Party game - 3 : Baby Shower

* Hand paper / pen to the guests.
* Ask them to list the Mother / Child pair from Hindu Mythology.
* Time the guests.

Eg: Kunti - Arjuna, Subhadra - Abhimanyu etc. Some smart guests will take the name of each Pandava and few Kauravas with their mothers. Allow them to :) They will feel accomplished with their long list :)

Party Game - 2 - Mythology

Indian Mythology party game

Select an Indian Mythology epic like Ramayan / Mahabharata. Make chits of alphabets.
Make teams. Have the teams with down the Mythological characters beginning with the chosen chit alphabet. The writing part will is of course timed. Each correct character written will fetch 10 points.

Eg: Say letter K is picked ... Krishna, Krishne (Draupadi), Kunti, Kamsa are some of the characters that may be written by all teams ... characters like Keechaka, Krupacharya, Kalinga (the serpent) will be surprises.

Try this game ...

Cancun - 2016 Winter Vacation

We have established sort of tradition over the past few years where a friend's family / sister's family and our family head out for vacation during Christmas break. We are a group of like minded people with similar priorities and kids in almost similar age groups, so it has worked out well thus far. (tough wood).
 After some discussions, we narrowed Cancun has our vacation destination. (we are running out of warmer destinations to visit during Christmas ... unless we agree to increase our budget:) ) Resorts / flight tickets were booked in early October and we thought we were all set. So the day of travel dawned bright and we were welcomed with a text from United airlines that our flight itinerary was "Rescheduled". Per our original plan we were to reach Cancun by 7:00am via a red eye flight ... but per the rescheduled itinerary, we were going to reach by evening 4:00pm. We were essentially going to miss out almost a day of vacation. That wasn't the worst part ... our new schedule routed us to Denver where we were going to spend 10 hours in airport (without lounge facility) before we could catch the flight to Cancun. It irked us to no end. Sister's husband in whose name the booking was spent a good 4-5 hours trying to negotiate with the United flight customer service, but their tone / understanding of the passenger plight was pathetic, to a point of being rude. It was almost as if without explicitly stating it the message was "This is the best schedule we can offer... take it or leave it. And if you leave it, no refund". We could perhaps have negotiated on the "Refund" part ... but we truly had our heart on the vacation and did not want it cancelled under any circumstance. So after much grumbling we took the offer.
 Once the travel part was done ... the vacation was as good as it could get. We departed cold SF to be greeted in Warm Cancun. The humid weather reminded us so much of India and our spirits were up the moment we landed..the lost night sleep soon forgotten. Our resort was lovely and rooms tastefully designed. The next 4 nights we thoroughly enjoyed the warm weather and delicious desserts / ice creams.

Day 1 : Visited Xcaret : A surprise package : Previous night lack of sleep, led to delayed start on Christmas morning. Having not much choice since most tourist places were closed, we went Xcaret. Thankfully, the place did not disappoint us a bit. We enjoyed clay moulding, butterfly garden, lagoon swimming and the beach side lunch location. Special mention to the scuba diving experience that my older kid thoroughly enjoyed.

Day 2 : My favorite visit : Chichin Itza : The Mayan temple - Reminder of the mayan culture. It was such a lovely experience to learn about the Mayan "Warrier" culture ... we bought some artifacts after much bargain and I was pleasantly surprised with my skills ;)

Day 3 : Rio Secreto : Group favorite : Never in my life so far have I walked in river water flowing inside underground caverns. Such a unique experience ... the caverns are maintained spotlessly clean and the water temperature is pleasant at 25°C. Our group was split into 2, with the dads taking charge of younger kids and mom with the slightly older kids. The irony being older kids in mom's group who could swim were going to help out the non swimming moms :( Anyways, our guide turned out to be a superwoman, she managed to drag all 3 floating moms at one go when required. We felt accomplished, when we learnt we had managed to cross almost 13ft deep water at times. This place is a must go for adventure seekers ... walking in the river water is such a refreshing experience.

Our vacation ended with us waking up at 4:00am to catch 8:00am flight. There was a minor flight delay again, but thankfully not as bad. Our travel adventure did not end with just landing in SF. We managed to keep up the adventure going by exploring bart / caltrain / uber to reach home 3 hours past our flight landing. A scrumptious South Indian Thali from Saravana Bhavan was such a delight after eating continental food for past 4 days ... a great way to end our 2016 vacation. 

Party Game - 1 - General

This game can be played with folks of all age group. Not much prep work needed and provides a lot fun to the all ...
 Prepare chits of situations to suit the audience. Have the audience pick a chit and narrate an incident related to the situation they picked.
 We played this game in our Chiti party and boy what fun we had. Some of the situations given were :
* How did you meet your spouse?
* Recollect an incident that brings a smile on your face even today.
* Share a kitchen disaster
* First movie experience with your spouse
* If you could change one thing about your marriage, what would it be?
* Your favorite cook in the family
* Share an incident with your bestie
* How did you spend your summer vacation growing up?

What is nice about this game is not only do you learn something nice about the person sharing the incident, but others also recollect their personal experience in this minds :)

Next time you are pressed for time and have a party, try this game. You are bound to have fun. 

Lunch out .. restaurant review

Hubby and I explored this new Indian restaurant called “Bikaner” for lunch today. It is a very modest restaurant with not so pricey dishes.

The service was OK, could have been faster. We ordered Kashmiri Kofta and Subzi mela along with Naan. The Naan was crispy just to our liking. Kaftas in Kashmiri Kofta were not very appealing, we like ours when it contains, paneer and cashew. The gravy though was very tasty. The Subzi mela was average. 

Overall would give the restaurant 2.5 stars. 

Party Hosted ....

I am part of a group of friends who meet every month in the name of "Chiti". As part of "Chiti meet" each of us contributes $25 every month to a "Prized Pot" and we pick the winner of the pot via lottery. Previous winners are eliminated from the lottery pick. We are a group of 15 and so every one eventually wins the pot. The idea behind this is to meet friends regularly and have fun. 

 So I won the coveted pot last round which meant, I was going to host the party in our house to pick the next winner. Traditionally we meet, greet and eat ... once that is taken care, we gossip and play games. 

 The most difficult part of hosting a party for me is the menu decision. I have to consider the day of the party (to evaluate if I will have time to make trip to grocery), scale of the party (cannot plan on items not scalable), time of the party (mostly avoid frying if lunch party) and the crowd type (helps determine cuisine). 

 After much deliberation the following menu was narrowed down. 

Tomato soup with bread crotons, Bell pepper and Menthya Bhath, Bell pepper tambuLi, chapati, avial, mosaranna, Baasundi, Ripe mango with salt+khara. 

 

What gave me immense satisfaction is that all guests thoroughly enjoyed the food. The effort was completely justified... the leftover food ensured no dinner cooking, could it get any more better 😊

More about the games in my next post ...

Back from hibernation ...

I didn't realize how difficult it is to string two simple comeback sentences together until now. Few friends have been urging me to come back to blogging world and I decided perhaps I should give it a try. Only now, when I start typing the comeback post, I understand, this is hard for me ... I don't like to share too many details with people anymore. I am fiercely protective of my personal and professional life. I don't like to write about my regional / political inclination ... so that leaves me with most generic topic. Let me see how regularly I am able to blog... but hope to target atleast couple of posts in a month.

Cheers to me !!

Snow tubing

We went snow tubing the first day of this year ... yep ... on 01/01/12 !!

Funny how learnt about this ... daughter had a playdate with her friend. The friend's mother casually asked if she could borrow daughter's snow suit. I asked her if they were going skiing and she mentioned about this farm ... not too far from home, where they had arranged for snow tubing using artificial snow.

This year, Lake Tahoe has not had as much snow and we had cancelled our annual ski trip. But this farm sounded like a good alternative. The only problem was that we were going there on the last day before closure and we were invited for lunch at the friend's place on the same day. Determined to go there, we booked the tickets online for 5pm ... managed lunch and left home around 3:15pm. Luckily the traffic was not bad and reached the farm well on time. The girls also got to enjoy some hay stacks / climb up tire stacks before tubing.

The tubing gates opened on time and we managed to go down the slide to our heart's content. We were back to our area by 7:45pm and headed straight to Sitar Express... a quaint Indian restaurant. Packed food. .. went home .. showered and enjoyed a lovely dinner. (must add rich ... because we ate Paneer tikka masala and Shahi panner and Naan for dinner)

The first day of the year was well spent.

Office stories continue ....

This person comes to office :

@10:00am - Tad late ... but not too bad.

Immediately goes to get a cup of coffee ...

while loudly saying Hello to everyone in the path between his cube and coffee vending machine.

Once done with coffee ... starts calling his friends ....

discusses about stocks, vacations, lunch, dinner etc etc .... LOUDLY ... very very irritating

Time for lunch now ... and goes to heat his food

Lunch done in an hour.

Checks emails and strolls around for few more minutes ...

Coffee break again...

In between attends one or two office calls for 30 mins ...

WHEN DOES THIS PERSON WORK ??? grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

The choice she made ...

My colleague usually goes home for lunch. Today, there was a lunch out planned by her team and she was looking forward to it. But as luck would have it, she had to attend to some thing important, at the very hour when she was supposed to go for lunch. So decided to drop out of the group lunch.

She was done with her work in the next 30 mins ... now had the option to go for lunch. She had our office cafe, subway, home and other restaurants and drive through as her options. She also mentioned to me that her hadn't had her breakfast that morning and was really hungry ... "Go get a sandwich" I suggested. She listened and pondered about how to deal with her hunger. (The time she spent thinking about this, she could have got herself a sandwich)

She then stepped out ... went to the vending machine and bought a packet of pretzels. The lady in question is on the stouter side and tells me she is trying to reduce her weight. I have seen her cave in for sweets / pizzas / donuts when offered by others in the office ... and when she was really hungry she bought Pretzels ??? WHY ??

Should I remind her of her weight goals ?? Should I remind her of the healthy food habits ? Should I remind her that skipping meals is not the best idea to lose weight ??

ps: I didn't say a word ... just looked at her pretzel packet and asked "Is this lunch?" and she smiled back.

2010 -Winter break

The Winter break was eventful. Mom and dad left on 21st Dec ... so I had took off from office on 21st and 20th. Working on 22nd / 23rd was not easy ... the house felt strangely quiet. Hubby had taken off for 2 weeks to spend time with family. The kids were home and noisy as usual ... but still missed daddy / amma.

We had plans of skiing on Christmas day at Lake Tahoe... but the weather played spoilsport. We decided to go to Monterey instead and enjoy the Aquarium. Before we drove to Monterey, enjoyed breakfast at Komala Vilas. Aquarium was good and the kids co-operated, but I felt it was slightly over priced for what it had to offer. As we walked towards our car, we noticed folks biking by the bay ... my sister insisted we check out bike rentals and we did. And boy, what a lovely experience it turned out to be !! My little one and nephew (chunnu and munnu as they are affectionately called) were seated in the front row and took up the responsibility of ringing the bell when instructed. It was very cute to see them ring the bell everytime someone requested "Bell please" ... my little girl would ring immediately ... and nephew followed suit.

The bike had 3 rows and was perfect for 2 families. We biked for an hour and headed home.

On 26th, we hosted dinner for one of our friends' family who are moving back to India. The menu was Methi paratha, Chole, Bende Kayi gojju, Kayi sasive anna, mosaranna and Badaam Halwa... and oh, the cucumber - tomato - carrot puri chat was delicious.

Cousins and their families visited us on 28th for dinner. We went out to "The Jungle" before having garam garam Masala Dose, Avare KaLu saaru, mosaranna, Basundi (prepared by sister) and fruit salad for dinner.

I was just browsing the weather site when I noticed that Jan 1st and 2nd had snow storm predictions in Tahoe which meant, our Ski trip would further get pushed. So hubby made instant decision to go skiing on 31st. The only problem was we had already committed to a New year get together for the evening. After some browsing / consulting, we booked a room for 30th and headed to Tahoe. We spent the night at the hotel (played Sequence after a long time) and headed to Tahoe on 31st. It was a bright sunny day ... perfect for skiing... if only the kids co-operated and rentals did not have long queue. We braved all odds and still managed so go tubing and kids enjoyed snow rides after much persuasion.

We came back home around 6:30pm and went for the party at 8:00pm. We played Dumb cherads / 20 questions ... and had yummy food and welcomed new year by cutting a nice cake. We were home around 12:30, wished family members and hit the sack.

Apart from all the activities above, managed to watch some movies (all movies were watched late night starting at 10:30pm)

Overall a great break ... and the grind begins now :)

Happy 2011 !

Summer break almost done

Summer vacations are soon coming to an end ....

School Supplies - Check

New Pants - Check

New Tops - Still to be done

New skirts - Check

Shoes - Check

The classroom list will be out the next week.

My little girl will start school next week in a new positive attitude :)

Cousin bonding

My 21 months old nephew is coming to our house since yesterday ... and its interesting to see how toddlers bond. My 2 year old who once could care less about her cousin's presence has suddenly started to bond with him. Their games / conversations are interesting.

She calls out "Hi S" the moment he steps into our house .... and the little fella responds with "P .. P.." calling out her name. My 6 year old then gives him a tight hug and he is only too pleased to be cuddled. Then starts their "Game" of running around the house scream some war zone cries at the top of their lungs.

The way this game is initiated is simple ... one of the toddlers screams out the high pitch cry and starts running ... turns back after 8-10 steps and looks at the other. Signal enough for the other to join the fun.

I as much as I see the little ones bond, I so wish my 6 year old had a similar play date as well :)

Bicycle

I learnt to bicycle when I was 10 ... the same year I started cycling to school. The school route went through some busy streets ... but I managed just fine. I rode my bike to every single class I attended be it music or dance. I event went to different corners of the city to participate in various competitions on my bike and thoroughly enjoyed the independence.

My daughter has been biking since she turned 3 (with training wheels) and 4, with out training wheels. That was quite an early start, we thought. (parents's pride)

But I don't see many kids biking to school or other classes here in the US. I understand there is a lot of traffic here and the speed of the automobiles is quite high ...

But is that the reasons for fewer kids biking to school or it is more parent's not approving biking for other reasons ???

My daughter is going to be 6 in 2 days, and I do not plan to send her biking to school atleast the next 2 years.

Card games

Ispit - as it is called in our household, is one family entertainer for the adults.

Kids under the age of 20 are not allowed to participate .... and most kids in the family seem to have mastered the skill even before they start playing, just by observing. (me included)

Cards is not played in our house for money ... its for fun .... "Nirmal Anand ke liye Khelte hain".

We play lots of games

* 250 points Rummy

* Best of 7 (limited to 7 games)

* 28

* Hearts

* Oh hell (*not sure about the origin of the name*) ... sometimes called Justice

* 26

* Donkey

* Set

Of these the last 3 days has seen us playing Oh hell, 26 , Best of 7 and Rummy .... It had been almost 2 years since I played cards ... I was pleasantly surprised to find out no degradation in my expertise :)

Candies

We celebrated our second daughter's birthday in May. The theme for the party was "Candies". We planned hard to have everything in alignment to the theme.

* Made candies in different / shapes and sizes for decoration

* Made a Candyland game (blocks) for the guests

* Made a Cookie house

* Made giant Lollypops and gumballs

* Made Giant Ice cream cones

* Made candy Table center pieces

* Return gifts to ladies - Raisin candies wrapped in glass bottle

* Return gifts to kids - Books (this could very well have been candies ... but the prize as part of Candyland game was candy)

The food was catered. Menu was Nav Ratan Korma, Baingan Bhartha, Naan, Veggie Biryani, Raitha, Veg Pakora, Curd rice. We had special items planned for the kids ... like pop corn, Peanut butter / Jelly Sandwich, Cone ice creams (3 flavors).

The only hitch was end was May still proved chilly and windy. Our efforts would have been fruitful had it been a warm sunny day ... but alas. But the birthday girl had a blast ... and to me that was the most satisfactory part.

Some of the candies we had mimicked were:

* Ferrero Rocher

* Ghirardelli

* Nestle

* Hershey's

* Lindt

* Eclair

* Crunch

* Rocky Mountain

* Skittle

* Chocolate Orange

* Mounds

* Almond Joy

The guests were asked to list down the candies they saw around and point out any spelling mistakes :) It was fun watching teenager / pre-teens out do their parents :)

Parents are here ....

Daddy and amma came to our house June 23rd ... wednesday. It has been such a relief for the past few days. My daughter's school closed for summer break on June 10th. Since then hubby and I took turns to stay home with the kids.

My parents landed around 1:00pm on 23rd and my girls instantly bonded with them. Even my otherwise shy younger one gelled quite well with them.

Its been two weeks since their arrival and we have already made a trip to LA ... looking forward to spending an exciting summer with them.

LA Trip

Recent trip to LA was a last minute decision... but turned out just great.We left early saturday morning to reach Hollywood around 1:30pm. Universal Studios was alive with people walking all around as expected :) Each ride came with a wait time ... the longer the wait time better the ride. Studio tour had the longest wait time of 60 minutes where we sweated ourselves in the hot sun despite the cooling fan arrangements made. Dad loved the tour... especially the KingKong / Dinosaur episode of the tour.

We took turns to take care of my little one ... and covered most of the rides. We wrapped up our visit by 9:15 and drove to our hotel. Reached there by around 10:00pm ... ate our packed food and called it a day.

Next morning woke up at ease and were ready to tackle the Disneyland by 10:00am. We enjoyed most of the rides there ... my dad who usually avoids rides, braved most rides much to my surprise. The kids were enthralled by atmosphere that they hardly noticed their hunger. (yes ... food ... especially vegetarian food is a big challenge) They loved Mickey, Minnie, Donald .. Princess and all the other disney characters. Small Wonder was the most favoured ride. We exit the park around 8:00pm and headed straight to Udupi. And boy... were we glad !! The food was delicious ... our daughters who require some eating requests, were more than eager to gobble the food :) Oh yes .. we watched the July 4th fireworks from the restaurant.

Next morning we bid bye to LA around 10:30am and headed straight to the Bay area. With some breaks in between for lunch and rest and with traffic we reached Bay area around 5:30pm.

Nice vacation indeed ! Much needed break from mundane life ..

Movies watches lately

Naanu Nanna Kanasu - 4 star

Wake up Sid - 3 star

3 Idiots - 3.5 star

Avatar - 2 star

Rajneeti - 2.5 star

Pyar Impossible - 1 star ( did not ... rather could not complete it)

Don (SRK) - 3 star

Singh is Kingg - 3 star

Athiti Kab Jaoge - 3 star

ps: Lately is past 6 months :) only Naanu Nanna Kanasu was watched in theatre :)

One year since that day ....

 Already a year has passed since the day my grandpa passed away ... 365 days just went by and still I can recount the turn of events on that day.

 I still miss ajja ... I may have moved continents far away from home ... but the time spent in ajja's house is fresh. Those were some awesome days I will never be able to forget. Thank you ajja and ajja for all the love and warmth you showered on us ... I may not have expressed my love for you in words ... but I hope you know I truly love you guys !