5th Birthday Celebration

Kabir's 5th birthday turned out to be a lot of fun (even if somewhat exhausting for me!). He helped plan it and we decided to have two separate parties - a brunch party in the staff hostel play area with his staff hostel friends and a more formal dinner party at Gulmohar with extended family and other close friends. We agreed to request for no birthday gifts and Kabir decided to make thankyou cards for all his friends (his initial suggestion was that I bake cookies again this year, but fortunately agreed that he was now old enough to make his own return gifts!). Here are some photos capturing some of the moments.

The number '5' cake as demanded by Kabir

Hand-made thankyou cards from Kabir to all his friends

The brunch party in the staff hostel play area

With Pranidhi (his current best friend), Prajna and Mihika didi

Food time - chhole-tikki, aalu parathe, pulav and chips

birthday boy

Kabir's friends

The dinner party at Gulmohar

Kabir's 5th and Zoya's (belated) 1st being celebrated together

Birthday boy with Tani didi and Amu

With Buggy and Rhiku

A family photo

Dadi's 3 monkeys

A rare family pic

Cousins

Happy 5th Birthday to Kabir!

Pictures: Darjeeling Dec 25-27 2012

Our (in)famous hotel

coffee and hot chocolate at Frank Ross cafe on Mall road

Why is Anu wearing pink?  Because its his favorite colour and this was also the only warm jacket we could get (from our neighbour's daughter) before we bought more in Darjeeling

Himalayan zoo and mountaineering institute 

Darjeeling Himalayan railway joyride

Getting closer to Kanchenjunga

the eternal devotee

playing with the rabbit in our hotel

On the way to Sikkim

Horsing around

A fun video of the boys playing ghoda-ghoda. The video is taken by nanaji in his house.
In case anyone is wondering, the "Prakhar" in the video title refers to Kabir. Kabir's nana refuses to call him Kabir to this day and has instead given him a name of his own choice - Prakhar. He is, ofcourse, the only one to call him by this name. We know where the stubbornness in the kids comes from :-)

More travel

We just returned from another trip to Udaipur! Little Zoya is here from Boston with Kakku bua and Erroll phuphaji. After spending a few days together in Bombay we all went to Udaipur for a family reunion at dada-dadi's place.

Udaipur was very cold in January but the boys didn't seem to mind it. The kids bonded a lot (Kabir and Zoya much more than Anu-Zoya). Kabir loved playing the elder brother and doted on Zoya. Zoya too loved all the attention from her big brother and kept coming back to him even though he was being somewhat rough with her. Anurag, surprisingly, felt a little threatened by Zoya's presence and had a hard time sharing toys with her. He's so used to being the baby of the family that it was unsettling for him to find a new baby in the house.

We spent about a week together in Udaipur. The highlight was a day trip to Sajjangad where we took some family pics. Photos are yet to be downloaded from the camera, but will try to upload soon (as soon as I'm done posting the Sikkim pics)

In the meantime, preparations have begun for Kabir's upcoming 5th birthday. His dadosa, dadisa, bua and cousin Zoya are all flying down from Udaipur for the big day. And the boy is simply giddy with excitement!