Morning Craziness

We overslept this morning. Wake up at 7:45 instead of 6:45AM. Everyone rushes to get showered and dressed as fast as humanly possible. Mehul skips shower. He doesn't like it anyway. I have a daily conference call at 9AM that I generally take in the car. DH remembers *he* has a meeting at 10 and we will certainly be late. Since we've sold my car (yay! I'm getting a new one soon), we have to carpool. No time for breakfast he determines. I toss a package of cheese and crackers towards Mehul and off we go.

We drop M at the daycare at 8:30 and reach my office at 9, promptly in time for my conference call. Something is wrong. The traffic light isn't working. There is no electricity in the area! The building has a generator but that can only support the lights, elevator, etc. Our servers are on battery power for a while but LAN is down. Wireless network in the company isn't working either. How long will my laptop battery last? It will be a couple of hours before power is restored. We finish the conference call in which it is determined that I have to finish something urgently in order for the rest of the team to continue testing. Great.

They ask me to go home! Yay! Except, I don't have the car. Carpooling, remember? A colleague offers to drop me home on the way to his home. Perfect. I reach home and call DH. He says his meeting is in 5 minutes. LOL! I went to work and came back and his call hasn't started yet? We should have had that breakfast.

Slightly Religious Post

I don't think I've ever done a religious post here. I have been thinking of making a poster for my favorite stanza from The Bhagwad Geeta - Hindu religious text. It is known as Geeta Saar or the Essence of Geeta. It gives me strength in the bad times and happiness in good times. I want to hang this somewhere I can see it daily.

Not one of the most stellar LOs I've done, but I wanted to keep this simple and focus on the text.

Geeta Saar

Among other news, we are leaving for Toronto next Saturday. Our Aunt has been calling us for a couple of years (!) and we're finally going this time. On our last trip, Mehul was 2.5 months old. We went by air that time and it was the Christmas weekend. Nightmare! Not something I wish to repeat. BTW, he turned from tummy to back for the first time in their house! Now he's 2.5 years old. We'll be returning on the 4th of July. I have the 5th off as well. I have a couple of novels for myself (including Harry Potter - Half Blood Prince for a re-read) and coloring and board books for Mehul. It's a 9 hour journey by car. The longest he's been in the car is 3 hours for Ocean City and even then he had a meltdown. Let's see how he holds this time. We'll be taking breaks every couple of hours.

Today is cleaning day. Couple of loads of laundry, deep cleaning Master Bath, Powder room and Kitchen, dusting and vacuuming and picking up wherever necessary. Fun.

Couple of LOs

Splash!

I made this one last night from Miki Ferkul's newest "Freezy Pops" kit yet to be released to Scrapbook Elements. I just love the summery feel of it. Yes, this is the kid pool I was talking about in the last post.


Credits:
Miki Ferkul's newest "Freezy Pops" kit to be released on June 24th at Scrapbook Elements.
Staples from Jenn Patrick available at The Digi Shoppe. I call them "The Best Staples Ever".

Milk Mustache

Who can resist this face??

Credits:
Paper: Lisa Whitney's A Beautiful Mess (I still love this kit) at ScrapArtist.
Cardboard Flip: Linda GB at ScrapArtist
Star: Lisa Whitney
Buttons: In Memory of Miles kit
Flower: Christina Renee Urban Buds freebie on her blog
Stitches: Lisa Whitney Ultimate Stitches II at ScrapArtist.
Photo Frame: In Memory of Miles kit (pretty sure it is)
Swirl: Lori Wiley at Scrapbook Bytes

That's it from me today. I have to get back to work. I have a special LO that I've saved for a separate post, hopefully tomorrow.

Summer is definitely here

This weekend was so relaxing. We did not have anyone over, we didn't go errand-running (except a trip to Walmart - Diaper Emergency!), heck I didn't even clean the way I usually do. Mehul and I went to the library on Saturday but that was a short trip. Mostly, we just stayed inside or played in the backyard.
Saturday - DH helped us setup the Slip-N-Slide in the backyard and then he went to get the car fixed. Mehul and I stayed outside for about 2 hours. I put my chair next to him and continued my reading. He really enjoyed it. After this, trip to the library. I am so impressed by our Library's Collection. So far, there are *very* few books I've wanted to read and haven't found at the Library. There are actually 6 branches and I can request books from other branches too. Their catalog and request system is online as well, it's very convenient.
Sunday - Father's Day. I made DH one of his favorite dishes - Puri Aloo for lunch. I also let him sleep-in in the morning and had breakfast ready when he came down (he usually makes breakfast on weekdays). Later in the day, Mehul and I baked a cake for him! We're actually cutting it today because we all were so stuffed yesterday. We inflated a kiddie pool for Mehul. We actually got a high efficiency pump for it and still it was such a pain to inflate the pool. We're just keeping it inflated indoors (basement is unfinished so no one really goes there). I took pictures! I'll share them soon I promise.

Here's a Summer themed LO. I actually did it a couple of weeks ago but never got around to posting it.


Credits:
Michelle Coleman's Beautiful Journey available at Little Dreamer Designs.

Just been busy

I've been busy working so no posts in almost a week. Every single day there is some new drama at work. Work related, not personal but there are new issues cropping up all the time. We seem to have stabilized a bit today. But even this morning, both our test and production servers were down. Turned out one of the client's server was down that caused errors in both of our servers, but still. I was the one spending the time debugging them. Ugh.

Anyway, Mehul came down with stomach virus on Monday evening, so I was home with him Tuesday (and working as well). I ended up working until 10:30 in the night. And started back at 6AM Wednesday morning. Mehul finally went back to school on Thursday. He's fine now, but I'm concerned because he's lost yet more weight. It's lower than what it was at his 2 year checkup. I don't know what to do. He rarely eats his lunches but he eats breakfast & dinner with us, and snacks at school. We're trying different kinds of foods at home as well, but he just doesn't like school lunch. They don't usually allow us to pack his lunch and he has to eat what everyone's eating. He just doesn't like mac and cheese, lasagna, cold cut sandwiches, etc. He also doesn't like steamed veggies that they serve at lunch. This has been going on for more than 1 year. Initially he used to eat a little bit, but now he's not even touching it. I'm going to make a special request to the director to allow us to pack his lunch because he just can't afford to lose any more weight. If he doesn't eat that as well, then we'll come up with something else.

We learned a few weeks ago that our good friends Maneesh & Monika (whom we jokingly called M&M) are getting divorced. They had only been married 4 years, and have one toddler girl, G, and another on the way. We had no idea that they were having problems so it was a big shock. Maneesh has moved out and left her pregnant and miserable, with a toddler to take care of. I'm sure moving out was her idea too, but it would have been better if she had someone else with her to take care of the girl when she needed. One day she called me from work, G was crying inconsolably in the background. She was sick and Monika had to take her to work because there was no backup! The daycare wouldn't take her and there was no one else to take care of her. She couldn't work from home because Maneesh had taken the laptop, the PC (yes, both), the modems, phone and everything with him and left her without any way of calling someone in case of an emergency! I just hate him rightnow. She had called to inquire about getting a wireless connection, cell phone and landline for the apartment. With DH's guidance, she has been able to get a new laptop (that she's loving) and a phone. She's coming this weekend to get the softwares installed on the laptop. I repeatedly asked her to move in with us for some time, but last week her mom arrived from India and she says she's fine.

I need a quick and easy Dessert recipe for an upcoming GTG in 2 weeks. If you have any, I'd love to have it! Have a great weekend.

Zoo Pictures! (AKA Long and Photo intensive post)

We made it to the zoo yesterday. The weather co-operated and we had a great time. We deliberately took the Metro to DC instead of driving as Mehul enjoys the ride and is *very* into Trains and Trucks rightnow. Though he wasn't as impressed as I thought he would be. He loves seeing trains approaching from outside, not so much the ride itself.

Anyhow, since we were there last year, National Zoo has built the Asia Trail. I think it was opened last September. The Giant Panda trail is a part of it now. They also have Sloth Bears which are quite common in India. This time we saw the Red Panda again. We have gone to the zoo atleast once every year ever since we've lived here in VA, and had only seen the Red Panda once before. Another animal we have only seen once are the Golden Tamarind Monkeys - they still weren't there this time.

Mandatory Giant Panda Photo first

They are always so far away, it's hard to get a good picture. This is Tian Tian (I'm pretty sure).

Cute Red Panda

Sloth Bear Statue

- Their expression is curiously alike.


How cute is the Chimpanzee!


They've also added a brand new Kid's Animal Farm.


Pizza Garden! This is new as well. So many changes in less than an year.


Invertebrae section. I just LOVE sea life.

The Corals

I messed up the setting of the camera after taking coral photos and it started taking really fuzzy pictures inside the exhibit. It was just fine outside. There were these really cute, really transparent jellyfish - without the tentacles, whose veins shimmered with Blue, red dots as water traveled through them. No pictures, sorry :(

Butterfly!

DH took this picture of a butterfly in action. So vibrant.

Komodo Dragon.

Totally cute. Loved having his pictures taken :)


After this, on to the Olmstead Walk. This is where the birds are. They have 2 sections - Indoor Bird House and Outdoor Bird Cage. The outdoor area was closed by the time we reached so we missed seeing the Flamingos, Storks, etc. I had taken great pictures of Flamingos previously and was looking forward to getting some with my DSLR. Oh, well. There's always next time :)

Seals and Sea Lions

- They are the last thing we always visit because of the where they're located. There is a nice pool area with steps for sitting and we always sit down here. The sea lions were very playful (it was already evening) and totally hamming it up! LOL. This was way better than any Dolphin show we've seen. And they were putting up a show all by themselves, no trainers. So cute.


I took these pictures of some Hydrangeas that came out good, I think. If you'd like them (or the butterfly) for wallpaper, click on the download links at the end of this post :)

Pink Hydrangea

Hydrangea Closeup

Download Butterfly
Download Pink Hydrangea
Download Hydrangea Closeup
Download Corals
Download Sea Lion (Thought I'd put this here as well)

I took some cute pics of Mehul as well, but you'd see them in LOs for sure so I'd rather not add to this already photo intensive post! LOL!

Mehul Funny

When Mommy meets Mehul after school.

Mommy: Mehul, so what did you do at school today?
Mehul: In a Paper.
Mommy: What?
Mehul(yelling): IT'S IN A PAPER!!
Mommy: Oooookay.

He was referring to the sheet he gets from the daycare which lists all the daily activities. I can't wait for the teenage years.

May Review

1. Increase run to 5 Miles within 80 minutes (more reasonable goal). Done. I did 5 miles in under 75 minutes, and 6.2 miles in 88 minutes. Yay
2. Run atleast 30 miles in May.Nope. Only got 15 miles
3. Complete and send ATCs. Done
4. Water the herb garden as needed. (not much of a garden, it's just a long, narrow row of herbs in the backyard.) Yep

June Goals

1. Run 6.2 miles in under 85 minutes.
2. Water the herb garden as needed.
3. Stitch atleast 7 nights.
4. Scrap atleast 7 Layouts.
5. Watch atleast one movie in Theater.

I scrapped I scrapped

Thanks to my Canon Rebel, I have a renewed interest in scrapping now. Love the pictures it takes. All my beach photos were taken with it. It also helps that all my CT designers are coming up with such great products. I scrapped some of them.

Be an Original

Credits:
Everything from Diamate Designs by Lori Wiley. Available at Scrapbook Bytes and Scraptastics
Background: Glamorous Midnight
Edge Overlay: Graph Tears
Swirls: Glamorous Decorative Swirls
Red Flower: Schones Blumen III
Fabric Loops: Tye Dye Knots
Bling Flowers

Just Me

Credits:
Miki Ferkul's Mellow Yellow at Scrapbook Elements.
Big swirl - Diamante Designs Swish at Scrapbook Bytes.

Love Dream Grow

Credits:
Everything from Miki Ferkul's Penchant kit at Scrapbook Elements.

Beach Boy

Credits:
Lisa Whitney's Love Blossoms to be released at ScrapArtist
Lisa Whitney's Ultimate Stitches #2 at ScrapArtist
'B' alpha Lisa Whitney's Graph Paper Stitched Alpha at ScrapArtist
Diamante Designs Swish at Scrapbook Bytes and Scraptastics
Diamante Designs Glamorous Decorative Swirls at Scrapbook Bytes