Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Beatrice with her cousins Louis and Rosemary in Griffith Park

This year's Christmas card photo

Merry (belated) Christmas! and a Happy New Year!

Early in December I took Beatrice to see (a wonderfully authentic-looking) Santa at the Americana shopping mall in Glendale. We waited in line for 45 minutes surrounded by loud music, blinking lights, and shrieking children but Beatrice had a great time throughout, she was smiling the entire time, even when I made her sit alone on the lap of an outlandishly costumed stranger.

Christmas attire in Southern California

Then we drove to Dallas with the dogs, stopping on the way to visit Michael, Laura, and Boston in Santa Fe.

We spent the holidays with Dev's whole family: Mamo, Naresh, Suzan, Mina, James, Julie, Maureen, Rosemary, and Louis, along with me, Dev, and Beatrice, plus the two dogs and Maureen's rabbit Fifi.

And we even got snow for Christmas!

Louis had his Christmas balloon tied to his wrappings

Beatrice plays with her drum and xylophone from Aunt Mina

Beatrice opens her first Christmas gift from her mom and dad, the "bob and wobble lion"

The lion is a hit.

Playing the worst board game of all time.

Beatrice with her Christmas balloon.

James makes an excellent pie.

See the rest of our Christmas photos on Flickr and Facebook.

Suzan's birthday and Kumar reunion in Ojai

We just got back from four days in Ojai, where we rented a very impressive house to celebrate Suzan's 60th birthday. There were a total of 15 adults, 2 babies, and 1 dog: me, Dev, Suzan, Naresh, Mina, James, Julie, Maureen, Mamo, Gale, Roger, Eddie, Sally, Krissy, Aaron, Rosemary, Beatrice, and Cromwell.

Beatrice met many of these people for the first time and she spent time focusing on each person's face and voice:

Suzan and Naresh brought Beatrice a beautiful Indian gold bangle:

(They also gave me a beautiful Tanzanite ring, photos to follow - )

At the pool:

Watching Suzan's birthday slideshow:

Krissy's amazing cake:

At the beach:

On a geology tour with Naresh:





You can find more on Facebook.

Baby's First Road Trip

Another late post, but I wanted to include some photos from baby's first road trip. When Beatrice was four weeks old we loaded her up with both of the dogs and took them all off to Santa Fe, about 15 hours away. Why Santa Fe? well, why not? Or as I said to Dev, if this baby doesn't like doing stupid things for no reason, then she sure picked the wrong family.

We descended on Michael Waddington, his girlfriend Laura, and their dog Boston and it was a wonderful trip. Thank you to Michael and Laura for being such great hosts - that kind of hospitality is exactly what leads to you having people show up at your house on two days' notice with an infant and two dogs.

On the road:






Beatrice meeting Laura and Michael:





Hiking at Tent Rocks National Monument:





And best of all, prairie dogs:




See the rest of the photos on Flickr or Facebook.