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I went to pick up Suhani last Friday. She was very excited to see me, picked up all her stuff from cubby, mail box. But started whining saying that she wanted Dad to pick her up. While walking in the hall way she kept on asking why naana did not come to pick her up. I was trying to console her but she was not ready to listen, so I tried to blackmail her emotions saying ” Suhani, you hurt my feelings, I came all the way from work to pick you and you ask for naana”. With a whine look and pouted lips she said “Amma, you hurt my feelings too, why did you come to pick me up?”

Both DP and myself love cooking at the temple. From past 8 years we cook for atleast 3 times a year. For sure, we cook on Annabhishekam day for Shiva during anniversary celebrations, Durgashtami day during Navratri and any one day during Annual Yagnam. This year we only have done it twice as during Maha Yagnam, temple encouraged different cuisines from India rather than personal sponsors. But I was one of the leads for Telugu’s sponsored lunch, which was a great experience.

For this year Durgashtami, we cooked for 200 people, and the menu includes sabudana(saggubiyyam/tapioca) pakodi, mixed vegetable pappu (tomato,cabbage,cucumbers), chamadumpa deep fry, cauliflower and potato curry, cabbage pachhadi, sambhar, buttermilk and banana pudding. We reached temple around 5:15pm and I was little tensed up as we were late because DP could not leave early from his meeting. At first, only DP and I were there but later Chaitu and Sai joined us which boosted my confidence. But after a while all our friends came to help which made it look like a big cookery event. At one point of time, I did not have place to enter the kitchen as all the three big gas stoves were surrounded by people. We really really had lots of fun. Thanks to all of our friends namely Shivram, Sridhar, Ajay, JC, Rukmini, Padma D, Kachi, Kala. BTW, for all recipes with pictures, visit http://www.chaitali.net. Also, just for information sake, we spent around $425 of which $125 goes towards paper products, of course not counting man hours and cooking equipment. But believe me, personal satisfaction and blessings we received from people is priceless.

When Shivani was learning numbers, she used to count fine until 20 after that she used to say twenty eleven, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,twenty fourteen. While Suhani remembers 1-10 fine, but for 11,12,13, she used to say onety one, onety two, onety three.

I was teaching Shivani different shapes including pentagon, hexagon, octogon and Suhani kept disturbing us, as she wanted my attention. So I asked her pointing a octagon, what shape it is and she replied back saying that is a STOP sign. 

While I was reading online about Vishwnathan Anand, Shivani, my five year old, asked who he was and I was talking all about him and told her that he is the winner of World Chess Champion’ship’ Tournment. She nodded her head as if she understood most of it. But at the end she asked me why he won a ’ship’ for playing chess.

Suhani and Shivani are all pumped up to go watch this movie as all their friends are going, of course their number one reason is still Coke and Popcorn. Also, the name of the movie is also in English, so it was easy for them to pronounce and they kept saying that they were going to watch Happy Days movie, from few days before. Once the movie started, Suhani started pestering me for Happy Days movie while my eldest for food. I kept telling Suhani that the movie which is going on is the Happy Days movie, but she kept on saying that is not the movie. After a while, I realized that she was expecting HAPPY FEET movie. But few minutes later, they sat tight and watched the movie while enjoying their popcorn.

Both of mine liked songs as they are very soft and melodious. Both started singing at home while Suhani adds few steps to that, explaining that this is how the heroine did in Movie. While they were singing Happeee daaays , Happiee daaayssss, Happeee daaays, I reminded Shivani to get her Kumon and she changed the lyrics to NO Happeee daaays , NO Happiee daaayssss, NO Happeee daaays as she has to do her home work.