Happy Birthday Ron!

Indeed, we did have a very fun celebration on Monday, September 1, for Ron's natal day!  It started with the older girls coming early in the morning to serenade him with a rousing rendition of "Happy birthday"--they do a second verse also which says "May God bless your year..." repeated four times.  Nice.  Staff and children all added loving wishes as they met him. Throughout the day he received many nice emails from family members and friends--he loved that also.  

That afternoon we took the Kirby family, Vicki and Gordon Gibb, Erin, Katie and Emily and Nickesh, to Dakshina  Chitra which is situated on about 10 acres of well cared for property, and is a community service project of the Madras Craft Foundation.  They promote and preserve the cultures of several states of India, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.  The architecture of these different communities includes various buildings that have been brought and reconstructed on the site, making several village-like areas showing the differences between one community and another.  They are beautiful, mainly wood construction, although some in brick and stone.  We never see wood used in building in recent years--all wood that is used in India is imported now.

There are many crafts people who are working on site, and sell their wares directly to the public.  Also, they have many interactive things going on--making pottery, grinding rice, palm leaf decoration, pot painting, terra cotta doll making, block printing, basket making and others. 

It's lots of fun and very informative--come on over and we'll take you there!  After that stop, we went to a fun restaurant called Kabob Court for a delicious dinner.  One of the dishes was a beautiful seafood platter--including a large lobster.  We did end up with a biriani that was so spicy that Ron said if he'd had tonsils, they would have been burned right out!  We had not one but two beautiful birthday cakes--we got a little mixed up with two Hot Breads bakeries on the same road, and we had ordered one from each!  We had to eat the second cake the next night for dinner--darn!

The Kirby's six year old made a hilarious card for Ron, including such descriptions of him as "Faster than a speeding auto-rickshaw...with a flat tire", and "Stronger than the smell of Indian garbage."  It was so cute, complete with great pictures. 

It was a happy day for all, I think especially for the Birthday Boy!