Love of Tropical Gardening

I have always loved gardening and have wanted to create a tropical paradise in my backyard. I have grown up with fruit trees and they remind me of good times with friends, cousins and my parents. So the first thing I wanted to do was plant all those trees which I grew up with. So far I have planted 8 varieties of Mangoes, 1 Logan, 1 Mulberry, 1 Guava, about 8 Coconuts and a Moringa. I have unsuccessfully tried Sugar apple and Lichee but haven't given up and am going to give Sugar apple another shot. I know what you are thinking, these plants are all dwarf varieties so they won't create a jungle :)

Besides this I also planted a small herb garden with just few things like coriander, mint, oregano, basil and curry leaves. I am still working towards pole beans, bottle gourd, bitter gourd and maybe the Indian squash.

I love colors and you can see it in my garden. I have tried to play with mostly orange, red and yellow with some purple.

Trip to Washington DC

This is the first time we took the kids to DC. Both of them LOVED the Museum of Natural History. Such a great place for kids. Soryan is learning about US Presidents so he was very interested in checking out the Lincoln Memorial and Thomas Jefferson Memorial. We did the whole walk around the Tidal Basin with beautiful Cherry Blossoms around the Potomac river. It was very cold but gorgeous. The National Mall is the best place for kids. Both Soryan and Arnav love dinosaurs and they took so many pictures. We also saw the Mammoth fossil - Remember Manny from IceAge?

The tulips were in full bloom, and the kids even played with snow one day. It was a COLD vacation but we had so much fun.

School friends

Soryan and Arnav are now going to go to a new school starting Fall. Arnav, the 5 year old already has 2 best friends and is very popular in school. I am not at all worried about him going to a new school and adjusting since he has a very bubbly personality and makes friends easily. Soryan on the other hand is reserved, a more introvert personality. I remember going to his class in Pre-K trying to make friends for him. Now he has finally made so many friends and is very comfortable in his school. I feel horrible to take away all this from him, but I have no choice. So this is for my son Soryan, his school friends :)

Momma Loves you LOTS!

Halloween 2005 - 2006

I just uploaded a lot of pictures from my camera and came across these. I don't know about u all but I am pretty bad in getting prints and uploading pics. As usual I waited till there was no more space left on the memory stick and had to either start deleting the pics or get a new memory stick. So picked the better of both options -- Upload them :)

I still had pics from 2005 in my camera. So here are pics from 2005 and 2006 Halloween. I still remember Soryan wanted to be Shrek and Arnav Spiderman, both influenced by the movies that came out that year. In 2006, I wanted to reuse the costumes but I got new demands to which I finally gave in. Soryan was Buzz Lightyear and Arnav became the Red Power Ranger. We had so much fun going around the community. Every Halloween we have a block party tradition. All the kids from our block get together and we bring out snacks and drinks at one of my neighbors houses. From there we all go together trick and treating. Last Halloween, the kids were tired after going through 1 block of 15 houses. So one of my neighbors got their pick- up trucks and we all hopped in the trunk and went through the whole community. The kids had a BLAST!