Baking cookies

With all 4 grandparents over, Ananya decided we should bake chocolate
chip cookies tonight. Yum!!

Ananya's first field trip

Big day today - Ananya's first school trip to see a play "The elves
and the shoemaker"....Pooneet and I had to join her on this big day,
which is also her first time on a school bus!!

Breakfast for dinner

After a loooooong and fun day in SF, the girls are winding down with a
cartoon and a breakfast for dinner picnic!

Thanksgiving weekend

Thanksgiving this year has been an awesome nonstop celebration of
family and friends. Deepa, Erich, and their super cute kiddos Sonia
and Neal visited us....Ananya and Sonia became the best of friends and
slept together each night!

Ananya's "Happy Diwali" song

Ananya, like her mom, loves to turn everything into song...so here she is, after our Diwali celebration (which included a puja/aarti, wearing a new lengha, lighting sparklers in our backyard, reading a Diwali book) singing her version of a Diwali song. Enjoy!

Happy Diwali

Here is our first set of Diwali pictures from our celebration tonight.
It is near impossible to get a picture of Amisha standing or sitting
still!!

Antics

In the middle of taking pictures, amisha hit Ananya and also pulled
her hair. Lovely.

Old shirts

My mom saved two of my baby shirts, so I made the girls wear them today

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"Wearing my old baby shirts"

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"Fun day in the park"

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Movie nite

Here's what movie night looks like tonight...realized too late that
Finding Nemo is fairly traumatizing for poor Ananya, so now we are
watching Dora!

Busy ballerinas

Coloring very seriously

Ballerinas

Two colorful ballerinas

Matching purple dresses

Karva Chauth

Every year, Pooneet's family celebrates Karva Chauth - a day where women traditionally fast and the fast is broken when the moon is seen at night. The moon, by the way, is impossibly hard to find on this one night!

Halloween

Halloween was action-packed in our house this year. Ananya dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast (thanks to Mili and Sharath's costume gift they got for her) and Amisha was a butterfly. We went to the pumpkin patch and had a great time...I think because we went the weekend before Halloween (slacker parents?), there was no one at the patch and we pretty much had all the rides to ourself!

 The kids dressed up multiple times for many parties. They made ghosts to put on our lawn. Pooneet and Ananya carved pumpkins. They went to Amisha's music class and Ananya's preschool party all dressed up. And then on Halloween night, Steph brought over homemade Halloween treats, Puja/Rohan/Kaiyan came over, my parents and Anjali came over and we all went trick or treating up and down our street. The kids were really into the trick or treating process - Ananya would ring the doorbell and she and Kaiyan would say "trick or treat", and Amisha loved taking candy and saying "thank you, bye bye".

 Here are some pictures of all the Halloweeny events:

Lots of fun

We have had a fun month, celebrating Adhara's birthday, having Mili/Sharath/Baby Nayan stay with us for 5 days, and going to lots and lots of birthday parties.

 

Mom's Retirement

Major milestone in the Mohan family - my mom retired after over 30 years of work at the County of Santa Clara! She had a huge retirement party and then we also celebrated at home with the kids, where my dad treated her to some pretty fabulous jewelry (see the look on her face in the last photograph!) 

Here are some pictures from her work retirement lunch, where over 100 people came, including my dad, me, and Pooneet...and from a dinner party we had at our house so that the kids could join:

Dadi's birthday

Before Pooneet's parents went to India, we celebrated Dadi's birthday at our house! We got yummy cake, lots of treats and balloons, and had a fun birthday celebration