Park outings are such huge stress busters....

The 12000 Intel Layoffs announcement has suddenly brought on SO MUCH STRESS at work. Every single team I work with is affected. Many small sites we work with are shutting down, affecting all our colleagues working there. We don't know yet what will happen to our team (we will find out next week), but there is nothing we can do except wait for the news.

It's been a crazy difficult week, to say the least.

However, the California spring warm weather has done it's best to keep things cheerful. This is quite possibly my favorite time of the year. Our garden has so many roses, camellias, orange and peach blossoms, other springs flowers blooming. We also have blueberries starting to grow. Thanks to the abundant rainfall this year, the lawn is lush green. The hills around us are lush green. And the parks are so inviting.

Our kids are young, and thanks to both of us working full time, go to all day private schools. We have made a choice to keep them out of ALL structured activities lately. Other than school, they have nothing planned going on. This has helped keep our evenings and weekends completely open. I have loved every single minute of this open time. We make it to the park almost every single evening, and most weekends. It is pure joy to watch them race down the slide, or make sand castles in the sand pit, or chant "higher higher" on the swings, or watch them make slow but steady progress on the monkey bars. It is also absolute delight to watch them make new friends - the son doing that more easily than the daughter, but both trying, nevertheless. After every park outing, we all come home relaxed, and rejuvenated.

Yesterday was one such lovely day, and our visit to a small park closest to our house was one to cherish. The kids made a friend, Sonia, who hit off really well with them. I played tag with them, and fed them evening snacks. The husband climbed slides and raced down with them. They played in the sandpit, climbed the structures, yelled and squeaked in delight, and we came back as the sun began to set, leaving us with a breathtaking sky in the background.

What's not to love?

Here are some more pictures of our park fun....

An afternoon of calm in between stormy days....

So much is happening. And so fast.

With the help of our good friends A and K, the husband and I pushed ourselves to declutter, purge, pack and clean our entire house over the kids' spring break. We decided to put it up for sale, and it's now doing open houses, waiting for a buyer to come and put in an offer :)!

This activity took a huge toll on us, but even if we didn't want to sell, it was very much needed. We had accumulated SO much stuff over the last 7+ years, and we never really found time to purge. Our house was always clean, but we could never get it organized to our satisfaction.

Since the beginning of the year, I wanted to follow the "Less is More" principle. I am SO happy we were able to pull this effort off. Our home feels and looks amazing right now. A lot of our stuff is boxed up in the garage, and we are living with only the basic essentials since 2+ weeks. It feels.....quite.....nice!

You must be wondering if we are selling our house, where are we moving? Well, we have put a holding deposit on a brand new house within our neighborhood itself. Our move is contingent upon us selling our current home, so I'm not yet ready to announce to the world that we are moving!

My pet peeves with our current home are a small kitchen, relatively smaller yard, and the layout of the kids' rooms (which until now were never used because we still co-sleep). If we were in India, we would keep the same property, and turn it around to suit our needs. But it's more expensive here to do that. The husband and I really enjoy gardening, and would love to have our little space to grow all we could. We would plant a bunch of fruit trees, just like we did in our current backyard, and would have have a large area for kids to play ball, climb, and slide. Let's see how it all pans out...

While we were in the midst of all this, I got into a hydroplane accident in our old car on the highway. I was extremely lucky to not hit anything, or lose control of my car, and I just swiveled to the shoulder which had loose dirt on which my tires stuck. But after that incident. I felt terribly unsafe to drive that 16 year old car. It lacked many safety features that are standard today, like side airbags.

So we sold that car, and bought a new one. Selling was effortless - I had a couple interested buyers, and one of them came through in a timely manner. Buying a new car took some haggling online, but my time at the dealership was short, and sweet. However, the sell/buy of the car weighed on my mind ever since my accident, and I'm relieved it's taken care of now.

I am now going through the loan paperwork for the new house. We need to get pre-approved and be ready, even if we may not end up applying for a new loan. I am also doing my taxes so buried deep into investments, deductions, credit scores, debts, etc.

In the midst of all this, yesterday was an oasis. We made an impromptu plan to visit a friend who lives on a 5 acre property, very close to Folsom Lake. She has pet tortoises, chickens, and 3 cute doggies. She has a huge organic garden and spring is planting season around here. The kids helped her plant squash, melon, watermelon, curry leaves, and few other things. They also fed the tortoises lettuce, bananas and tomatoes. They played to their heart's content with Archie and Roxie, the 2 hyperactive doggies. My friend is going to let us babysit the dogs on the weekends, so that we can see if we can manage a pet (that the kids have been begging for) in our new house.

There is always some work going on at our friends place. She had some workers digging and laying stones in the patio, and the son enjoyed some digging along with them.

The husband and I also managed to take a short hike to the lake with our son. He rarely gets undivided attention from BOTH of us, so it was lovely. He saw a toad, and a flying fish in the lake. He stood on the side and threw stones as far as he could for several minutes. The hills and trails were lush green, the California poppies were shining bright, the lake is full with the abundant rain this year, and the spring weather was simply gorgeous during our short walk.

We had planned for a 2 hour outing at my friends place, but ended up staying until after dinner. The kids were tired but super content, and passed out in their carseats on our way back home. Here are a few pictures of our amazing day....

Sorry for the long post but it feels better to have penned my thoughts down, all at once!!!!