Global Winter Wonderland

This year we have a new Christmas attraction that is local. A "Global Winter Wonderland" in the parking lot area of the Great America Park in Santa Clara.

Guess they bought all the props from the Beijing Olympics at garage sale prices and set it up in Santa Clara. The whole thing was like a Chinese Christmas celebration with "Chineseized" doll displays of American icons including Disney themes!

The "Global" was thanks to the following displays and they were all very impressive.

The ticket prices were a rip off considering there was separate tickets (3$ a ticket per kid per ride) and an entrance ticket of 9$/person on discount! There should have been no entrance tickets for the kids and that would have come close to being fair. Nevertheless, we had already promised the kids that we were going there and we had no choice in the matter once there.

We made the most of a very cold evening and spent a good 3 hours wandering around the light displays, taking photographs and having the kids go on a few rides and try some of the carnival type attractions.

The kids were happy and tired enough to eat a speedy dinner and go to bed fast. So from that stand point it was a good deal! Next year we will be back to Christmas in the park. For all we know, might still take the kids there one of these days.

Some snippets of the three hours caught on video..




Next year if this attraction is still there, might go only if there are some discounted tickets... then again the rest of the family thought it was okay for the price we paid.


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The school holidays begin..

The kids are on break now. This year they did not even ask me if I was going to make it to their end of year class party. They knew daddy would not come.

They asked their mom and were disappointed to hear a "sorry" from her as well!

They had fun anyways...

Jr. made a gingerbread house and brought it home. It was great!

The little one made me a car ornament and that was great as well!

The best part was an email from the little one that was waiting in my inbox Friday evening!

A section of which is..

hi appa i am so glad that for two weeks there is no school and it is so fun
so i can play with you of the whole week i hope you have no work to so i
can play with you.a

Well, will disappoint her again, but the good news is she is getting used to it!


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5 years in Caricatures

This week was travel week. Daddy managed to limp along and spend the week out of town and came back limp intact late Friday.

The kids were overjoyed to see daddy and promptly declared that they had a surprise announcement for me. The IBM Children's party was Saturday morning and limp or not, I had to come because most likely Big Al will be there and we will do our caricature collage!

So off we went and spent two hours at IBM..

By now we already had four sets of pictures showing a constant theme!

Our annual Santa picture, courtesy IBM..

Grandma helped the kids make their X-mas hats and Gingerbread cookie decorations.

The kids posed for me in the backyard after coming home, without me having to beg them to pose!

and the best part..

Next year the plan is to make this one giant collage and put it on our hallway. It might cost us a fortune to frame this one but will try!

Once again, we thank IBM for organizing this every year and Big Al for showing how the kids change in his caricature world!


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Happy Holidays

The kids have been insisting that our house have a Christmas tree. Considering that we don't have a doll display at home for the Navarathri Golu, told the kids that the tree is very similar to a golu and our ancestors who have banned us from doll displays will be equally angry for the tree display.

For now the kids have bought into that logic much like the rules of Quidditch..

Our cousins have a tree in their house (they also do Golu) and that means we celebrate with them every year.







We spent a quiet Christmas with the cousins and had the kids open gifts, watched a bunch of movies and all was quiet on the home front.

Took a few portraits of everyone at home (here are some samples) and the weekend is almost coming to a close.






We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and are looking for a better and brighter 2011 !


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Wishes

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Happy Deepavali Wishes

Wishing you all a very happy Deepavali







Wishing you light and liveliness in your life

Sundar, San, Jr. and the Little one, not to mention Bombay!


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Happy Holidays

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas, and wonderful holiday season!




From all of us!!

I cannot wait to find out what surpise awaits me at the bottom of the tree!

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