Miranda's birthday - 8 years old!!

For Miranda's birthday she wanted to try out the Fun Village at the Ambience Mall. It is sort of a ChuckECheese thing (oh how I HATE ChuckECheese!) with arcade games, rides and prize tickets. For the rides you buy a pre-charged credit card thing and just put it into the ride and the amount is deducted. (Better and cleaner than tokens) It was very loud, of course. But it was pretty fun. My favorite is the Dance Dance Revolution Game - it is cheap too, so we danced several times. Isaac is the king, since he does it tons at Grandma and Grandpa Leavitt's every summer. Later we played Whack-a-Mole and we ALL whacked - you get lots of tickets that way!!

At the end the kids pooled their tickets (somewhat willingly) and let Miranda choose the prize. A tiny brown teddy bear then came home with us.

When we got home, we had very chocolatey cake and presents!

Her siblings gave her a Princess colouring set with Princess crayons, extra stickers from Alex (Princess of course), puzzle and PlayDoh and Oreos and an artbook from Mom and Dad. And of course, the blanket from Grandma Brooks that she actually got at Christmas time!

I think she had a good birthday.

I think they call it monsoon...

Well, it has begun. Early this year. It started with a nice electrical storm that the girls went up on to the roof to watch - we could hear them screaming and singing and whatever else up there. The lightning is pretty good here. Sam has decided the storms are her favorite thing about India (altho I should add that the list is pretty short!). Anyway, that was a nice break, it cleans the air and keeps the dust down (by turning it into mud, of course!), even as the temperature stays the same (over 100 most of the time). After a couple days of rain at night, it really hit. We wanted to go to Delhi to shop but by the time I got to the end of the driveway I was drenched! And the problem is that many of the shops don't open because so much of their inventory has to be outside on the sidewalk or hanging on a wall or whatever. They use a lot of blue tarps, but they only work to a point. There were many trees down, and traffic is slow. People huddle under the overpasses to get out of it - especially the motorcyclists and bike rickshaws. It gets crowded under there!
This picture is of a parking area at the Omax Mall (the mall across the main road from our neighbourhood). It used to be grass, then they filled it in with dirt so it was less of a mosquito breeding ground, but now it is a lake!Can you see the truck on its side in this photo? The roads are poorly constructed and when the rain hits, there are so many potlholes and soft spots, that bad stuff happens. This one is a truck sunk to the bumper in mud/pothole/etc. It has been there in the middle of the road for 3 days now.

Then yesterday we really got slammed - SO much rain - the most on one day in May in 5 years. The temperature REALLY dropped - the lowest temp in May in 5 years - it was not over 74 all day! Which was great, except the laundry will never get dry under these circumstances!

The best part is, that usually it rains like mad then quits and the sun comes out. (I love that!) But in order to get that record-breaking rain yesterday, it rained ALL day, just like Seattle. No wind, not hard rain, just all day. Bleah. I thought I was done having to run the lights at noon :)
Randy had some excitement at work because the gutters broke, so water was pouring in the plant, and when he tried to go outside to see if he could fix the gutters, he discovered the guard had LOCKED THEM IN THE PLANT!! So he banged on the door until it was unlocked then yelled at the guard and said NEVER do that. Five minutes later, he was locked in again! Perhaps not the safest idea. No idea why he would do that. Anyway, he took these photos of the street outside Helac's gates - really like a lake. Drainage is poor and the rain comes down SO hard and SO fast - like pouring out a bucket. I tried to take a photo but it just doesn't do it justice.