Parrots?

So I was walking to the bus stop the other day to get my kids when I saw this really pretty bird. After a minute I looked and noticed that there were a lot of them. I never have seen birds like these flying around like you'd see Robins at home. I came home and told Alan about these pretty birds that I saw. He told me he thought they were probably Parrots. Aren't parrots red? I obviously am not that educated on birds. I had no idea that they could look like this. He pulled up a picture on the internet and sure enough, we have parrots that fly around wild here.

Sunday Morning

Ethan had a few good lines this morning as we were getting ready for church. The first one made my day. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: Ethan hurry and lets get dressed for church.

Ethan: I want to wear my shirt with a pocket.

Mom: OK here is the white one just like Dads.

Ethan: Mom, I wish I was a Dad already.

Mom: Why?

Ethan: Then I could marry you!

I knew deep down he really loved me even though he always tells me that he only loves Dad!

Then the next conversation with Alan was a pretty good one too. Alan had to speak in church today and I was telling all of my kids that if they couldn't sit quietly in Sacrament Meeting they were going to have to have "church practice" when we get home.

Ethan: Then what can I do in church?

Mom: You can sit and listen to Dad talk.

Ethan: What's he going to say?

Dad: I'm going to teach you some good stuff.

Ethan: I already know good stuff.

Dad: What good stuff do you know.

Ethan: Like don't hit people.

Dad: What other good stuff do you know?

Ethan: You shouldn't banish people either.

That kid had me laughing all the way to church, and it's a good thing because he was awful in Sacrament Meeting and I just had to keep thinking to my self his funny conversations this morning to keep from loosing it! Alan gave a great talk about prophets. He mentioned in it that I had had the opportunity to ride in the elevator with President Hinckley and after church I became the most popular person with questions about him.

After church there was a baptism and I told Alan that I thought it would be a good experience to stay and let our kids watch the baptism of these 2 brothers and 1 sister. The missionaries baptized them, and then afterwards while we were waiting for them to change out of their wet clothes they wanted to sing some hymns. The pianist had left so they turned to me and asked me if I played the piano. I very timidly said I could play a little, so they asked me to play. ha ha ha!! Mom, why did you let me quit taking lessons? Don't answer that I already know the answer. I wouldn't have wanted to listen to me whine about practicing either. I played "Choose the Right" the only hymn I know and then they asked me to play something else. I plunked my way through "Teach Me to Walk in the Light". Needless to say I think I'll start practicing playing some hymns just in case they ever ask me again. Afterward, I leaned over to Ellie and told her to never quit practicing because you never know if someone is going to ask you to help play the piano.

Ganesha Festival

Alan came home from work the other day and has told me that some of his co-workers in the US are following our blog. I have alot of good video that I have been taking, but as with everything here, it takes so long to get anything done and just to upgrade our internet to unlimited takes 5 days. ha ha I'll have to post the video after Monday (when I can upload it on our unlimited internet)but until then...Ross this one's for you.

This past week has been the Ganesha Festival. It is a party in the streets every night.

Our driver is Hindu so he was telling us all about it, his English is very good, but still I had a hard time with some of the story. As far as I could understand...Ganesh is the God with the Elephant head. His father is Shiva, and I can't remember his mothers name, but the story goes that his mother wanted to bathe so she told Ganesh to stand at the door so no one could come in while she was in the bath. Shiva came and Ganesh wouldn't let him come in because his mother was bathing. This made Shiva mad and he cut Ganesh's head off and when the mother saw this she was very angry with Shiva so, Shiva went out and found a sleeping elephant and cut it's head off and placed it on Ganesh's body. That is why he has an elephant head. I am pretty sure they are celebrating his birthday, but not positive. The people keep these Ganesh statues in their home for anywhere between 5 days to 10 days and then they take them to the lake and put them in. They send Ganesha off and he takes with him all of their misfortunes. Sunday was the begining of the festival and we went for a drive to see the parties. I videoed some of the activity, but again...you'll have to wait until Tuesday for that.

When I went to pick the kids up from the bus on Thursday (the day to put Ganesh in the lake) it was a party. At the same place where the kids get dropped off, inside Adarsh Vista, they were taking Ganesh.

We stood and watched for a minute. There was drumming and dancing all in front of this tractor that was pulling the Ganesh. They were also chanting something, but I didn't understand it. When I got the kids back to the house our driver asked if we would like to go and see the lake that they put the Ganeshes into. That night he took us to Ulsoor Lake. It was amazing.

These are some people carrying their Ganesh to the lake

The had a big crane lifting the big Ganeshes in. The statues range anywhere from 3/4 inch tall to 25 feet tall
Again Annie steels the show. In this picture the man on the left is our driver Vijay. He was very protective of her. He was a little nervous I could tell because there were so many people there. He wanted all of our children holding someones hand. He offered to carry Annie so that I could hold Ellie and Maddie's hands while Alan took Ethan.
I think he was kind of excited that Annie actually went to him. She usually will go to our maid, but she doesn't usually let him hold her. She was happy that night and I think it made his night.

A Pioneer Day Activity

I've been meaning to blog about the activity that our Elder Quorum had for the 24th of July. Unfortunately Alan wasn't able to go because we were still trying to settle in. They forwarded us these pictures and we've heard all about the fun it was. Also, they planned the activity, and the Relief Society planned an activity for the same day. I think this would have been fun to do with families.
For those of you who are following our blog and don't know the significance of the 24th of July in Utah, Pioneer Day is an official holiday celebrated on July 24 in Utah, with some celebrations in regions of surrounding states originally settled by Mormon pioneers. It commemorates the entry of Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, where the Latter-day Saints settled after being forced from Nauvoo, Illinois and other locations in the eastern United States. Parades, fireworks, rodeos, and other festivities help commemorate the event.
In addition to being an official holiday in Utah, Pioneer Day is considered a special occasion by many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). On Pioneer Day, some Latter-day Saints walk portions of the Mormon Trail or reenact entering the Salt Lake Valley by handcart. Latter-day Saints throughout the United States and around the world may celebrate July 24 in remembrance of the LDS Churches' pioneer era, with songs, dances, and pioneer related activities. While the holiday has strong links to the LDS Church, it is a celebration of everyone, regardless of faith and nationality, who emigrated to the Salt Lake Valley during the pioneer era, which is generally considered to have ended with the 1869 arrival of the transcontinental railroad. (taken from Wikipedia)
These guys are all dressed in their pioneer clothes. The man 2nd in on the left is the District President, and in the middle is the EQ President, I don't recognize the others with their beards on though but I think the guy on the left might be the counselor in the Branch Presidency.
They met at the Branch building and built their covered wagons, and then began their trek. The branch building represented Nauvoo I think.
They made stops at Far West and Winter Quarters for food.

They trekked through Bangalore with their covered wagons.

When they finally reached the Salt Lake Valley (church property, site for our new chapel) they played pioneer games like water balloon toss and hoola hoop contest.

I looks like they had a lot of fun!

A Sunday Drive to Church

Our church is 1/2 hour drive from our house, and our new driver has Sundays off so Alan drove us to church today for the first time. I know there are a few people out there that are watching our blog, and want to see India so, as Alan drove, I videoed. (this word looks like it is spelled wrong, but spellcheck says it's right, and I don't question spellcheck) We turned the radio on in the car to some enjoyable Indian music so that you wouldn't have to hear our kids fighting in the back seat, but the sound isn't very good on the camera anyway. I hope it doesn't make people sick.

 This video is just outside our housing complex gates. It's called Vignana Nagar Main Road.

Exciting Week

We have had a busy week this week.  Not only did we have our first day of school, we had a 2^nd,3^rd, 4^th and 5^th.  Ethan had a hard 2^nd day of school. It started out hurrying to make it to the bus at 7:20. Our first day to ride the bus to school. As he was running to catch up to Alan, he tripped and fell. Because he had a backpack on that had all his supplies, he got top heavy and landed flat on his face. Alan picked him up and he had done a pretty good number on his eye. Alan ran back to the house and got a few band aids and some Neosporin and made it back before the bus got there. We fixed his face, and tried to get him on the bus. He wanted nothing to do with it.  Maddie got on the bus and we decided to take Ethan back to the house and he could ride out with Alan to school. As we walked back to the house I started to feel bad for Maddie because in the rush of trying to get off she ended up riding the bus by herself for the first time. Oh well, she lived and probably grew from the experience.

 

Wednesday the kids (Maddie and Ethan) were off to school without any problems this time. Ellie still home sick. That afternoon, we had a call that our shipment had cleared customs.

 The kids got home from school just in time to see them unloading all their toys, scooters, Rollerblades and Ipods.  It was like Christmas gone bad at our house that night. The kids would rip the paper off of one thing enough to see what was in it, and then they would move on to the next package. They were so excited.

Thursday was just another day of school for Maddie and Ethan, but it was the “First Day of School” for Ellie. She was so excited to go. Of all my kids she was the most excited to start school, and then she ended up sick so she had to start late.  That’s OK though because she ended up having to go to Saturday School this week.

 

This was also the first day that it was just me and Annie. It was fun to see her get so excited as I unpacked some of the toys. Things that she had never seen before were so exciting to her. I had to put this picture on to show how curly her hair is getting.

Another thing that we did this week was buy our car! It’s a Toyota Innova. We just can’t seem to get away from the minivan! We also hired our driver and have tried to figure out how this whole thing works. On Saturday evening, I was cooking dinner and decided to make cookies. We had all of the ingredients except baking soda. I wanted to run to the store, but the driver had gone home for the night. So…yes, I drove the car to the store all by myself, and no..no one got killed. I honked the horn and drove on the wrong side of the road and everything. I got a few crazy looks from the security guards at our gate though. I don’t think they were expecting to see me behind the wheel.

Another purchase we finally made this week was our clothes dryer. Yippee!

Alan's Hair cut

I think I've kept you all in suspense long enough about Alan's head massage. Actually, the video file was too big to upload onto the blog so I had to figure a way to shrink it. I sped it up so that it wouldn't take quite as long to watch either. So...

Can't wait for people to come visit so they can go get hair cuts with Alan!

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Monday August 10th was the first day of school at Indus. We drove Maddie and Ethan out to the school and met their teachers. They went off to breakfast and then to class. They rode the bus home after school and got home at 5:10 that night. The kids were so tired when they got home. Ethan had fallen asleep on the bus, and Maddie fell asleep on the bus the 2nd day. They leave at 7:20 a.m. so it becomes a long day. They ride the bus 1 hour each way to the school.

Ethan all ready for school. This picture is taken in our backyard.
Maddie was pretty excited. She and Ellie wear these uniforms. She has to wear it on Mondays, and then they have a PE uniform that she wears the rest of the week.

This is how Ellie spent her 1st day of school.  She got sick on Saturday just before school started. She had a fever, sore throat, cough and now its gone into her chest. I took her to the hospital and they gave her some antibiotics and told me that if she wasn't getting better by Wednesday to bring her back to the hospital and have her admitted so that they could do a H1N1 test on her.  She has started to feel better, so we haven't gone back. I guess 5 other little girls in the neighborhood all have the same thing and have been out of school to. Hopefully the rest of us don't get it. Hopefully she'll be able to have her 1st day of school on Thursday or Friday.

A quick view of the past 2 weeks

I hurried and put a few pictures of our past few weeks on here.

Annie has started really liking real food. She loves spaghetti and meatballs, and really likes all the fruits that we have here. Mango, guava, and bananas rank top on her list, but she also really enjoys the watermelon and oranges.
All of the bathrooms in our house have showers so there is no place for her to just splash in the tub. I bought a big tub that they sell for people to wash their clothes in for her bathtub. She LOVES to get in the tub.
This is a picture of our kids in the pool at the clubhouse. Their favorite past time.
This is Annies crib that has it's net overtop so she doesn't get eaten alive in the night anymore. I don't know why they love her so much. The other kids only get bit every once in a while.

Alan and Ethan went for haircuts. I'm not sure how safe it is to use a straight edge razor on a 5 year old, but he came out alive. Alan's video gets a little long, but I didn't know where to cut it off. When Alan got done with his haircut the guy asked him if he wanted a head massage. Thinking he was going to get a "Sports Clips" head massage. Boy was he wrong.

The other day we took our kids to see the Hindu God statue of "Shiva". This statue is about 30 ft tall.

At this same place they have another statue of Ganesh. This one is only about 15 feet tall.

The "Cyber Cafe"

So...we don't have the internet for the time being. It has been out since Saturday and I'm going through withdrawals. I walked through our little village area of Bangalore and found a "Cyber Cafe" I am able to see my emails now, although it is very very slow. I decided I better post an update on here so those who skype us know why we haven't been on in a while. Hopefully we'll be able to get internet within the next few days. I will be able to post pictures again then. I have a few that I'd like to post (Alan's haircut/chiropractic visit, and more).