Paavaadais for this season

Too bad I was not in good enough shape to capture the other two sets.. We will get them the next time they dress up to go to a temple or some other function.

Our girls are growing up.. too fast for my liking!


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To each his own

One thing about the festival season in a south Indian brahmin family is the clothes.

Well, the guys get to wear their silk dhotis and the ladies come dressed like cute penguins in their madisaar saris!

It is an extra long saree (almost 50% longer) reserved for special occasions (usually red color) that they wear in a different way than the casual sari.

San will always be my hottie! She has always been cute to my eyes from the day she walked down the marriage hall and challenged me to be her husband. It was like a bull fightress with the red cape challenging a bull. To this day I am madly running around her, still unable to hit the mark!

To get back on track with the post, there is something about the madisaar sari that is a turn on. The casual San in her jeans and kurthi somehow magically transforms into a madisaar wearing hottie. It is possible that deep down somewhere the image of a madisaar mami is similar to how Hollywood movies portray the woman in her white wedding gown for desi boys like me!

Indian ancestors seem to have perfected the art of packaging. Cover almost everything, expose without really exposing, and let curiosity take care of the rest..

Well, as long as San keeps her "Koorai pudavai" in good shape and wears a madisaar once a year, she will still be my hottie when she is old and gray!


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Festive season

This weekend is a festive one in the house. First Varalakshmi Nombu/pooja was celebrated by the girls and ladies in the house Friday evening. The house was standing room only and the food (all taken care of by MIL and San) was yummy!

The girls dressed up in their last set of new clothes and posed for me as usual.

Today was Aavaniavittam aka thread ceremony, which comes with some more yummy food for me. Considering this is the one festival for the men in the house (man in our case) the ladies were kind enough to cook new goodies today!

Yoga was bunked because of all the over eating and that was a double whammy. Tomorrow will be a day of yoga and meditation. There is a 1008 Gayathri mantras to be done and some hot yoga to go with it...

Another year has rolled by and we enter the festive season !




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Bright and white..

One of the last matching dresses came out today...

This one is simple but the girls looked bright eyed and bushy tailed in them!

The little one has been very difficult to deal with the entire day. Bad cold, the infinite "nobody loves me in his house" routine, tantrums galore!

Things will turn around tomorrow or so we hope..

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Frolicing in frocks

These days elders we visit with the kids give them cash and ask them to go buy clothes. We rounded up all the cash and got a few sets of fancy wear for the kids from a place called Cents and Pence in Adyar.

They have a decent collection!

Jr. is having a problem fitting into practically anything as she is now outside of the kids sizes! Pretty soon she will be shopping in the young adults section at Target. Don't know why she is in a rush to grow up. Wish I could slow it down a little and keep her the same Jr.

The little one seems to be okay as far as physical maturity goes, but mentally she talks like a 60 year old. She makes sure I don't miss my mother! At least she fits in clothes in the kids section..

More pictures next weekend..

Floral matches

The tailor messed up this one bigtime. Jr.'s salwars are all one size small and we could not even fit this through her neck.

Don't know how a guy can measure her and stitch something like this!

So she might be wearing this only for this photo for all we know.. poor thing did wear it for a few minutes just to pose with her sister. Cloth and stitching was a waste of almost 100$ !

So much for stitching comfortable dance suits for her in India. This is our family tailor and we have known him since he was a small boy working for his dad.

Now this is why I keep telling him "she is a growing child, make it loose.."

Next time we should also not pressure him to stitch a dozen salwars in one week..


Lesson learned!

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Pretty formals

We attended a baby shower today and the girls decided to dress up for the event. Not missing an opportunity, we did another photo shoot in the backyard and they were at their posing best!

Lets see if these come out okay in blogger.. The originals uploaded were already reduced size images so there is not compressing involved!

It is always a joy (painful joy when they are doing monkey poses, but joy nevertheless) to take pictures of the girls!



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Matching Jewelry

Bombay had purchased some Paavaadais for the girls in India recently.

Another installment was released today!

The girls were also very excited to receive matching fake jewelry that goes with the silk frocks.













They made daddy happy by posing as usual for photos.

A detailed analysis of the fake Jewels showed that there are no real stones for most of the necklaces. The thing is actually a faceted hole in a stamped plastic with a coating on the inside. The reflections from the hole create an optical illusion that there are raised stones set on the plastic. Whoever came up with the concept is pure genius! It shines better than real stones would.

Daddy shed some Aaananda kanneer (happy tears) on seeing how far materials science has improved over the years!

Hopefully such improvements will save lots of $ for me when the kids grow up.


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Goodies from India

The MIL is back with us now and the kids are just plain ecstatic!

She got us all the snacks for the adults and clothes for the kids from all the relatives back home.

Today we did not go anywhere. The girls just wanted to try on the clothes and take photos, to reaffirm their prettiness of course.

One advantage with the girls is that you can spend hours indoors if you take them to Walmart, Target or simply when grandma opens her suitcase just after she lands from the airport!

They will insist on wearing every dress and look in the mirror and before you know it, it is 2013 and they are ready for the next batch of paavaadais (silk frocks).

These aren't the best shots (will have to take some during the day to avoid the shadows) but here goes..







Okay, we are not in 2013, but half the weekend is over!


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Happy Thanksgiving

From the Indian American American Indian.. aka Little One who came home like this..




and Jr. who was thoroughly amused by the little one's dressing up in a pasta necklace and brown paper feathers.




The kids are going to give Kollu Paati a cheer up present tomorrow. Tomorrow promises to be an interesting day already!




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Navarathri 2009 - The rest of the golus..

Previous golu posts on this blog...

2009 : first set of golus

2008 : Part 1 (Golumania), Part 2(padis), Part 3(Megolumaniacs)

2007 : Golus and Paavaadais, more paavadais and golus..

2006 : Don't know and don't remember why we missed the golu scene in 2006.. we had just moved to Cupertino and things seem to have been normal. But no golu posts...

2005 : The first golu post when San was still very pregnant with the little one (ah, how time flies!), stitch shots of golus

Now for the last of this years photos.. (the little one deleted two of the photos on the iPhone by mistake)































That is all folks!

The Chronicles of Navrathria continue next year.


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Siblings

Hope they stay like this forever...




Will post the pictures of all the golus we visited over the last seven days tomorrow night..

It has been an eventful and busy week. The coming week will hopefully be less hectic and bring us back to normal pace..


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Orangeutans

The last of the new matching Salwars...




complemented by some bead garlands..










They sure are getting naughtier by the day!


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Match them while you can

Round three of the matching salwars was unleashed today. The girls did not even bother to ask. They dressed up, went to the backyard and said "Daddy, where is your camera?"

We seem to have successfully created genetcially modified photogenic offspring!










Our first thought was that the pink was a little too bright. This one turned out to be the best!


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