What do you do when...

...you get a mail from a matrimonial site with the subject "Have you met your Special one!" after being married for 13 years (yeah..just 2 weeks to go for this milestone) and having two kids?

I just did a silent laugh :)

What do you do when...

...your soon to be 9 yr child notices the sign "Use Dipper at Night" at the back of a truck, misreads Dipper as Diaper, and asks "Why are they asking us to use Diaper at night?".

I was in splits when I realised what it was all about :D

Etiquettes in different countries

Just a while ago I came across this link - http://www.swissotel.com/promo/etiquette-map/ which tells us about the basic etiquette that we need to follow in various countries. And when I saw the one on tipping it reminded me of a funny incident during my trip to US.

On the last day of our trip we had free time and myself and the three of colleagues went out for lunch. So when the bill came I asked generally how much do I need to tip. One of them said that since it would already include service charge do not leave any and just round up the amount. So that's what I did. And then the guy who served us came and asked me point blank "You are leaving me 23 cents as a tip?" Man!! I was so embarrassed!! I asked him if the bill includes a service charge and when he said it doesn't I apologized and gave few dollars as a tip.

Later on we all had such a laugh looking at his face on getting a tip of 23 cents :D

What do you do when...

...you scold your 15mo child for scribbling on the wall and in return get a huge scolding back from the big brother for scolding the little baby?

*rolling my eyes*

How cool is that!!

Just a while back I came across this website - http://crayoncreatures.com/ which makes 3D figurines from the drawings of the children. Isn't this awesome? 

I just LOVED it!!

What do you do when...

...you lie down with your 15 month old to put her to bed. And after about a minute she sits up and starts patting your head saying "ninni..ninni"?

Role reversal?

Trip to Houston, TX

I went for a short (6 days) work trip to Houston, TX in the third week of December 2012. I was pretty excited as this would be my first trip to US.

But then it was so short that I didn't get to see around much. We were staying in downtown and client office was 15 min walk so pretty much stayed in downtown only for 4 days. Everything was 30 miles or more farther from our hotel/client office.

Nishka fared a lot lot better than I had imagined. Looks like she was a total angel in my absence. I was told that there were times when she would be a little quiet and mopey kinds but on the whole pretty fine. My in-laws had come over to help out taking care of kids.

Met a cousin and his wife from hubby's side of the family. On the 5th day (Friday) they took me to Galveston, the bay area, and the aquarium. On Saturday we had about 2 hours before I had to reach the airport so managed to quickly go to the Museum of Natural History and the butterfly park in the same complex.

On coming back, when people asked me how did I like it there, I said what I liked was traffic rules being followed by vehicle owners as well as pedestrians, clean roads, quick emergency services (saw many a accidents there). Rest pretty much the same - quality of construction, the malls, the offices - we all have it as good in India now.

Lot of people had told me you might have trouble with the food but seriously I had none. In fact I ate lot more than I eat here in India :)

I hope next trip happens soon and I get to go around town more. Let see...

Baking and Birthday

Another year gone by. A happy year I would say.

So to make the day happier I started with baking some stuff. It had been ages since I baked and I just loved it! After baking three things I wanted to bake some more!! Hahaha...

So I baked a banana-walnut cake, a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and a chocolate layer cake.

Seeing the awed look in betu's eyes made it all the more worthwhile. And the way Nishka relished both the cake and the raisin was the final stamp of satisfaction for me.

Here are the pics -

I also baked a simple cake and layered it with whipped chocolate cream. The look isn't great as I didn't know how to smoothen the cream.

As it is every year was flooded with emails, SMSes and calls from friends and family. It just overwhelms me. Every year.

Ended the day with a dinner out at DimSum Bros, New Friends Colony. The food there was great and so was the ambiance and the staff.

So like always a day well spent!

Bliss

Bliss is when hubby dear prepares the gajar halwa! And you just sit, eat and relish it! :D

Yes, hubby dear made the first gajar halwa of the season. It was his first time but it wont be the last! As now we have decided that making gajar halwa will be his job. I used to make it the long way...with boiling/cooking the grated carrot in milk. He tried the shortcut way by pressure cooking it for a while and then just adding khoya (condensed milk) and ghee. It was much faster, required less effort and consumed less fuel. And yet tasted so yummy!!

Orange peel

The season of oranges is here and it brings back many memories revolving around oranges as kids.

Remember how we used to squeeze the orange peel in the eyes of our friends taking them by surprise and making them squint because of the prickling sensation?

Remember how we used to make threads from the juice of the orange peels by rotating it around the plastic rulers? It would leave the scale all melted/shrivelled and basically useless. God!!! How many rulers we ruined in this process!! :D

And it also reminds me of an incident from school. I must have been in 7th or 8th standard. And I was eating an orange while waiting for our English teacher to come. The teacher came and I shoved the orange inside my desk. We were then asked to read a story from the book quietly. And I in total absent mindedness started eating the orange again while reading the story totally forgetting that the teacher was in the class.

And as well all know we can smell anyone eating an orange from 20 yards. So obviously teacher smelled the fragrance of orange and started looking for the culprit. And then she saw me chewing and asked me to stand up. It was only then that I realized what I had done. I quickly swallowed the orange inside my mouth seeds et al. When asked about it, I tried to lie that I wasn't eating. I was so damn scared I still remember.

The teacher than asked another student to check my desk and of course that student confirmed seeing an orange there. Thankfully since I was in the good books of the teacher as I was one of the few students who were good in the subject, I got away with just a good shout from her. And boy did I feel glad about it then?