Rakshabandhan

This year, the whole Shah family was together for Rakshabandhan festivities after two intervening decades, when the festival meant envelopes bulging with Rakhi, love & blessings traveling across continents.

Three generations under one roof, lots of pictures, sweets and fun -

Coldplay Live!

No words can do justice to the experience, I'll let the pictures do the talking!
One of the two opening acts, Robyn -

Wolfgang was the other band that opened, did not happen to click any pics of them, sorry!
Then there were instructions :)

Every person who entered the arena got handed a xyloband.

Pretty regular wristband till they started blinking - all twenty thousand of them!!

Thanksgiving 2011

Time sure flies when you're having fun! This thanksgiving we hosted friends from Austin, and with their four year old to keep us company, the weekend just flew by.

We had traditonal Indian fare for thanksgiving dinner, there was kheer and cake too! Yum!!
And now we have enough leftovers to last a few days :)

We went to the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan Resort on Thanksgiving night - no crowd and no lines. Its the perfect day to go :)
This year the theme was "Shrek the halls" and it was awesome. It was our second time at the exhibit, the last time we were there in 2009 and that year the theme was Dr Seuss! It was amazing to walk through the halls and see the grinch find his heart.

Shrek started out all grinch-y.

But a few exhibits and dragons later, Shrek invited us all for Christmas :)

The last exhibit, and they make this every year - Nativity in ICE! Absolutely love it.

Out of the exhibit there were lights and train sets to ogle at

We all had fun and the kiddo had such a ball on the ICE slides.

The day after thanksgiving we slept in, had fun playing Jenga and Taboo. Dinner was at Potbelly

This morning after an awesome breakfast at IHOP we fared them well and sent them on their way home. Thanks guys for an awesome three days!!

Happy Diwali!

Diwali, or the festival of lights is the Hindu equivalent of Christmas :) The five day festival starts with cleaning up & decorating your house to welcome Goddess Lakshmi (the Goddess of wealth) and goes on till Bhai dooj.

According to lore, Lord Rama, having defeated the demons in Lanka, returned to Ayodhya with his bride and his posse, on a no moon night. So to welcome him, everybody lit rows and rows of lamps. That's what gives the festival its name. Diwali = short for Deepavali = Row of lamps! And that's also how the festival came to signify the triumph of good over evil.

Traditional decorations include oil-lamps and Rangoli. Inexpensive and beautiful. Back home, my sister and I made really quick and classy Rangolis using rangoli powder, flowers and lamps.

But for the last three years, I did not make a Rangoli, in part because we were renting (I did not want to stain the tile and pay through my teeth later) and partly for lack of enthusiasm - its no fun to make a Rangoli all by yourself!

But this year, it'll be our first Diwali in our new house, and Gudia is with me! So we wanted to make one. She researched and came up with an awesome design. Then we went shopping for Rangoli colours, only to find out that the Indian store didn't have even the primary colors, they were sold in 'bottles'(!) and were ripping us off!! So we decided to use dyed rice. Gudia found out all about dyeing rice, and made batches of all the colours we'd need. We also used some glitter for embellishment.

All done, this is what you see when you enter -

Get a bit closer and there the Rangoli is, in all its splendor!

Thanks to my adorable little sister - she did all the work! And to my patient husband - no questions asked :)

Here's wishing y'all a Very Happy Diwali!
May the coming year bring to you all things good!