Summer 2021 - Birthday Edition

 Within 6 weeks in the summer, we celebrate 3 birthdays in our household!

Milan had a 3-part birthday celebration with friends in San Diego, family in Tustin, and back at home at his favorite restaurant in the bay area.

Obligatory pics with Brownie (with some signs of starting to pack up in the background)

We celebrated Sunil's birthday with a fondue dinner

It was the first time we took the kids to a restaurant with a dress code (which we took to mean "don't wear jeans with holes in them")

Shortly after Sunil's birthday, we relocated to the DC area for the year, where Kirin turned 6 among extended family

New backdrop but the same stuffy and quilt!

No birthday interviews this year, though we are working on documenting our year's worth of adventures in DC through videos and writing!

Road trip to SoCal

 We had a real vacation as a last hurrah in California in LA and San Diego

Our airbnb had a chicken coop, a hammock, a hot tub, some swings, and...

 a trampoline, enjoyed by adults and kids alike

We had a blast returning to Legoland, where the highlights were the Technic roller coaster, splashing down Pirate Reef, and the Bionicle Blaster

After a day at the beach,

some people were ready to call it a week!

Springing open

We spent our spring post-vaccination cautiously venturing out and about...

 

Mother's Day brunch in San Francisco

followed by our annual photo shoot in front of our blooming roses (and wearing the same clothes as two years prior which fit better now)

the last day of school,

and some fountain hopping on campus.

I finally finished my pandemic project - a paint-by-numbers that you may see in my new zoom background one day soon.

From winter doom to hope

 We started the winter with a statewide stay-at-home order, amidst rising caseloads.

Luckily, we were able to take advantage of local beauty

We visited the tidal basins at Natural Bridges State Beach

and saw suns set

and moons rise.

We rung in the (Times Square) new year with homemade noisemakers

 

and visited Golden Gate park

where we found some hope!

And when mom got her first vaccine dose, Kirin commemorated the occasion with a drawing.

Rahul mama came to visit and see the sights

And we visited Yosemite for the weekend