Dallas Snow Day! March 5, 2015

It's been an interesting winter through late February-early March!  While we were lucky enough to get amazing 70 degrees and sunny weather during Krish's outdoor birthday party weekend on February 7th, we have experienced some extreme cold and snow (for Dallas) by the end of the month.  After four snow days the last week of February, we experienced one final beautiful snow day last Thursday March 4th!  It snowed all night, and we woke up to our entire neighborhood and all of Dallas covered entirely in a beautiful blanket of pure, white snow!  It was absolutely breathtaking!  Since living in Dallas, we've definitely seen a few snow days every winter, but this was just gorgeous!  Unfortunately, Daddy had to go into work that morning, but the boys and I enjoyed the snow with the neighbors all morning long!

Snow at 6 AM! I never noticed how neon yellow the
crosswalk signs are!

The front of our house!  The lawn is completely covered
in 4 inches of snow!

Our backyard at noon.  The snow on the street has
completely melted.

The neighborhood park!

With the streets deserted and fully covered in snow, we felt like we owned it!  We were living in a Winter Wonderland.  The crystals of white in the trees glistened and the air felt crisp and fresh.  The boys rode their bikes in the snow with their friends, made snow angels, made a snow man that looked like a snow pile because the snow was so soft, attempted sledding, played on a snow-covered play ground, built a giant, life-size snowman with the neighbors, and made some delicious snow ice cream!  We had a productive morning to say the least!  We did all this before sadly seeing all the snow melt by noon!

Our backyard snowpile snowman!

 Playing on our Arbol street with Cayden, Logan, and Caleb!

My cutie pie in the middle of the street after slipping
and sliding on the ice.

Walking to the park!

Boys getting cold and tired after 2 full hours out in the snow!
Resting on the park bench, ready to go home!

Momma and Krish with the neighborhood
snowman!

We love our neighbors!!!

Recipe for snow ice cream!

Yummy snow ice cream!

Krish's Greenhill school playground the day after snow day!

24 Glen Abbey Drive: Our New Home - Bhumi Pooja

Since finding the perfect lot of land, signing our title deed last April, finalizing our floor plan and signing our construction loan contract last week, our builders are finally ready to break ground and start the construction of our new home!  We are extremely excited about this next chapter in our lives and are thoroughly enjoying working on this project!

This past Saturday, we participated in an auspicious Bhumi Pooja on our land in preparation of building our new home. Even Krish and Arjun participated in the ceremony by digging in the land!  We are hopeful that with the start of the spring weather, the construction process will be smooth and seamless.  We can't wait to witness the progress of the building phase and see our dream home come to fruition!

Mahraj Janakbhai officiating the pooja

Halloween 2014!

It is way past October, but I just wanted to catch up on some big holidays of the past year.  This past Halloween, we enjoyed making homemade costumes based on Krish's favorite book at the time, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!

Krish and I made his cookie costume together out of felt and cake boards, and we put a little mouse costume together for Arjun out of a painted nose and whiskers (blush and eye liner), a mouse ear headband, blue jean overalls and a mouse tail.

The boys had fun trick-or-treating this year after our annal neighborhood Halloween party and in keeping with our tradition from last year, they were very excited to trick-or-treat at Demarco Murray's house again!  He is a running back for the Dallas Cowboys and had an excellent season last year breaking the record for highest rushing yards!  Dada even printed out Krish's picture with him from last year so he could get it signed this year.  What a great idea, Dada!

Cutie pies in their completed costumes!

Trick-or-treating by wagon with Daddy!

Cutest little trick-or-treaters I ever saw!

Trick-or-treat Demarco Murray!

Valentine's 2015!

The Shah family got very festive this Valentine's with a homemade photo booth, Krish's class party, our play group Valentine's party and homemade gifts for loved ones and Daddy!

Love for Dada and Ba!

My sweetheart Valentines!

Krish's Pre-K Class Valentine's Party!

Another Pre-K mom, Ms. Trinh, and I had a wonderful time planning out and setting up Ms. Gio's Pre-K class's Valentine's party this year!  It was complete with a "photo booth" station, paint-your-own Valentine's cookies, a bookworm bookmark craft, and a chocolate fondue dessert station!  The kids had so much fun getting involved with all the activities at their party, and Ms. Trinh and I had so much fun planning it all out!

 

Ms. Gio's Class Rocks! Krish, Harper and Blake with
Ms. Gio in the photo booth!

Krish enjoying the yummy chocolate fondue!

 Painting his paint-a-cookie!

At the Photo Prop Station!

Krish with classmates Harper and Blake!

Krish with twin classmates Finley and Ellie!

Ms. Trinh and I!

Texas TOTS Valentine's Party!

Our play group friends of three years!

Arjun and Anna: Cute, little Valentines!

Rock Star Arjun sporting his new shades from his Valentines!

Date night with my handsome Valentine
 at Sushi Bayashi in Trinity Groves!

Making gifts for loved ones!

Krish and I had a blast getting creative and crafty at home for Valentine's this year!  In addition to the photo booth, we handmade lavender lotion bars for all the ladies in Krish's life: his grandmothers, masis, and teachers!  We also made some for Mommy's friends on our street and put them in their mailboxes.  

It was definitely a fun project!  All the ingredients we used were organic and bought from Whole Foods Market.  We mixed 1/2 cup of shea butter, 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, 1 tablespoon of grape seed oil, 10 drops of lavender essential oil, and 1/4 cup of beeswax in a double boiler and added a few dried lavender buds at the end.  We then poured the hot liquid mixture into our silicone molds (heart-shaped ones for Valentine's) and they cooled and dried within half an hour.  We then popped out our heart-shaped lotion bars and packaged them in little milk cartons we assembled with gift tags!

We also had fun making a special surprise gift for Daddy from an idea we got from the Munshis!  Daddy was so surprised and loved it, so thank you Munshis for sharing your great ideas!

Krish making Daddy's Valentine's gift:
writing 10 things he loves about Daddy!

Thank you to the Munshis for this wonderful homemade gift
idea for Daddy: 30 Things We Love About Daddy!
Daddy sure had fun reading what Krish, Arjun and I
wrote about him!

Finally, we enjoyed some festive Valentine's treats and food this year!

Tanya Masi made a special dessert cheese board!

Mommy made heart-shaped brownies and rice krispies treats
for our two parties.

Mommy made a mini waffle breakfast for Arjun!

Nani's Birthday!

This weekend we were in Houston and got to celebrate Nani's birthday with her at a popular, new Indian restaurant in Houston called Pondicheri in West Village/Upper Kirby.  The food was very different fusing Indian cuisine with farm-to-table freshness.  I personally thought the food was okay but was very impressed with their creativity.  For instance, the desserts included a Chai pie (chai flavored mousse pie, a twist on a typical French silk pie) and Bournvita flavored ice cream sandwiched between two Parle-G glucose biscuits.

Between all of us, we were able to try quite a bit of the menu and thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Nani's birthday with the yummy Chai pie!  Krish takes some time warming up to new flavors, but Arjun of course loved it!  Krish also enjoyed making Nani one of his very special homemade, birthday cards!

Happy Birthday Nani!