Portrait Festival

Yes, every year during Golu season Daddy Narayanan organizes what is called the Portrait festival where the two girls have to pose for portraits after their dress up routine.

This years Portraits below..

Next year we have to custom stitch stuff for Jr. She has outgrown readymade Paavaadai sizes as of this year!

That means yours truly is growing old and needs new camera equipment to cheer him up! Certain fokls who are traveling in India right now need to make note of above statement...

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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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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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..

Wagle ki duniya

When we went shopping for clothes, as soon as we landed in India, my thoughts on getting the kids matching outfits got a very critical response from the Mrs..

You are like Wagle in Wagle ki Duniya! Do you remember how he dressed his kids in matching outfits?

The comment initially drew a big blank from me because the time this serial was being telecast, yours truly was working hard to earn the title of "star maggu" in school and college. Nevertheless, my reasoning was apparently the same as Mr. Wagle! Save money by reducing cloth wastage! Per crude back of the receipt book calculations of three different Chennai tailors, one can save anywhere from .2 to .4 meters of cloth to stitch two salwars if you buy the "same" cloth for both girls.

After these critical looks and comments, we mutually agreed to do Wagle with a twist. Same pattern cloth, different color or design for the two girls. We get some level of matching but lose the cost saving bit.

Here is the first in a series of photos of the semi-matching outfits...

More photos over the next few weeks..

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