Long weekend

May is one month that has 2 long weekends and we look forward to this because the first and last Monday in May are usually bank holidays. Our plans to visit Rome during the first week of May pretty much got scrapped after we realized that Prashanth was working the nights on Monday. I was particularly enthusiastic on Friday as one of my school friends, whom I had met through Orkut, was visiting us on Saturday. She was visiting with her husband and two boys aged 5 and 2. We were up early on Saturday and polished every nook and corner of the house until it shone bright and clear.
The plan was for my friend to visit us that evening, so I prepared gajar halwa, aloo tikki and bhel puri. They had visited the shopping mall before they arrived, so the elder one was exhausted due to the walking and slept off on the couch after gobbling down his milk. The younger one refused his milk, but started looking into each of Aditi's toys from her red toy box. What surprised us was Aditi happily shared her toys and played with the little boy. Thanks to the nursery, she did not cry for the same toy that my friend's son picked. She picked another toy and decided to play with it until he was finished. The little ones ran from the kitchen to the living area and were 2 happy bunnies. While the kids enjoyed their new found company, the dads discussed current affairs and other miscellaneous topics - like which service provider's was the best broaband in the country. The moms caught up on all the school girls' gossip. We chatted on who went with whom and what happened later. My friend gave me useful tips on parenting and choosing schools. Three hours flew up in a jiffy and it was time to bid good bye.
We cleared up and awaited our next set of friends who arrived on Sunday and stayed with us for the night. They travelled from London, stopped enroute at the Balaji temple at Birmingham and came on Sunday evening. The South Indian tiffin varieties sold at the Balaji temple deserve special mention. They are prepared by volunteers and are simply so tasty that they are sold out in no time. Our friends got a big laddu prasadam and medu vadais neatly packed with 3 varieties of chutneys from the temple. There was a sale of mangoes at the temple and we received a huge crate of mangoes as well. We decided to go for a simple dinner, but by the time I laid the dishes, there was hardly any space left on my dining table. The simple menu was Chappati, Mutter Panner, Baingan Bartha, rice, murunga sambar, rasam, gobi-aloo fry, left over mangeout curry from lunch, mint thogayal and vadam. We chatted till midnight and the men stayed awake much longer.
The next morning was a bright sunny day and after a breakfast of semiya upma, we went out to the Botanical gardens, which is in the heart of Sheffield.

Aditi enjoyed walking on the lush green grass there. She was running all over the place and we had a tough time trying to run behind her. It was the first time she was walking around in an external environment other than the garden and the little paved area in front of our house. After some pictures and a few nic-nacs there, we returned home hungry and tired. Aditi slept off on our way home after all the running , the poor kid was too drowsy.We had a leisurely lunch and our friends left later that evening. Aditi enjoyed the company of the 2 new comers in the house and our friends had fun time with the kid. Back to work on tuesday, but surprise-surprise awaited me that evening. More about that coming up in the next post.