Starting 50 with a memorable day

Started the 50th year this week! My family and friends made it special with their wishes and blessings!

Got to do yoga in the morning with my teachers pushing me as usual. When you are in a Bikrram yoga class, you actually expect that your teachers to be tougher on your birthday and my teacher didn't disappoint! It was also awesome to have my guru in the front row with me! Always makes me give it everything I got.

My wife made me some potato roast with paruppu sadam (that is all I wanted) and it was yummmmy!

We had already gone to the temple earlier and celebrated Karthigai deepam.

My Tamil birthstar is Rohini and this year there was a lunar eclipse which was specifically related to Rohini. So I was advised to stay put at home and eat light.. which I did.. in anticipation of all the good eats that were coming!

Now that I am part of a music family, which is a large family, they made my day extra special. Got some special wishes from the music group and got to show some progress in the singing. Still writing what seems to be a never ending post on my recent singing experience. Hope I get to post it during the thanksgiving break!

The best part of this birthday was my baby showed up for thanksgiving break. Having her at home after 4 months made me so happy!

We went to LED lights this year for Kaarthigai.. simply because it is rainy and windy out here. We respect the folks who can still pull off lighting oil lamps in Cupetino!

My not so little girl baked an amazing cake. She has a gift. Hope she keeps up her baking.  I asked Jr. to blow a candle with me given she spent her birthday last week without us!

A rare photograph of the four of us. It is going to get more and more difficult to get these photos as years go by..

A day that was made very special by all my family and friends! I am lucky to have all this love! Lucky to be healthy and happy! Thank you for all the wishes!

Mothers day

Every day is mother's day.. but when you live in a world where only one day is made special to mothers, one tends to go with the flow!

The kids made a cake, decorated it and let Mom cut it. By the time they were done fighting over who gets to write what on the cake, mom had pretty much given up hope on the cake's cuttability if such a word exists. 

Apparently it came out good and the three of them ate a sizeable portion of it. Daddy was happy to just play photographer as all those colorful things on top cannot be good as they are all some concentrated form of sugar!

In case you are wondering why Jr. has a big "bindi" aka "pottu" smack dab in the middle of her forehead instead of the tiny dot right between her eyebrows (mommy style).. she was posing for me earlier!

You see, these days it feels like I am 14 years old again because Jr. has a scary resemblence to my sister at the same age be it both at certain angles or her mannerisms.  To prove my point here is the picture of them around the same age, give or take a year difference!

Same controlled smile, same donna kaadhu, same collar bone showing, same type of earring choice.. just simply scary! Don't think I ever yelled at my sister that much when she was at that age.. but feels like I am making up for that by shouting at my sister's look alike! 

Here's to Mom's! If someone made a movie called "Mom's" the tagline should read 

"MoM's - terrorizing sons and daughters since the beginning of time"

My mother still has a superhuman ability to remote control me from the other side of the world. Not that it is a bad thing because chances are San has that magical ability and will exercise it when time comes on Jr. and the little one! Daddy Narayanan is counting on it!

On a side note, it feels like I have 34 mothers now. Every teacher at BYSJ reminds me of my mother. Almost makes me think that that my mother is giving them some secret coaching classes on how to push me past my limits. They all pick on me in class, somehow know I am trying to take it easy on some pose and call out my name and say "smaller step", "higher", "more".. and I go "how could you have possibly known that I did that? Touched my head to the floor with that wide a stance only yesterday and it was not your class. How could you possibly know! How?" .. that kind of thing happens only with Mom, because she has eyes on the back of her head and can know! 

Hope all those mom's out there had a great Mother's day. Tomorrow is unfortunately... just another day!

A weekend in Pictures

This weekend saw a lot of activity in spite of me being down Friday and Saturday. 

Everything that happened in and out of the house was a cheerful experience.

We did the Varalakshmi pooja dinner Friday and the whole house was full of people, standing room only at one point. It was great to see the smiling faces in huddled conversations and the kids running around gleefully (if there is such a word).

Then we attended a surprise birthday party for my friend who turned 40. Yes, this year is "no one escapes the big Four O" year for our batch. There are only 4 guys I know from our batch who are waiting to celebrate within the next few months. The cake.. Oh What a cake! We have seen a lot of unique cakes over the years but this cake takes the cake!

Came home for some rest and took my parents to Shoreline park so they could watch the geese, pelicans, etc. and get some sun. It was good to get some fresh air and sit on a park bench and get more grounded with the thought processes. Kind of like going into your hard drive and killing all those threads that are running in the background!

After a long time we skipped Yoga entirely on the weekend. The body needed a lot more water and rebalancing before being confident that there wont be any dizziness once in the room. Sometimes, got to give a break when a break is due!

This morning we went and attended a "Kalyana Utsavam" at a friends house. It is a function where they conduct a marriage ceremony for the god and goddess just like the real wedding ceremony for the bride and groom. It is kind of like the "wedding rehearsal" that people conduct in marriages here which gives a "what to expect when your kids get married" before the actual wedding. The priest did a good job of explaining what was being done in a step by step way, something that more priests need to do to set the context for today's generation so they appreciate the reasoning behind the customs.

My parents enjoyed it thoroughly because they don't get to attend outside functions during their visit here but in India they are going to some function or other on a weekly basis. For me, it was great attending a function after a long time where I was not the one doing the prayer! Sometimes it is good to be in the audience.

Then more rest after some heavy food and off we went to get haircuts, an activity that was postponed by the parents demand that it wait till all the functions were done..

Both the kids now sport short hair. A big help once school starts in a few weeks as we will be going crazy with the post swim class hair dry routine and the early morning "combing" ritual which will take an extra 5 minutes.

Now an eventful weekend comes to a close and we begin yet another busy week for everyone in the family!

Happy Monday, here we come!

November Joy

The weekend saw the girls have their "out of the house" birthday party with their friends at a gym where they got to swing on ropes, do cartwheels, etc. etc.

They were tired and hungry enough to devour pizza and cake..

Well, we head into the thanksgiving weekend in a couple of days...

That means two more birthdays!

Let's count the number of events in our immediate families..

My dad + My mom + me + my bro + my sis (me, sis, mom = Nov born, dad and moms wedding anniversary is November too)

FIL + MIL + San + SIL + BIL ( FIL, San are Nov born)

Both our kids are Nov born.

So that makes it 7 birthdays in November + a wedding anniversary!

Busy month, eh?!

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Cake

Went to a birthday party today. It was an outdoor party and that meant staying in a park from noon to 2:00 on a very hot day. Not a good idea to improve your existing cold and allergy symptoms. Still had to be done because Jr. just did not have the mind to skip this party..

The cake took its time to come but what a cake!

Apparently, this monster vs. alien movie is a big hit with kids! Haven't taken Jr. to see this movie yet inspite of her pestering. The cake did present the parents with some cutting challenges. Someone offered the "eye" to a bunch of kids and Jr. ran away from the party after that.

It was the most creative cake we had seen in a long time.

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