(Many) updates

On Friday we dropped parents off at the airport needless to say with teary eyes but with hope to see each other soon... somehow. We were so blessed to spend this past month together...we got to vacation for a few days in Chicago, enjoy the flagrances of fall (and winter as we got snow on Oct 10th!!!!), shop, cook, watch movies, and just do the typical family stuff that families do. We took tons of pictures as usual and will post some of them here. Ella misses them already and wants to visit them in Romania soon, so do we. So blessed to have such good parents, we're really proud of them and grateful that could visit.


We got to go to the temple together and that was such an awesome experience. Love my parents and I'm so grateful they/we can be together forever. I don't know if you can tell from the pics, but I tried to capture their glowing faces after the session.

On the 16th we celebrated Ella's 4th birthday! She actually had a birthday weekend and not just a birthday as we celebrated her on Fri, Sat, and Sun. On Sat she had a party at the gym where she takes gymnastics and on Sun after church we had family friends over for a nice Romanian/Indian meal with mici and veggie/rice pulau and other goodies. She had tons of fun! It was really wonderful to watch her and her friends play together. They're literally like little "party animals" jumping around, running, and following the instructor through all the fun activities they had. Then they gobbled down the cake (which in my mind was a masterpiece) as neither me or my mom ever adventured to bake and decorate a horse cake! 

Back to watching the little "party animals", aside from the excitment what struck me was the love and camaraderie they shared. It was genuine friendship.

Another testimony to me that these little ones are indeeded the purest. Ella was a great hostess: she welcomed each friend to the party and later helped the gym personnel to set up the table with plates, glasses, and silverware. She got a tons of beautiful presents for which we're very grateful. From mommy and daddy she got three live fish pets. Her first pets ever. She loves them: stands in front of the fish tank and talks to the fish. I can feel/tell she'd love to be able to have a way to truly "pet" them :-)

I think that's it for today. I'm grateful for a good/busy work day (at work) and looking forward to finishing the day with Ella and Hrishi.