most recent belt test he just moved up to a "plain orange" belt. He felt it was quite the achievement to once again get a belt without a stripe on it.

And in more recent news, the little lady excitedly took her first trial taekwondo class this week. She has been asking to join for awhile now, and next year she'll get to join her big bro. Having gone to each of his classes for the last year, she pretty much knows all the theory now. On to practice.

"This is the best snow day ever"

We got all dressed up for school and BSF on Friday, when we decided to play for 5 minutes in the first snow of the year. Ended up ditching the day's plans for snow fun, followed by hot chocolate stirred with candy canes, a Christmas picnic lunch next to the tree and lots of painting time :)

Thanksgiving at School + Annual Thanksgiving Tree

M along with her four-year-old class put up a wonderfully cute Thanksgiving music performance.

We also put up our Thanksgiving tree in November (thanks gama for drawing the artisitic tree) and recorded on an almost-daily what they were thankful to God for. The kids also came back home from school with cartloads of Thanksgiving crafts and stories about the Mayflower, pilgrims and ahem, Indians ;)

  

Thanksgiving 2013

This year we had full tummies and a full house for Thanksgiving. We started with an early Thanksgiving meal with the Bhaskers on Sunday (Yummers). Wednesday saw the arrival of the Rasams (Ramya + Sam) and Sidhus (Ritu + Sid) and the band of little people (four total this time). With six adults and six kiddos, Thanksgiving was a riot - four days of partying it up for us (at least our version of a party - food, more food, yapping, marathon TV shows, kids who kept each other busy...) Ranjit did the honors of brining and roasting the bird which turned out pretty good although thanks to wifely input we roasted it wrong side up (hehe). Nothing that some Indian masala gravy couldn't fix. Vegetable bake, roasted root veggies, smashed potatoes with rosemary, bread rolls, cranberry sauce and stuffing completed the meal!

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Fall photo shoot

   

Fall not, O leaves

'Tis a beautiful time of year
In the Northwest
When leaves
Change color
But when they fall
Then it's not so nice
When you have to rake them all.

(Having a blog + the concept of poetic license gives one the freedom to spout such pearls of wisdom).

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Halloween 2013

Halloween turns out to be a big fancy dress event for the kids. Between all the playgroup, school, and church events, Mika got to be Pirate Izzy (from Jake and the Neverland Pirates) and Red Riding Hood, while Yo opted to consistently feature as his current favorite superhero, Superman.

   

Playgroup buddies

Gymnastics

Mika started gymnastics again this fall; big bro wanted in as well, so he was added to the ticket. They both enjoy this quite a bit.

Vancouver & Victoria

In late Sep we headed back to Canada for the second time this year; round 2 was to visit Vancouver & Victoria.

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Maker Faire

In September we went to the local Maker Faire in town, and had a great time getting hands-on with a whole variety of cool toys.

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The many faces of M

    

    

Writing

The kiddos are starting to get better at actually writing things. Yo has started to write "stories", which are actually pretty good when read phonetically.

The first legible card from both of them:

We recently discussed going out for dinner one evening after I got back from work, and I guess he had an urge to start his chronicles at a tender age. Pulled out a piece of paper, and started writing:

Needs to work on spaces between the words, but this the gist:

Pumkpin,        Written By Yohan
Pumpkin
My family and me live in a
house and we got to a restaurant
in the night
when my dad comes from
work.