The artist and builder

love how she's sitting here

even a pink girl chooses other colors from time to time

very focused on legos

showing off his spiderman from Sunday Brunch

Tutus and Transformers

And the awards for fabulous packages last week goes to....Nana and Papa and Aunt Jenny!!! We had the treat of getting two packages in one day. Oscar loves his Transformer from Nana and Papa and his truck from Aunt Jenny. Livi loved her pink tutus and princess nightgown. Even Mama and Dada scored with this one and we have lots of treats for everyone to enjoy. Nandri!! (Thank you in Tamil)

princess livi

"This is my best Transformer EVER!"

big Oscar's score

you can never have too many princess livi pics

Mad Chaos of HHE

Our first HHE arrived last week, much to the joy of us all. Here's a few shots from the process and chaos that ensued. We've unpacked, cleaned up, and even had people over. I won't show you a picture of the guest bedroom yet, which is where all the "extra" stuff we haven't gotten to is hanging out.

3 crates worth of stuff

the bag of toys that kept oscar occupied for an hour until...

he realized his bike was in this one (he has a pair of scissors and is cutting through each layer)

I think 75% of our stuff  was toys/kids stuff

A walk in our "park"

These are actually taken from our yard, but a friend came over the other day to play and said she liked our park. If I haven't said this before, we're so lucky to not only have the swings and playhouses for the kids but also the great big lawn and all the beautiful plants whose names I don't know. Another project! Now where is that to do list....

Making Pita with Mama

I tried my hand at home made hummus and pita for a get together we had last weekend. I gave up halfway with the hummus. Oscar thankfully resurrected it and made it quite tasty. The pita bread was pretty decent too, although next time I'll make it a bit thinner. Livi joined me making the pita bread Sunday morning....

the resulting nap. note her bed choice.

Livi's First Day of School

a little nervous getting ready to go

all smiles afterwards with a lollipop and Pricilla

a happy Livi blur

Livi had her first day of school last Friday! She goes to a small nursery school about 5 min from our house for a few hours a day. Let's just say on her first day she "pulled an Oscar"....lots of tears and protests. She did end up letting me leave after 30 min or so, and thankfully the nanny from upstairs stayed and could give me a report. As soon as I was gone she was fine (or course), and was very involved and happy. This week she says she doesn't want to go and protests a little at drop off, but if I walk her to her classroom she'll say "Bye Mommy" and we don't have any more tears.  I have yet to capture a picture, since we're still going through the adjustment and I don't want to stress her out more with a camera in her face. I'm hoping in the next week I'll get her big smile at pickup on camera to share.

I told her you have to put your hair up for school and we've graduated to two small braids in front...my next goal is all of her hair in braids on both sides!

Money money money

I love money from other countries. The first time I came home from travelling overseas, I was a bit dissapointed by our green bills. Here's a few pics of the beautiful Indian rupee (which is about 45 INR to 1 USD). My personal fav is the 10 rupee note with all of the animals.

love this

A challenge for the untrained eye is that some coins of different denominations are the same size/weight, and the same denomination coins could be different sizes/weights....

these 3 coins are different versions of 2 rupees

Papparazzi in the mall

I finally made it to the big mall last week, and had my first experience in reverse culture shock. Now, I haven't exactly immersed myself in the culture here but I have gotten used to the general sites along the road and the local stores. Even though everyone told me how huge and "nice" the mall was, I was still shocked to see it first hand. Here's the only picture I took from our trip but it gives a good idea of how big it is. This is just the center courtyard and it has two halls going in either direction with more stores, and there are 4 stories, plus a basement with a few other shops. Tho top floor has a huge movie theater "Escape" that has restaurants, game rooms, touch screens to order your movies, and massages while you wait. The grand total is about 2USD a ticket and it is apparently packed at all hours. We didn't go in this time around but hope to take the kids to a full screen Bollywood experience at some point. They also have first run movies here too.

Big Bazaar is in the basement and everyone compares it to Walmart. I dislike Walmart as much as the next guy, but I am a fan of Big Bazaar. They essentially sell just aboth everything you'd find in a Walmart (clothes, furniture, food, housewares...) just the Indian versions. I suppose that should go without saying since we are in Indian, and not the US...

My favorite store I saw was Lifestyle, a Macy's-like department store. There's everything from housewares to clothes to toys, and even maeup counters when you first walk in that cell Clinique and MAC. Perhaps not the most cultural of experiences, but I do like my malls and it's nice to know it's there when I need want it.  Other stores I saw included Marks and Spencer, Puma, Nike....along with a huge variety of Indian stores!

Livi was a rockstar. She had people asking to take her picture (which I declined) and literally had a crowd of store workers following her around when she started reshelving items that were out of place.

Before HHE

As we eagerly anticipate our HHE arrival this afternoon, I decided to take a few pictures of our house in a relatively clean state before all of our stuff arrives. "The Aftermath" will follow....

living room

other side of living room

study

den

kids room

kitchen

master bedroom

Fun in the Sun

We discovered last weekend that there are beautiful resorts about 1 hr south that we can enjoy. And for the first time since we got here, I felt a breeze that was cooler than the air temperature! Not much cooler, but it was perfect beach and pool weather and that ocean breeze felt so nice. Oscar said he could taste the ocean in the air. :) We had the added bonus of going with the G's as well, which was awesome to have great company for both us and the kiddos!

The drive down is a bit harrowing and my least favorite part of the experience by far. The two lane road is used by all forms of transport - car, truck, bus, auto, motorcycle, auto (tuktuk), cow.... and like all driving around here it's up to the less agressive driver to move out of the way, even if they're coming in the opposite direction and crossing the center line to pass. Our friends said at one point they had people simultaneously passing them on both the left and right sides of their car on the drive down. Thankfully, there is at least a shoulder for most of the road. I tried not to look and I'm 100% sure I will not be driving here, especially not on that road!!

We left on Saturday and came home Sunday afternoon so it was definitely short, but very sweet. Next time we'll take two nights, but Oz thinks we need to stay at least 3 or 4 nights. He was near tears while we were getting ready to go home. He was also exhausted from all the swimming and jumping in the waves! The pictures show it best:

dinner by the ocean. man those prawns were GOOD!

Oscar the ghost (from Dada putting on sunscreen)

a Livi ghost too

fun in the waves

a little Livi Love

A few extra updates:
-Livi is potty training and doing fantastic. We've had a few mad dashes to the bathrooms and overall she's done amazingly well with very few accidents.
-The new favorite words are "I love you too" from Livi. It actually sounds like  "To I you too!" which is somehow even sweeter.
-Oscar really seems to be enjoying school. No more tears when it's time to go, and were planning a day next weekend when a few of his school buddies can come over to play.