2011 has been an interesting year overall. It had a mix of positive and negative experiences. The biggest decision we took in this year is to move out from Seattle. This was critical considering how depressing the seattle weather was and the frequent illness the chilly weather has been causing to us especially Kedaar. The new jobs in California, having some closest friends around , great weather, Kedaar joining Kindergarten turned out to be some of the positive experiences. The Seattle house which has been on market for 9 months (and hopefully closing in Jan) turned out the worst experience of all where our dreams of having that as investment shattered down and that because a liability for us. Additional cons of our CA decision include things such as cost of living here, missing friends from Seattle (both us and Kedaar) and probably the least number of vacations :)
Kedaar seemed to have a blast this year. Having some close families and frequent visits to their houses build nice friendship for him with the kids. He was able to bike a lot, go out locally to several locations around CA, loved his Kindergarten school and made some friends.
He grew up a lot , became very very smart and imaginative (did lot of of art and drawing work), knowledgeable, acquired vast vocabulary, improved great in education (Kumon didn't work for him well, work but the school did), making conversations/answering questions, very affectionate, talking on any topic instanteneously.
He tried out extra curricular activities yoga, dance, soccer, drawing and he is still going on regular with the Taekwando (for almost 11/2 yrs now). He loves the Taekwando teacher Mr.Perez and wants to get a olympic gold medal too :)
He also became a expert iPad/Phone gamer (acquiring some highest scores with games like angry birds/istunt2/car racing/fruit ninja etc) and developed new tastes for TV (with Wild crafts, sid the science kid, word girl, Arthur, dinosaur train etc). Something must be said about this.. Kedaar became expert in spotting and naming the cars. He can literally name every single car on the road, model and some times year too whether the car is near or far, day or night. He can name 3,4 cars for every single letter in alphabets :)
The number of soft toys friends he got this year ("called as babies") grew a lot too and he named them as Ryan, Polar, Polly, Pooh, Shamu, Kelan, Kubby, Rex etc.
Overall I think he loves california much better compared to Seattle. His constant 3 wishes (having mom and dad who keeps him happy forever, having a happy sunny day every day and a house as big as seattle one)
The sad part for me was I have been so busy with the move, work , chores etc this year that I couldn't capture any of his growth or discussions in blog at all (I started sharing some updates to friends through Facebook more :)). This year was very interesting and awesome the best so far in age in terms of imazination.. Hopefully mom should do a better job at at-least in 2012.
Here are some picture albumns of photos we took this year. There are a lot more, but here are few we had time to upload :)
Ice skating : Kedaar tried out iceskating during his winter camp and loved it. So we took him again and he enjoyed it. We enrolled him for few skating classes starting Jan.
Birthday: Kedaar had his milestone birthday (5 yrs) this year. This is a cars a birthday and he had a blast with the celebration in school and in "Bounce U" (San Carlos).
Halloween : Kedaar became a race car driver this year and the school celebrated Halloween. He also carved a pumpkin at home.
Sandiego and LA trip: Went with Neelima's family for Christmas holiday. This was very fun for Kedaar being with kids and they had a blast. Sandiego is awesome!
Las vegas and Grand canyon : We did a short 3 day trip to Vegas and Grand canyon.
Takewando: Started at Yellow black belt and cleared 3 exams this year to get to orange, orange black and then Green. Great going here !
Foster city is a fun place for kids with the beautiful central park closely. This is Kedaar's standard summer destination with biking, boat trips etc
CA visits – Here are some albums of few local places we visited. CA is awesome in terms of places around.
Mystery spot, 17 mile drive to Pebble beach, Coyote point, Monterey bay aquarium, California academy of sciences, twin peaks, Golden gate bridge, Half moon bay, a mini golf trip, SFO downtown etc
Birthdays and at home – Lot of Kedaar's friends had birthdays while we were here. His friends include Isha akka/Sreeram (Saritha/Chakri's kids), Anushka akka/Neerav (Neelima/Arun's kids) , Vishal(Sreerama/Goutham's kid), Vinay/Ajay (Jayashree/Pari's kids), Shreya/Kavya (Naren/Lalitha'kids) etc
Neelima aunty and Arun uncle gave surprise parties to mom and dad for their birthdays. Here are some pictures from the occasion.
Temple visit : Bay area has beautiful temple that feels like India in Livermore. We haven't too regular in going there, but visited it 3,4 times after we moved here.
Seattle move memories: We started trying out for jobs in March and once jobs are finalized by March end, we spent 15 days in rigorous packing. We got rid of around 50-60% of house items including one of our favorite items, the bed set and some of very nice Kedaar's toys, kitchen items etc. We donated hugely as well. This was a serious physical exercise. We met some of the closest friends before we left and Sharmila/Rajesh and Aparna/Raghu helped a lot during the move time with various things. Here are some photos from the move, meeting friends, microsoft and in general Seattle..
Citizenship
