Our New Playground

The fifth floor of our apartment building is called the stilt floor and it's nicknamed the garden floor.  This is where we access the swimming pool.  We love to swim!  We just wish we had more time to do it more often!

This year at the Elementary School the theme is "The Year of Movement".  We were asked to send in pictures of how our family moves.  I sent in the individual pictures of the 3 little boys, but I had to get a group shot too.

Ali is a water baby,

and wants to go fwimming all the time! (That's not a typo, that's how she pronounces it.)

There's also a fun playground with

swings, monkey bars, slides and climbing structures, and a zip line.

A crow enjoying the garden's beauty.

We have hibiscus in every color- orange, yellow, purple, red, pink, and white.

Plumeria is one of my favorites!  We also have it in hot pink.

We also have oleander in soft pink, hot pink, red, and white.

I don't know what this flower is (I think a canna lily), but it is a big fluffy peach muffin!

Even the foliage comes in amazing shades of yellows, greens, and purples.

And aren't these little purple orchids sweet?

A pretty orange and yellow canna lily that looks like fire.

And stephanotis will always be a wedding flower to me.

We are lucky to be surrounded by such beauty!  We also have an indoor gym, an outdoor tennis court, exercise area and reflexology walk (we enjoyed both of these in Taiwan too!), and a lovely little trail to walk around with many bench swings to sit and rest on.

But again, we need more time to go down and enjoy it!!

Home Sweet Apartment

Our home for the next couple of years is in this tall apartment building.

A pond outside on ground level.

(Our pool and other amenities are on the 5th or stilt floor, but I'll post more of that later.)

Looking up to the 38 floors.

Looking down to the lobby.

Looking through the side of the building (you can see the pool).

Now come inside.  Here is our entry way looking from our great room towards the front door.

On the left is the kitchen.  It's H-shaped with another sink and dishwasher to the left and the fridge & freezer is behind the door.

This is the only balcony that we use, aka our laundry room.

Our apartment is a double apartment, so this would have been another kitchen.  Instead we're going to use it as a playroom for the kids.

Here is our great room.  Again it is twice the size of the majority of the apartments in our building.  It is set up as 4 areas:

the living room,

a little sitting area,

the dining room,

and a little office area.

I love our view (minus the pigeon netting).  We can see many more tall apartment buildings near and far and more under construction.  We can also see slum houses and shops (the low buildings with the blue tarps on the roofs).  The green patch on the left is the Mahalaxmi Racecourse (for horses).  In the distance on the right is the Arabian Sea.

A close-up shot of the sea also shows our view of the Haji Ali Dargah mosque that was built in 1431.

The hall to the east wing.

The powder room.

The master bedroom

is 2 bedrooms in other apartments.

The master bathroom is tiny though!

Kaleb and Teague's room,

and their bathroom.

The hall to the west wing.

This would have been another bathroom, but all the fixtures have been taken out so it can be a storage room for us.  It has the 3 pack up kits (for our temporary bedding, towels, and dishes, etc.) as well as stuff left behind by the previous occupants.

Noé and Ali's room.

My sweet Noé says their room is plenty big if we adopt Macy and Sasha.  (In my dreams we would, but I don't think it's going to happen.)

The girls' bathroom.

Gavin and Hiram's room,

and bathroom.

I really like our apartment, except for one small thing.  We have 5 bathrooms (as well as a servant's room and squatter bathroom outside), but do not have a single bath tub.  I really prefer shaving my legs in the bath, and washing my little kiddos in the tub.  We're making it work though!

Business Class

On our trips from Ottawa to London and London to Mumbai, the Canadian government pampered us with business class seats.

We told our kids not to get used to it though, as when Mommy & Daddy our financing our family vacations, this is a luxury we can not afford.

Our flight to London was during the night, while this flight was during the day.  We played musical chairs lots and took lots of trips to the bathroom and snack bar, but all-in-all I think we did pretty good with 6 kiddos confined to a small space for 9 hours.  

Everyone had their own entertainment system-

to watch movies,

or TV,

play video games,

or listen to music.

We had a couple of yummy meals,

although Kaleb and I both ate the small chili pepper in our Indian dinner and thought our heads were going to blow off.  Still, that was better than having Ali puke all over me like she did on the flight to London.

Our seats completed folded out to become beds too, if we wanted to take a nap.

Oh Airlines!  If only all of your seats could be business class seats with economy class ticket prices!!  If only businesses could be more concerned with giving the best customer service instead of giving themselves the fattest wallets, sigh.  What a world we could have if we always offered our very best to others.

Teague's lost tooth

Teague's front tooth was hanging by a string...

but not for long.  It's out of there!

The Tooth Fairy gave him a huge bag of Double Devon Toffees as a reward.

Teague thought they were quite delicious and shared them with all of us.

I love your smile Teaguey boy, and I love your generous heart!