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.

Music Season 2010, Chennai (Shashank's home!)

I am finally here. I have always talked about doing this forever now. Arun insisted that I walk the talk. I'm in a state of bliss still. Its been three days and I'm still shocked.

Here are a few things that I am going through.

I am staying with the world's most renowned classical flautist, Shashank and his family.

I hear him and his sister practice all day. What's even better are his dad's advices to me.

I get to hear from him first hand about how to be sincere in pursuing one's passion. He is Shashank's guru and I see how sincere his children are and how dedicated he is, first hand. I eat with them, listen to them, their talk, play with his kid. His wife is a wonderful dancer and human. I met her in Sacramento and instantly saw how genuine she was. I asked her if she could sing too and she said she was a dancer. Little did I know about how good she is. She is training under Priyadarshini Govind and has renered several performances including Kalakshetra and the Academy. I have a few Uncles who warned me about how musicians treat people from the US with little respect, but that so far from the truth. The amount of freedom, love and happiness I have here is unparalleled. I can hear Shashank play Abogi as I type this. This is the reason the spell hasnt lifted. Shrisha (S's wife) has promised to take me to Kalakshetra soon to meet Leela Samson. I cannot wait.

Their house is in CIT colony which is walking distance from the Academy and Narada Gana Sabha. Will tell you about that in my next blog.

Going home, 2010

Yipee, Its India time again. We are headed home.

We havent started packing yet. Arun is still ordering stuff on amazon to take home.

We want to cover Bangalore, Thiruvannamalai, Palani, Pune, Mumbai and Chennai.

I hope things go well and D doesnt fall sick again. I am looking forward to learning music from Vasumathy Desikan in Chennai. If things go well that will be the highlight of my trip.

Alright India, here we come!

Folsom Zoo, Folsom, CA

I've heard a lot about the zoo at Folsom, but never gave it much thought until a friend of mine told me that most of the animals there were rescued animals! With Diego playing at home most of the time, we are all into animals and rescuing them! Every pretend game at home is about an animal getting lost in the wild and Dhruv and Aru rescuing them! We've saved blue morpho butterflies, baby jaguars, red eyed tree frogs and what not.

We decided to take Dhruv and his now favorite friends Swathi and Sneha to the zoo.

The zoo was better than what we expected too see for the following reasons.

1. We covered the zoo and its animals in two hours.

2. We saw a tiger in very very close quarters.

3. We saw grizzly bears! Thought it was a myth until then!

4. All animals were indeed rescued from either dangerous hide outs, or from unfortunate incidents.

Just being there made us feel Diegos!

The train ride was an added bonus.

The kids had a blast and so did we.