Playing!

Here are a couple of pictures of Aashini from today on the playground :) She cracks me up! I love the look on her face in this picture :)

The look on her face here cracks me up too! haha! She's a funny girl :)

Out & About

Here are a few pics from yesterday :) Here are Aashini & Hazel playing Simon Says next to an Auto :)

This is a seriously awesome ball pit!

The girls sitting at their special table for dinner :) (Ignore the mess we're in the middle of moving!!!!)

We went to Pink Mango to get some frozen yogurt for desert! Yum!

Having Fun!

After a morning full of doing stuff, we took the kids to a garden to run around. They had a great time :) Aashini is cracking me up in these pictures running around with the chip bag! haha!
We stopped to feed the ducks :) Don't fall in Adam!!
Here are the girls running at me to get more chips to feed the ducks ;)
Feeding chips to the ducks... they don't really like chips :)
These circle steps were awesome :)
haha! This picture (bad photography and all) cracks me up!
Diya did NOT want to be carried anywhere. She wanted to walk by herself Everywhere! She LOVES walking now!
Here are the girls :)

Buddies :)

We have some fun friends in town right now! My friend Emily who used to live here in the Capital and her kids and one of their youth Kiley is here. I used to post a lot of pictures with Aashini and her little buddy Hazel. They were born just a few days apart. The last time the kiddos were together, they were little.... They looked like this:

You can see more pictures of their last time together here. Anyway, they are here! They're so big now (AND they have little sisters!) I love Diya's smile in this picture :)

Adam made the girls laugh in this pictures :) haha!

We told them to make funny faces :) The little ones didn't get it :) haha!

We're all having a lot of fun!!

Valentine's Day!

This year for Valentine's Day we had some extermination done on our house - yay! haha! We have a serious termite problem! Anyway, after that we needed to get out of the house, so we headed to a fun park called the Garden of Five Senses. We've been here MANY times but have never seen it all -it's huge! Anyway, usually on Valentine's Day they have a camel there, so we thought it would be fun to let the girls ride. Aashini was a little scared at first but she had a great time!

Diya LOVED it! She laughed and clapped the whole time!

Valentine's Day is an interesting holiday here. Relationships outside of marriage are taboo, so if anyone dates then they do it secretly. Usually on Valentine's day all of the parks are filled with couples paired off hiding everywhere. This park actually had a "make-out" police. A park guard was walking around with a whistle blowing it at couples - hilarious! (to see a previous Valentine's Day post, click here)

Aashini had a blast at the park climbing on everything! This picture is totally overexposed but Ithought she was cute :)

There were also other fun things to climb on :)

...and other fun things!

They had a super small playground that had a hamster wheel and a slide. The hamster wheel was tied up so that it wouldn't move because it had holes in it and was dangerous... but that didn't keep Aashini from trying :)

The slide was funny - it was a conveyor belt! It was fun :)

Diya liked it too :) It was a fun day :) After this we at South Asian food at the park and the girls napped in the car while we went to the mall. They played at the mall and we ate there and went home to our fume-y house :( The girls slept in a non fumey room and we all went to sleep :) Anyone have any tips on getting rid of fumes?

Anyway, Happy Valentine's Day!

Diya Fun :)

Here's a post all about Diya :) We have a newish mall in our city that has an awesome (and FREE!) play area! The girls are a little young for it, but they had a great time at it :)

Diya made a little buddy while she was there :)

Diya got to meet Shrek the other day - she was a little scared of him (but less than Aashini who wouldn't get closer than 5 feet away ;) haha!)

Poor Diya still only has 2 teeth but she eats everything! haha!

:) Diya is walking everywhere now! She walked steps here and there for a long time but then one day a couple of weeks ago she just decided she wanted to walk everywhere and that's what she did :)

Diya has just enough hair that I can put up a little water spout - haha! It's fun to be about to do something with her hair :)

Diya doesn't get juice very often, but she LOVES it when she gets it and sucks the box dry! (Mango juice is the favorite of both my girls) :)

This picture isn't great photography but it really makes me smile, so I thought I'd leave you with this picture :)

School Fashion Show

Aashini had a school fashion school this weekend. It was awesome! We weren't sure what to think when this whole thing started. Her school is awesome and they are always doing some kind of public speaking contest but this one was a fashion show too. We weren't sure what to expect! (There's a video at the bottom of this post in case you want to go ahead and let it load :))

We weren't sure how to dress her. The teachers and principal showed us a video of the past winners and showed their outfits and things like that. The kids were super decked out! They had all kinds of flashy crazy clothes or fancy clothes. The teachers told us to make sure Aashini's hair was done up special and that we should buy a hair piece or a wig. So, as a good South Asian parent I found a shop that had hair pieces and I bought one (I even found one in her color!)... She looked very 80s and quite funny...

Anyway, I couldn't handle the fake hair :) so here is what Aashini looked like :) (her hair was super cute but it's hard to tell at this angle :)

The Fashion Show was awesome! The kids had to walk out and "do the model walk" and then walk to the microphone and talk about something and then "do the model walk" again. This was the first kid - he was hilarious!!!! When he walked up to the microphone he made this face (below) and just stood there like that for what seemed like forever! It was hilarious!

The kids spoke on some funny things! Some of the topics were Alcohol, Government Corruption, Global Warming, Female Feoticide, etc...

This kid was awesome - see the Nike swoosh necklace? haha!

This kid's outfit cracked me up! He had real leaves on!

After the boys went, then the girls went. This is Rhea (below), she's Aashini's best buddy at school. She talked about Government Corruption.

This is Aashini's little friend Pavani. She was dressed so cute!

Aashini was next! She was so excited!! She sort-of did her little walk and walked up to the microphone :) She was loving it!!!

When she first got up to the mic she just kept posing. We weren't sure what was going to happen :)

Her teacher took the mic off so that she could hold it herself and that seemed to be what made her comfortable - haha!

... and another picture :)

...and another one :)

She was so cute when she walked off. She kinda did a little strut :) I thought it was cute :) I like how you can see her friends Naviya & Rhea in the background :)

I posted a lot of pictures :) haha! Here's another one :)

This little girl was so cute!!

This was almost all of the little girls that participated :)

This is the little girl that won! She was hilarious!

They gave the kids gifts when they were done. The kids were all so excited with their gifts! (They were all a little less excited when they opened them I'm sure... it was a set of coffee mugs...)

Aashini with her gift - her face here cracked me up :)

I love nose picking pictures... this isn't a nose-pick, but it's pretty close :) haha!

This girl had the biggest wig... it was quite big!

This is Aashini with her friend Naviya. Naviya and Aashini were born on the same day at the same hospital! In a city of millions it's pretty crazy that they ended up in the same class at the same school!!

We celebrated afterwards by letting Aashini strut her stuff at the mall and getting ice cream cones :) Fun!

And.... a VIDEO!!! Our video camera half-way died right before Aashini went on (so the image stabilizer isn't working - so it's a little rocky!) and totally died just a little bit after she went. Crazy :) Anyway, here's the video. Aashini's is first, and then I put a few clips of the other kids on it too :) Enjoy! (if you can't see it then just click here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ztx7j0ip4 )