Viva Las Vegas

We packed our bags and set out for Las Vegas Friday night. My employer Axon, invited its employees for an annual dinner event in Las Vegas. We barely escaped an impending inclement weather in the east coast and reached LV by 10:30pm (14-DEC-2007), where our company sponsored valet service put us in a limo and promptly dropped us at the MGM Grand Hotel.

Dad and mom exhausted from a 5 hour flight, hit the bed while I went down to the casino to meet Pradeep and Rajesh. We had a lovely dinner, gambled a bit, hung out at the club "Tabu" and went to bed at 3:00am.

In the morning at 8:00am, all of us went to the grand breakfast. After the breakfast, myself, Pradeep and Rajesh headed to a half-day company meeting. Mom/Dad and rest of the crew spent time in the casino. After the meeting, all of us went to a lovely lunch on "the strip".

At 7:00pm me and Dad attended the "formal" dinner (4-course meal, live music and magic show.) We got back to the room and rested to get ready for a day-long trip to the famous Grand Canyon, next day.

Viva Las Vegas

More dinner invitations

A couple of our friends invited us over for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday. I spent most of the daytime working and my parents would spend time reading books. In the evening we went to my friends place (Rajnikath/Shailaja and Swarna/Jagan) for dinner.

Mom spent a couple of hours on Thursday night when dad made his infamous request to mom to make some "Janthikalu" (muruku).

Mom and I went to the Gems show at Dulles Expo and mom bought Italian corals.

MoreDinnerInvitations

Visiting Rinay

Sitapati and Madhuri had their 2nd baby boy on 11-DEC-2007. We visited them at the hospital.

After our visit to the hospital, we got some "heat-n-eat" dishes for dinner from a desi store and watched Maya Bazaar before hitting the bed.

Today mom fed me while I was busy working. I miss the good old childhood days...

Visiting Rinay

Lunching out and shopping

After 3 days of hibernating due to the snow here in VA, we stepped out to eat a nice vegetarian buffet at famous Woodlands. After loading ourselves with a full meals and topping it off with a sweet paan, we engaged in burning some calories by shopping around in a nearby Kohls.

Lunching out

First snow in USA

The last couple of days mom and dad pretty much hibernated at home. Other than a visit to the nearby temple on Monday night and grocery shopping on Tuesday night, they were at home doing the eat-sleep-tea-eat-sleep routine.

GroceryShopping

We watched "Bhookailas" last night and re-lived my childhood times.

Today we went to Sitapati's for a lunch (and an eventual dinner.) It snowed here in Virginia, a rarity this time of the year (it did not, in the last few years - global warming???)

Mom and dad were maha-thrilled at the sight of the first snow and embarked on a picture session en-route to Sitapati's house.

FirstSnow

Sunday late lunch

Mum offered to make whatever Ravi wanted and Ravi quickly jumped and said "Veg Biryani" - guess the taste is etched in his mind from our childhood times.

Sunday morning we had a dosa breakfast and mom got busy in preparing vegetarian biryani. All of us met at Shanker's house and forced ourselves to a "full meals". The rest of the Sunday was filled with couple of rounds of hot tea and a small dinner.

Sunday lunch/dinner pics

LunchAtPullas

Luray Caverns

It was a rare December weekend (Saturday ~ 01-DEC-2007,) warm and lovely day. We had a good breakfast, packed some more idli's in a tiffin-box and set out to check out Luray Caverns, a decent hour and half drive from where we are.

On our way to Luray Caverns we took a detour and paid a visit to the Stillhouse Vineyards in Hume, VA. My x-boss owns the vineyards. Dad had experienced the first wine tasting gig here in USA and he thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dad and mom were totally excited to take the 1.5 mile tour of Luray Caverns, about 200 feet below the surface of earth. In the beginning it was all good, but halfway into the tour, Dad started panting heavily and sweating profusely. We were a bit worried about his condition, but he was determined to complete the trip and paced his walk perfectly to complete the tour.

On our way back we forcefully invited ourselves to Ravi's place for dinner. Padma made lovely dinner in no time, while we spent some quality time with Rohan and Rithi.

LurayCaverns