Big Sur Camping trip

Baby Shower for me at Thunder Valley Casino Spa

Kadri Gopalnath's concert

Well, how often is one blessed to sit and dine with the best carnatic saxaphonist in the world? Our family hot the jackpot with this. I knew of Kadri coming to perform along with his troop way in June. Sada and family were going to host them for a week. Sada is a BIG fan of Kadri and has recorded a lot of CDs of his for me. Akhila sent us a breakfast/lunch/dinner menu about a week before they came. Sada's family was kind enough to invite just us to have lunch with them on the day of the concert. We were vacillating about attending the show. Arun kept insisting that he wanted to, because he heard him play in Duet and knew of him. We sat down to eat lunch with them on the 2nd of Oct, the day of their performance. Akhila made "SAnjeevanam", which is 8 appetizers, 8 types of rices, 8 curries and 8 drinks etc, in one meal. Sanjeevanam is a restuarant in some village in Karnataka, that serves this kind of a meal. I told Kadri that even an gunpoint I wouldnt be able to make the stuff she made. The food was AMAZING. Arun and I sat down to eat with Kadri and he spoke to us in Konkani and tamil. We later sat down with Kanyakumari M'am for coffee. We decided to attend the show, Sada made sure we did by sending the kids back home with us and asked us to bring them to the show straight. The show was the best instumental concert I have ever attended in my life. He played popular songs and ragams, but also showed us his level of depth and knowledge in the swarams and ragams. The highlight of the show was Kanyakumari's accompaniment. She is a mainstream performer, but for such an artist to lay low and accompany another leading performer without showing her "dum" is something to appreciate. He played until 11pm and Dhruv was awake listening to the whole thing. It was such a great day and experience.

Navarathri

This is the Navarathri and Diwali season. To add to it we have Halloween and Diwali. Navrathri was a good success. I had a dinner (pot luck at home). The kids sang so well on Vijayadasami day. It was so inspiring to watch all of them dress up like little dolls and come with the tambalam and get my blessings. I am blessed to have such cute students and families that come along with them. I also started going out to couple homes this year. This year I did Sudha, Lakshmi and Jegatri's home. Dhruv came with me everywhere. The coolest part was, he wore the same color Indian clothes as me everywhere. We had the 5 steps put up. Arun and D had a blast putting it up. Dhruv had his own Lego Zoo and Dinosaur Zoo. It was tough convincing him to remove his other cars and stuffed animals from the steps. Overall a great Navarathri time.

The Flower Farm

Summer 2011

First Camping Trip, Tahoe, Emerald Bay

We've never camped. I have always had issues with the restroom concept. Now its all different right. Midori(Tyler((Dhruv's partner in crime))'s mom) mentioned she has booked a camped site in Emerald bay in the Tahoe area. Dhruv and Tyler are bestestst buddies in school. We thought it would be right to try to camp with someone, who is a little more experienced than us (they've camped one more time than us!). We drove up to the site. The site was splendid. It was about 50 yards from the Tahoe beach and 5 yards from the restrooms and bathrooms. The only things we bought were fruits and some sandwitches as we knew we were camping only for a day. The trees surrounding our tent site cooled down the place a lot. The trip was on the 22nd of September. Hana (T's sister) and the Madson family, helped us pitch our tent. The tent pitching took all of 5 minutes. We ordered this really nice one off of Amazon. Its called the Cole Instant Tent. Assembly and disassmbly did not take more than 10 minutes on the whole! We played a lot in the beach. We saw folks snorkling. We roasted smores, beef and salomi(as D calls it). The night was fun. The queen bed was comfortable for D and me. We kept pushing Arun off. The night ended with the boys crying about wanting to sleep in the same tent. We hope for a two day trip next time.

3rd Birthday

I haven't been really good about blogging recently. I thought I should make a note of some of the fun things I remember from this last year. Dhruv's third birthday was celebrated at the Breene Park in Rocklin. We had all my music students with their families most of our friends from work. The total was 80 people. The food served was Pizzas from Winco and drinks from Costco! Easy!
We had an obstacle race for the kids and since the party was on Easter day, 23rd April, we had a little egg hunt for all the kids too. It was so cute to watch these little monkeys run around and fetch eggs! Was a fun day overall.