Happy Holidays 2015!

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season!

This year Jr. got a visit from her "not so secret santa" and got a new Alto Saxophone to celebrate the holidays. Her old saxophone had a rod and screw drop off after her last school performance. The part is in back order till end of January. Given she has other performances coming and the fact that she has wanted to graduate from a student saxophone to a professional grade one.. we relented! We are also tired of doing the pickup and drop off from her school because she has to haul this large saxophone case to practice. From February she can leave the student version in school and practice on the pro instrument at home!

These instruments are expensive. So this is the last one we are buying her. They tell us this will last 10-15 years. We have nicely informed Jr. that she will be buying her next saxophone with her own paycheck! 

So far she loves the sound of the Yamaha YAS 62-III. It is also lighter than her student version. Why a student version will be heavier is beyond me.

The Christmas holiday has started today. 

The kids were practicing their music this morning and with a lot of censoring I am pleased to announce that this version has been approved for the blog..

Our entire family wishes you a very merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday!

Go kart racing

When we are local and want to engage the kids.. the usual drive through Vasona park or playing indoors inside some Jungle type place are not options anymore.. we now have a "tween" and a "teen"!

They had tried this racing once in summer and gave it rave reviews. So we went again to give it a shot. It is 35$ for two races of 10 minutes each (14 laps where the kids average 35-40 seconds a lap) and a 30 minute break between the races to let other folks go. They treat the first race as a warm up!

 The little one likes to compete while Jr. was mostly happy going at her own pace and having fun.

They both yelled at me afterwads because I was cheering them from the side on the long leg where they come straight at me. Apparently it was not a good idea to take their eyes off the track to look at "cheerleader daddy" as it made it difficult for them to turn. How was I to know?! My job was to watch and cheer. Maybe next time I will do a race to figure this out. 

Strongly recommend this if you have teens or tweens bored out of their wits and it is cold and raining outside, when the rest of their friends are instagramming picutures from warm and sunny beaches! 

Growing crystals

The last three weeks of December are going to be different this year. Given all the work travel, going to take it easy and rest. Doesn't mean we don't get to do some fun things in the house with the kids..

For starters we decided to bring out this birthday gift and actually try it out with the litlte one.

Diffusion is a slow process.. the little one learned "patience is a virtue" during the experiment.

This was time zero

Ten minutes

close to an hour later

this was a few hours later

then we decided to "help it" by creating some localized heat near the ones that were not growing.. but that went only so far.

The final stage was not far from this one. There was one drawback to this kit. We lowered the stand into the bath of chemicals with a hook. When the crystals finished growing, they went into the hole for the hook. So we could not remove it out of the bath successfully. 

The little one was very disappointed, but for a few seconds. Once she realized the crystals were broken and there was nothing we could do about it, she promptly said "oh well. we had fun while it was growing. now clean up daddy" and went on to watch Netflix.

So that part of the experiment where the experimenter is also responsible for the cleanup... failed! 

Some things never get old

Today the little one knew I was about to get an extra large load of laundry on the carpet for folding.. 

and she was ready to do "laundry angel" after I buried her with the warm clothes.

Jr. is not into these fun little things anymore.. now that she is a "teenager". I miss the days when they would both shout "me me me" and lie down on the carpet waiting for a rush of clothes to land on them.

At least someone is still up for it!

Some things are forever?!

Remember the post on Stone Temple Pilots?

Was not kidding when I said "someday, the little one will join in"

In spite of Chennai being rained out for 43 days, the one day that the kids visited Chennai on their 5 day India vacation, the rain let go temporarily. We made a quick trip to see my grandma and on the way meet my buddy Kabali. 

Jr. remembered the elephants and ran to it!

and this time the little one followed ! She needed help but enjoyed sitting on it. Their smiles brought back so many memories!

Some things seem to bring a constant into our variable lives. The stone elephants at the Kapaleeshwarar temple are one of those constants in our life!