Christmas and New Year

Last year Christmas fell on a Thursday and we got 4 days off. The nice thing about this year was Prashanth was not working, except on Christmas day, so we enjoyed the long weekend. When I asked my colleagues at work, what Christmas meant to them, they said it was the time to meet friends and family. It really seemed so this year for us. On Christmas day, me and Aditi went over to the famous Balaji temple at Birmingham, along with a friend, chatting happily on our 2-hour journey. Prashanth was working that day, so he could not join us. At the temple, we met Prashanth's cousin and family, who were travelling to Scotland and stopped on their way for a quick darshan(and free lunch). It was a surprise, for neither of us knew about each other's plans to visit the temple. We had wanted to meet them for a while, but on our recent trip to London, they were away in India. And all plans to go to London would be scrapped off even before we could think about it. We caught up on all the latest happenings in the family and after lunch, headed back home. I had packed Aditi's rice and dal, but she surprised me by eating the sambar sadam that was distributed for lunch at the temple. We headed back home and Aditi slept throughout the journey. Our friends dropped us at our place and I served them dosa and chutney with the previous day's sambar - as a thank you for the trip. So typically as on Christmas day, we met family and had friends home for dinner.
On Boxing Day, we went over to Kettering to visit a couple of my school friends. We wanted to take Aditi to meet more children of her age and she enjoyed that evening with the friends's children. The four kids had fun playing train, reading books, and basically playing with every possible toy that they could lay their hands on. Aditi tried the kids' goggles and was very happy. She was excited to find people as small as her and not having to pull mummy and daddy into her games. I was delighted to find her enjoying the company of her new friends - in contrast to what I had imagined - she wasn't shy at all. We left the next day and were supposed to visit Leicester, a typical Indian(gujarati) city, but the traffic out on the motorway made us change our plans and we drove straight home. As usual Aditi slept during the return journey, only to wake up when we pulled into our driveway.
And we shopped on sunday looking for deals to buy a flat screen 42 inch plasma TV, making maximum use of the winter deals.(A 40 inch Sony LCD TV is now the focal point of our living room!)

PS: This was started long ago , and was left midway. Managed to complete and hit Submit today.