My Christmas Present

My Christmas Present that will last a lifetime!
Thank you God for a beautiful family!

Chirstmas

The weather was supposed to get bad, so I headed to mom and dad's on Wednesday. I am so glad that I had. OKC had 14" of record breaking snow in a 24 hour period. Mom and dad didn't get that much snow 3" and it was just COLD.

We cooked way to much and ate way to much. The turkey was so much better than the turkey we had in India for Thanksgiving. Kati, Brandon and her kids came over and it was a good day.

I started home Saturday morning. Roads were fine until I got into the city. NW Expressway was 1 lane of slow traffic. An hour and a half trip turned into a 2 hour and a half trip. There was abandoned car's all the way home. Just stopped in the middle of the street, so the single lane of traffic thru the snow had to go around each abandoned car. It was a very interesting ride home


Arriving at home the parking lot was covered with drifts. I pulled in and stopped, but I decided that I needed to pull father into the lot. And there I stay. Stuck in the middle of my parking lot.

I tried to shovel the snow and see if I could get out, but I think it's going to have to thaw a little more before I can leave my parking lot. I am home and have plenty to do, so being at home a couple of days will not be a problem. I have plenty of leftovers from Christmas dinner.

Kati and me!

This is one proud "MOM" on the day that her daughter got her "Master of Education" at TCU on December 19th, 2009.

Kati's Graduation

It was a very PROUD day for me. Kati got her "Masters of Education". 10 am was the hooding. Which was the graduating students of Education. Then at 1 pm was the commencement ceremony.

SearchKing Techno Labs

This is the SearchKing Techno Labs crew in Ahmedabad, India

Christmas cooking

I've decided to bake this Christmas. So don't tell me miracles don't happen.

My house is filled with the sweet aroma of freshly-baked holiday treats.

YEP! those scented candles come in every fragrance you can think of.

==============

Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Just don't drag me into it!

Forgive me if I snap at you. I'm myself today.

Cade

PRICESLESS!

Inspiring

The holiday season was meant to be the most inspired time of year. It's an idealistic season when the outer world sleeps so that the inner world can flourish.

The secret to making your holiday inspiring is actually quite simple. Be inspiring yourself. As with any change, you must be the change you want to see in others. But how does that come about? Here are some suggestions:

* Stop doing what never worked in the first place
* Don't blurt out hidden feelings
* Stay out of the box that others want to put you in
* Tolerate what is difficult; engage with what is simple
* Do one inspired thing, no matter what anyone else thinks

Last Night in Ahmedabad India

On Thursday night after all of our visitors left, Bob took off on his scooter.

He came home with this passion fruit cake. It was so sweet! He is so sweet! Thank you Bob for "Loving Me"

NYC

I arrived in NYC, it was very windy and cold.
Took a cab to hotel.
Called mom and dad.
Took a long HOT shower
and I am now eating "Lobster Bisque", a salad and NEW YORK CHEESE CAKE!

To all of my Expat friends. I got ice in my water without even asking, and REAL lettuce!

Leaving India

Getting ready to head back to India. Packed my bags, need to go and check again.

Pranav and Darshini with Praneet came to say good buy. Praneet wants to go to US with me. I told him that his grandmother would be really mad at me!

The electrician, Amish, delivery boy with my business cards came by. Called my mom and then Marsha called and we talked for a long time, then Bob took off on his scooter. He returned with a passion fruit cake that said "I Love You" on the top. It was so sweet. He is really going to miss me!

Even the house-wife and cleaning guy, really was questioning me going to US. They were both so cute, when I got out the suitcases. You can really get used to these people taking such good care of you. My house-wife would put my saree on, and I think that she would even dress me every day if I asked. She really wants to please. Wish I could talk to her without using sign language.

3 more hours before the driver "Gorark" comes to pick me up to take me to the airport. I travel from Ahmedabad to Doha, arriving there at 11:30 AM. Then I will have the long flight to NYC and that is the flight that I want to sleep through. I then will spend the night in NYC and fly out at 9 AM on Saturday morning.

New Office in India

Bob standing at the front door coming down the hall on the 4th floor.

Amish and Nisha at the door to SearchKing TechnoLabs of India.


GOING AROUND THE ROOM FROM LEFT TO RIGHT




Bob and My Office

After putting the film on the windows of Bob and my office.

Conference Room



We moved the office from Bopal into Ahmedabad.

Days are going fast!

I can't believe that I just have 3 more days. I leave at 5 AM on the 11th of December. Staying the night in NYC and then arriving home at 6:30 PM. Sunday I will go to mom and dad's. Hair appointment on Tuesday then I will head to Texas to go to Kati's graduation. I am so very proud of her getting her masters. I know that it was very hard while pregnant. A JOB WELL DONE!

Last Weekend

My last weekend in India.

Friday we shopped for things for the apartment. I went to Davanshi's to pick up my saree. Friday night Gijsbert and Licia came over for dinner. Bill and Marsha joined us for dessert. Reasa and a new fellow Expat joined us for drinks. It was a very nice evening.

Saturday day we shopped for things for the apartment. Saturday night was Snehal. We went to old city and saw his mother, sister, aunt and uncles. Then we went to Torfi and Helga's.

Sunday we meet Torfi and Helga and went to old city and 10 acre mall. OH YA we shopped for things for our apartment. My and my housewife cooked super together. We cannot speak to each other, she knows a little English and I know NO Gujarati but the cooking was fun.

Can't believe that it's only 5 more days. This time next week I will be with my parents in Oklahoma.

Monday we are going to the office. It will be the first day in our new office building. Pranav's birthday is tomorrow. Monday night we have dinner at Chirag and Deepa's.

Tuesday we have a "Salad Master" demonstration, with the couple of Dallas, Victor and Vivian.

Wednesday is dinner at Bill and Marsha's.

Thursday is free at this moment. But I am sure that Marsha and I will do more shopping.

Living at the Signature....

Signature apartment. We live on the 3rd floor. Each tenant has the entire floor

Address:
Apartment #3, Signature
Near Das Bangla, Bulbai,
Ellisbridge
Ahmedabad 380006 India

It is really a nice apartment. It takes me about an hour to open all the windows but when I am finished there is a breeze that goes thru that is incredible. Getting used to a new house wife is a little hard when you don't speak Gujarati, but we are understanding each other. Got my laundry done for 24 Rupees which is 52 cents USD. The house wife costs us 1500 rupees a month which is $32.60. She comes twice a day she cleans dishes, laundry, floors and dusts, then returns to do dishes again in the evening. She will cook for us if we want her to.

Bob and I went out to pick up my glasses and a few other items for the apartment and then we went to Bopal to get the rest of our possession. I sit in the garden for a while, sure will miss the garden. The office will shift this weekend.


Last night 3 year old Praneet came up to visit (he brought his parents) then they invited us down for an Indian meal. It was so good! I could be vegeterian. Not all Indian food is spicy.

Christmas in India

Marsha and I went out looking for Christmas decorations. We were not lucky enough to find any. But we had a really good time. We went to a couple of new stores and just shopped. We had lunch at Curries.

New Apartment

It only took 3 trips and about 6 hours, not counting travel time, and we are moved. Gorark and Dilput did all of the work. I tried to carry some blankets and pillows to the car and they took them from me.

Bopal is a village outside of Ahmedabad. Bopal isn't that far from Ahmedabad except the traffic and roads are terrible. The bungalow is on 2 plots of land and is a really great bungalow. SearchKing is moving the office into Ahmedabad, which means Bob will have to drive from Bopal to Ahmedabad every day. This apartment will be so much closer for him.

The apartment complex is called Signature.

The apartment building has 5 floors and each floor is one tenant. The elevator opens up to a private landing.

The elevator and cleaning peoples entrance.

I finally have a kitchen. I am not sure, but I think Bob is expecting me to do more cooking. Which is OK, because I have a cleaning lady that comes and cleans up after me.

Count down to Christmas

29 days till Christmas!

I don' like to brag, but I have my Christmas shopping done! I was coming to India and knew I would be home in time to get the 12 days of Christmas and Christmas present bought and wrapped.

I may add to the gifts when I get home. I will buy extra and those that come to see me will get extra presents.

Twelve Days of Christmas for my 9 Grandchildren. The first day is always a Christmas ornament for their Christmas trees.

12 Days of Christmas

Inspiring Holidays

The secret to making your holiday inspiring is actually quite simple. Be inspiring yourself. As with any change, you must be the change you want to see in others. But how does that come about? Here are some suggestions:

Stop doing what never worked in the first place
Don't blurt out hidden feelings
Stay out of the box that others want to put you in
Tolerate what is difficult; engage with what is simple
Do one inspired thing, no matter what anyone else thinks

Happy Thanksgiving

Love wholeheartedly, be surprised, give thanks and praise… then you will discover the fullness of your life.

Turkey Day India 2009

Every year the Expat's in India have a Thanksgiving dinner. We try to work with the ingredients that we have here to make it is authentic as possible.

This year Marsha and Bill had offered to let us use their flat. It was very nice. Plenty of seats and a great dining room for serving. It was sit up as a guest house. 12 people joined us for the Thanksgiving in India dinner.

We had several shopping trips out to find stuff that we needed. We never did find brown sugar, coconut, marshmellows (what's Thanksgiving without marshmellows on the sweet potatoes) and countless other things.
So the stuffing was made from scratch down to the drying the bread and fresh spices from India. I had 1 box of jiffy corn mix, but at least we had 1. The dressing was awesome.

Marsha a job well done!

I took most of my kitchen over to Marsha's to prepare for our Expat dinner. We worked and laughed all day. We had purchase two turkey's from Mumbia.



Our biggest surprise came when Bill got the turkeys out of the refrigerator.

When Marsha had checked the turkeys a day before the dinner, to see if they had thawed out, she had called and said "They have feet on them".

There are alot of people that eat the feet. So it didn't seem to strange.





So when we went to unpackage them.

Under their wing was their head.

What an unexpected surprise.

We said this is not a "Butterball"!

So we worked on getting the heads and feet removed from the turkey's.




This is a picture of the turkey's before we started cleaning it up ready to cook.

Not alot of fat on this turkey. The skin was tough. We put one turkey into a large toaster oven, and the other we cut and put into a pressure cooker. It didn't matter which one, they were both a little tough.






Bill helped us with the turkey's, so that they looked like normal turkeys like when we get them in the US.


Bill a job well done. You were so much help!

We couldn't have done it without you.





We had plenty of turkey. It was a little tough but it sure tasted good. The menu was Turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, I had shipped over cranberry sauce, so we had all the basics.

The rest of the menu was sweet potato souffle (since no marshmellows), green beans, broccoli, potato salad, deviled eggs, rice, cucumber and tomato salad, hot rolls, I made two pumpkin pies and we made an apple pie.

Bill and I carving the turkeys. It took two of us. One to hold the pan so that it would go off the counter and one to cut.


Stirring the dressing! We had alot of fun preparing this dinner. It was quite a challenge.


Ben Made a Chocolate cake all by himself. He was so proud of that cake. He put the cake in front of him and served every piece.




Vernelle and I taking our own pictures. If you look closely we both have a camera.




And this is the picture.
Everybody said that they enjoyed the dinner. There was nothing spicey or Indian.


Marsha and I are not even getting out of bed today.

MONKEYS

We had monkeys. MAMA monkeys.

Each one of the monkey's have a very small baby and there were a lot of very small young monkeys with them.

Look how small that baby is.

Just a swingin'

This is how I spend most of my days, sitting on the balcony of the bungalow and swinging!

New Boys - Camden & Ethan

What a great job!

Cade and Camden = Priceless!

Ethan James - 2 Months old = Adorable

Ahmedabad Friends

Going away parties are a norm for Expats in India. Someone is always going somewhere else. Tonight it was Alex's turn.

Alex from the UK is going to Brussels so we had a party for him.

Vernelle from Trinidad and Gsjibert from the Netherlands

Blake from Chicago, John in background also from Chicago and Licia from the Netherlands