I love Saturday Mornings...

One thing I love here is that on Saturday mornings we are not rushing out the door. It is my one morning I get to sleep in. (I know I have a rough life! :) ) Alan gets up and goes golfing on Saturdays, and I get to play all morning with the kids. I love to wake up and listen to them playing. This morning they were building a puzzle of the world. It was fun to listen to them talk about all the places in the world they had heard of. "Here is the US, and India." " Look, I found Argentina, see if we can find Bolivia." "I have a friend from Spain, and ... he's from France." (Going to an International school makes my kids realize there are other places in the world) The best one I heard this morning though was.."Arctic Ocean...here's another Arctic Ocean, but they spelled it wrong...they spelled it A-T-L-A-N-T-I-C"

Hide and Seek

I tucked Ethan in bed tonight and he kept hiding under the covers. He would yell from his room and say "Guess where I am!" I kept saying "Your under your covers, Go to sleep!" Well, about an hour later Alan went in to make sure he was still tucked in and asleep...

Ethan's Quote for today

As I was tucking Ethan in bed tonight he said...

"Mom, don't turn off the light tonight. Just hand me my sunglasses."

Republic Day 2010

Wow, this is going to be a long post.

Once again our kids were out of school. Yesterday January 26th was Republic Day here and we actually did quite a few things. To start out the day Adarsh Vista (our community here) had a flag raising ceremony and a parade for all of the kids. They divided the kids up by street. Our street decided to dress up in the traditional Indian dresses from around the country. One street had all bicyclist, one was "Go Green", another dressed in Orange and Green, and another street had the children pulled on a cart by a cow. They paraded up the main road in our complex, and then back to the clubhouse where everyone met for breakfast. We missed the breakfast because the Elders Quorum and Young Men from our branch were having a cricket match and Alan wanted to participate in that.

Indian Flag

Our Security Guards

The next few pictures are the parade. By the time the kids from our street walked to the gate, one of the parents had a jeep that they took and gave them rides back down the parade route.

Ethan really wanted to ride his bike in the parade. He zoomed by so fast, I wasn't able to get a picture of him.

Ellie Maddie and Shauma

Coming back from the gate
Maddie has made a cute friend that lives 2 door down from us. Her name is Shauma. She and her brother, Kaveil, ride the Indus bus with our kids. She is in 1st grade, and Kaveil is in 3rd. He loves to come to our house and play Wii with Ethan. When the parade was over, ViJay, our driver was excited because the sign that Maddie was holding was Andra Pradesh. The place he grew up.

After the parade we went to the ITI Fields and played cricket. Well, the EQ and YM played, we learned how to play.


Our Elders Quorum and Young Men

The little boy in the front on the right is Kevin. He is 8 years old and was just baptized. We went to dinner at his family's apartment that day. He is a very cute kid and showed Ellie, Maddie and Ethan how to play. He and his dad, Jerry Lewis, walked Ethan to the bakery to get a treat while we were watching the match. His dad is the one in the very middle of the picture with the blue shirt and sunglasses.

ViJay giving Alan a few batting tips. He was pretty excited when we told him he could come play too. He loves cricket almost as much as Alan loves any other sport!

Maddie taking a turn batting.
ViJay helping Ethan to "bowl" or "pitch"

After practicing for a while, they let Alan play in the game. (They take it pretty serious) I think he said that he scored 6 points, and then it was his teams turn to go into "the outfield" (not sure of the cricket terms)
They put Alan in "right field" as he put it.

After the cricket match Alan and the kids went back home and I went to a District Relief Society Service Project/Talent Show

It was at the 2nd branch. They actually have a building with chapel and accordion doors and all. It was nice to see an actual LDS church here.
They put together Hygiene Kits for an Orphanage, and then they had a talent show. Most of the women sang songs, and most of them were in Tamil or Telugu. I didn't understand most of what was said, but there was one really funny lady that got up and for her talent she told the women how to impress their husbands. Most of it was makeup tips, or home remedies for acne, but the funniest one was exercising while cooking. She demonstrated how to get rid of the fat that hangs over your saris.

All in all we had a really busy day yesterday, and we learned a lot. We were able to get to know our neighbors and our branch a little better also.

The Solar Eclipse

January 15th was a Solar Eclipse in southern India. Because of the harmfulness of the Eclipse, the kids were again out of school. The people here are very superstitious. The believe that if you go outside on a Solar Eclipse day that you can be harmed. You may be killed, or something very bad will happen to you. Maddie came home from school and told me that we needed to keep our curtains closed so that the bad sun rays don't melt us. I assured her that nothing would happen to us if we went outside. Our driver told me that he could not be out between 11:00 and 4:00 because that is when the eclipse was happening. Luckily Alan leaves for work at 8. He also told us that you can't eat anything on an Eclipse day because the food might have been poisoned by the bad rays. The kids and I had a fun day that day anyway and were able to see the eclipse through putting a hole in a piece of paper and watching the shadow move across the ground. Our maid was also amazed by this and got on the phone to call someone and tell them to do this. Apparently there are a few Eclipses a year here, but not all of them are full eclipses like this one. We might have to buy some solar eclipse glasses for the next one.

Sankranti

Thursday January 14th was the Sankranti Festival. Yep, another festival here. This time it is the "Kite Festival" from what I understand. The kids and Alan had the day off so we decided to make a day trip to Mysore.

Before we got out of town we saw people leading their cows down the street and they saw us taking pictures. The one cow has a parasitic twin coming out of his head. "It's a prodigy" NICE!

On the way down we saw a place where they were selling and trading cows. It was pretty neat to see.

We stopped at a Hindu Temple. We were definitely out of place inside.

Lunch at McDonalds. The kids meals of course came with a kite. Our driver had never eaten there before so we bought him lunch.

Mysore Palace

As we walked up the sidewalk to the Palace Ethan spotted some men making something and he wanted to help. They sold us some sugar cane juice and Ethan helped to squeeze it.

Our family outside Mysore Palace

The Elephant ride at Mysore Palace

This is me driving the Elephant!!

Ethan and Alan on the Camel

"The Bull"

At "The Bull" we started to walk up to it. A man handed each of the kids some flowers and a newspaper with a potpourri thing inside. We have no idea what we are doing, apparently we did some Hindu Prayer without even knowing it. We got back in the car and the driver asked how we got the bracelets. We told him, and he showed us his. He had been to his temple that morning for Sankranti.

Our kids were getting tired by this point so we started to head back to Bangalore. It's about a 3 hour drive and on the way back Vijay was telling that Friday the 15th of January is the Cow Festival, but because of the Solar Eclipse (see other post), they were having ceremonies on the 14th. We came up to a place in the road where the road was closed, and then ahead of us we saw a HUGE fire!! I thought for sure it was an accident on the road and people were very hurt. As we approached we saw this:

They were making the cows run through fire to show that they were healthy or something. We parked the car and Alan and Vijay walked back to video. I didn't want the kids to get too close. Ellie was crying because she wanted to go too. Maddie was really worried about the cows and asked "What if they get burned?" Ellie through her tears answered. "We'll have to have hamburgers for dinner!"

Christmas

So I am going to print this blog as a book for our family so I want to go back for the last month and post about what we did for Christmas. We had such a fun time being back home. The day after Thanksgiving we flew into Salt Lake. It was a LONG flight home, but very worth it. The first week we spent most of the days trying to stay awake, and trying to keep our kids asleep at night. We took many pictures and I'm going to try and post them in separate posts to organize a little, but as I added them, I realized they are in reverse order. O'well I tried. If you want you can go down to the last post of today and read them backwards.

Heading Back to India

Before we knew it, it was time to head back! We spent a day or two packing, shifting, weighing ourselves, and then weighing ourselves holding suitcases, deciding what can be stored at Grandma's house until we come for another trip, and hopefully we can fit it then, and then finally Alan drove out to the airport the night before we left to make sure we hadn't gone over the weight limit.

We each got 2 suitcases, and a carryon, and a personal item. Yes, we used it all!! 5 tickets and a lap rider = 21 pieces of luggage, plus a stroller

The kids weren't very excited to get onto the plane. They like living in India, but were not excited for the 26 hour flight they had ahead of them.
Annie was the only one who had a "1st class" sleeping arrangement. They have a cradle that you can hook up to the wall.
Coach isn't quite "1st class"

We flew from SLC to NY and Alan was bumped up to 1st class because he is a Gold Member on Delta. He took the seat and took Annie up with him. Ellie, Maddie, Ethan and I got to stay back in coach. It wasn't too bad of a flight. They had internet access,(previous post) and the kids were entertained for our 1st leg. NY to Paris and Paris to Bangalore Alan wasn't quite as lucky. They said that they would bump him if he didn't have his whole family traveling with him. Sorry hun, you could have had a nice ride!

I really can't complain, our kids are EXCELLENT travelers. There were only a few tears when they got hungry, and the plane food wasn't what they wanted.

Out of 21 bags, only 1 got lost. Hopefully they find it soon, it has Alan's precious Dr. Pepper in it. :)

Christmas

Santa delivers again!!

After we opened presents we waited and talked to Jake, and then off to Evanston for Christmas! The kids get spoiled every year, and this year was no different. We started to worry how we were going to get it all back to India!

Christmas Eve

We had the Wagstaff Family Christmas Eve party at Ann's house. It was so fun seeing the kids in the nativity. They always do a great job. This year Ellie was the Angel, Maddie was the Lamb with Annie, and Ethan was a Shepherd.

After the Nativity, the Games begin! Everyone gets to draw a number to find out who their partner will be for the Shuffleboard competition. Once you win, you get to pick your present. It's alway a GREAT NIGHT!!!

And of course it wouldn't be complete if Santa didn't take time to stop by.

Skiing

Alan took our kids skiing a few times while we were in SL. Ski Free After 3 at Alta is the best thing since sliced bread!

It's a 3 man lift so Ellie ended having to ride by herself. She's the only one that doesn't really need help getting on and off the lift.

Ellie is under control and a really pretty good skiier. Maddie is a great skiier and very cautious. Ethan loves to ski, but he LOVES to go 90 mph straight down the hill. He crashed one time and broke his goggles. Thank heaven Alan opted for the helmets!