Archive | December 2012

Happy New Year 2013

May the new year bring loads of happiness, love and peace to you and your family.

Let each one of us be blessed with the courage and strength to deal with the challenges life throws at us in the form of people with their attitudes, in the form of nightmarish incidents that happens around us, in the form of injustice offered that no human deserves and  in the form of natural disaster.

Let us learn better techniques to handle our offspring’s tantrums.

Let us learn to be considerate to our environment. (one thing I am planning to take up seriously by putting my awareness from last year into actions in 2013)

Let us learn to treat life and people with simple love and affection.

Let us learn, Let us learn, Let us learn the lessons of life and evolve as a better person to our own self, to our family, to our environment and to our society.

Happy learning and hello 2013 !!!!!!!

P.S:  Adi has learned to make resolution and her first one this year is  “Never to break a promise” big one eh? I will be the best person to keep track of this 🙂 Let’s see..

IMG_0567

Advertisement

Merry Christmas

ETA: Linking to Shruti’s Artsy Craftsy Dec 2013 challenge.

to one and all. Adi’s school is closed until next year. That reminds me of all that crazy stuff we used to talk on Dec 31st during childhood days like I will brush only next year, I will take bath only next year, I will eat only next year or I will not talk to you until next year 🙂

We made ornaments (posted the details in IMC) over the weekend and the sudden snow on Christmas eve brought up some cheer. We took a stroll in the snow and it felt so magical and peaceful to feel the Christmas snow for few minutes from nowhere that reinforced the existence of God.  The ruffling thoughts of mind was put to peace in a moment when eyes witnessed the Snow through the window. A magical moment that was.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and your family.

Ornaments: (We made a lot but Adi gave away most of them before I got a chance to click).

IMG_0526

This week

continues to be disturbing..

Connecticut school shooting, Delhi gang rape and now Nithyashree husband’s suicide (though it was a personal decision) still mind is in totally disturbed state thinking of Nithyashree and her family. May God give all the strength to the families affected from these recent incidents. Let this be the end.

Thoughts are going wild, goosebumps show up as thoughts get deeper, tears roll down the moment mind pictures the families dealing with grief, there is a sense of urge to call off all those misunderstandings, to make those long pending calls, connect with everyone and just stay in the bed cuddling the family. Focus and concentration have become distant words for all that mind wants is to only sulk…

Heart yearns for some magic to happen and call off all these incidents as fake..

Adi is having security drills at school to learn how to hide in closet if a stranger enters the classroom suddenly. Her school had taken several safety measures in last one week and had circulated the detailed accounts to the parents. I spoke about the shooting incident to her though she was not ready to listen and assured her halfheartedly that she is safe.

What does “safe” mean? Who can assure it? Is it time to abolish the word “safe” from the dictionary?  I am going through the heights of insecurity questioning myself as we head start the day “what is the guarantee that we will meet as a family for dinner tonight?”

Hope the new week and new year brings some peace to home and world… All I am doing is pray hard and harder.

Of God, Dory, Trophy, Tree, Ornaments and Honors

Okay this is going to be a picture post of not so related incidents happened in last two months …

God – One weekend evening after we returned home from a Ranganathar temple Adi decided to draw pictures of six God’s of her choice and create her own temple at home. She also packed prasadam (laddu and murukku from the temple) to give us when we visit her temple.  She drew the pictures by looking at them from Internet and had spent more than an hour of dedicated effort on these pictures. The very effort by the little girl made me hunt for laminating options to save the pictures for many many more years.  I analyzed the Laminator machine, self laminating sheets in the market and finally settled on transparent sheet protectors that was cheap and worked well for us. The God’s have now joined others in our pooja room.

That’s the girl in action looking at Kindle and drawing with utmost dedication

drawing-god

Over to the pictures…In this process she also learned what weapon each God holds and what is their vahanam (vehicle)..

ganesha

shiva

parvathi

karthikeya

sita

lakshmi

Dory – We are the temporary care taker of Dory as our neighbors have gone on vacation. We were thrilled as they trusted us to take care of Dory. We are doing a good job so far changing its water every 5 days and feeding regularly. I spend few minutes every day sitting at the recliner watching Dory. It gives peace..

dory

Trophy – The girl won a participation trophy on a Chess tournament that happened last month. She played three rounds with different kids and won this trophy. We went to the tournament only because her chess master said all participants will get a trophy. Yep we are cheap but the girl desperately wanted a trophy what to do? But, she played pretty well for the first time. Her moves amazed us. She looked very serious and for the whole game she had both her hands on the forehead pretending to think very deep for every move. You see, she was working hard for the trophy 🙂  The tournament was on a Friday evening. As usual, we were late for the tournament (blame it on the detours and traffic) and got lost (in spite of having GPS) while returning. We had to take many local suspicious roads to reach our neighborhood and needless to say it was a scary to ride on those roads at late night.  It was 10:30 pm by the time we reached near our home and luckily most of the Indian restaurants around were open late. So, we stepped into a Hyderabadi restaurant, hogged on the food and reached home past midnight. She will be completing the current chess session by this month and I have left the decision to her about registering for the next session. I am satisfied as she now knows the rules and how to’s of the game.  Its totally up to her to take it further.

trophy

Tree – Our tree is up for this year. The father and daughter duo set it up during Thanksgiving holidays. The girl has written her letter to Santa and has changed her preference for few gifts in the list. As I told her that it is not necessary for Santa to gift all that she wants and he might choose to gift only 1 or 2 (you see our pockets are very tight) as he has to make gifts for the kids all around the world, she has now modified the letter to mention her preference 🙂 The other day she saw the picture of one of her wish list item in her father’s phone and showed it to me secretly.  As of now, only I know what she wants but how come her father had a picture of that item?  Her suspect is growing day by day and M is only generously feeding her doubts. Sigghhhh !!!!!

tree

Ornaments – We attended a holiday party at a camp Adi attended last summer. They let the kids make different types of ornaments, holiday cards and then there was a sing-along session. It was total fun singing holiday songs with the group.  On crafting, Adi choose the one that needed more patience and focus. See for yourself.. I made two bracelets. You see the one in her hand? I made that for her.

holiday-party

Honor roll – She managed to secure first honors roll for first quarter in 3rd grade. She is doing pretty well in 3rd grade. I am more than pleased with the way she is progressing in her academics. I only wish and hope as a mother that she keeps up with this in the coming years.

first-honors

Did I say picture post???