Happy Tamil New Year !

Time flies. We are at yet another Tamil New Year this weekend. The girls dressed up nicely to celebrate. San also did a marathon effort in the kitchen this morning to make some amazing food. I must have added 4-5 pounds just at lunch and to compensate for that did three hours of hot yoga instead of the usual 90 minutes.

The back is also hurting after being squeezed in cramped quarters on long flights next to oversized folks whose bottoms spread laterally into neigbouring seats. My strong recommendation to the good folks who make the 74(+)7's and Airbus equivalents is to create a solid barrier between seats instead of the hand rests. Then again, if a skinny guy like me is suffering, it cannot be too great for said oversized folks. As usual I digressed at the first paragraph.. Tsk!

Where were we? Ah, the new year! Got back home just in time to see the cuties dress up and have fun. To celebrate the new year, I got myself a pair of Bose headphones that are expected to do wonders for future air travel. Don't ask me what Bose has to do with Tamil New Year. It has as much to do with a Toyota or Ford Car sales event has to do with Memorial day! 

This year we celebrate the girls growing older by one more year and the fact that they still pose for daddy when begged to do so.

Had to capture the earrings she is wearing.. they are made of Terracota apparently! 

For once I wished there was a picture of me with the kids to post! Maybe we will take one over the week. 

Happy New Year to all of you. May this Tamil new year bring peace and happiness!

Holi vilayaadu paapaa (ஹோலி விளையாடு பாப்பா)

As the great Mahakavi should have said "ஹோலி விளையாடு பாப்பா" ... as in dude speak "Let's play Holi babies!"

Holi was celebrated across the bay area over the last 8 days, read "two weekends" just like any other major festival is over the nearest weekends. 

We were fortunate to join one of the groups celebrating Holi over the weekend. It was great fun. 

Given it was with some of my IT-BHU seniors, brought back so many memories of playing Holi in BHU 20+ years ago!

The Holi monk with his kids..

The little one played holi till she was drop down tired in spite of starting off with a stuffy nose!

We also got to meet another group of really nice people who happened to celebrate in the same park. They came over and said "it is not nice to have two groups play holi separately. lets all join in!".  They brought their Jelabies and Tandaii over to our table and we all put colors on everyone. It was great to see the spirit of Holi in action. 

Next stop. Easter bunny hunt at some place or other for the kids is our guess.. 

It is great to be able to celebrate as many festivals as possible.. things we never did as kids in South India. Our kids are lucky to get this diverse an experience!

Happy Holi to everyone!

The camera comes out, after a long time!

The girls were dressed in matching colors today. This begged for a backyard photo shoot!

The matching outfits reminded me of an old series of photos that were taken years ago!

Jr. is not the same model that she was a few years ago. She either smiles by covering her face or she has what she calls "smiling my way", which I don't understand at all.

The little one loves to pose, but she is so distracted that her eyes move away from the lens to something behind me or around me in a fraction of a second. This must be the impact of being on the iPad all the time, I tell myself. After calling out her name and saying "look INTO the lens" a few dozen times, get a clean shot if lady luck shines on me.

It has been more than two months and there are two snaps of them in the camera. So we made up for it.  Once Jr. got into it she started doing funny poses for me. These days the sum total of fun in the faces of the two kids seems to be a constant. If one is happy, the other one becomes mellow and vice versa. Have not figured this out yet.. but given time, will figure out a fudge factor in that equation.

The dresses are a little on the orange shade, but the backyard light and lens has the white balance adjusted to make them show up like pink! iPhone photos show up as orange. Now I have a new challenge to work on.. understand what is going on with color balance!

Hope the trend continues and they pose for more photos.