anamiivapayana

Our family visited Troy, MI to see my brother's family, my mom, and dad in June 2019. From there we had planned for a road trip around Lake Michigan. Since we are 7 adults and 3 young kids (1 yr, 2 yr and 5 yr old), who needed car seats, we rented a 12-seat passenger van for the trip.  We bought snacks, packed basic Indian spices for cooking on our road trip. we had booked Airbnb houses/hotel rooms with a kitchen equipped with basic cooking utensils to cook the yummy and healthy Indian food. We had started our road trip on June 25, 2019, from Troy MI around 7 am. We had a nice 4-5 hour long countryside drive to  Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore , kids had fun watching and counting the number of cows, horses, alpacas on the way. On the National Lakeshore, Lake Michigan appeared like a giant sweet water ocean to us with clear see-through water. The weather was perfect to enjoy the view but the water was freezing cold to play. This place had numerous viewpoints ...

VSNE had organized the summer camping from July 19 - 22, 2019 in the midst of  the beautiful greenery of  White Mountains, NH. There were over a 100 people including about 45 kids and a few parents from India. I would like to call this camping experience as Glamping because this place had all the glamorous amenities for camping like nice spacious camping sites, water, electricity supply near all the campsites, access to the banks of Saco river, playground for kids, delicious food by volunteers and of course, dear VSNE members. Since it was our first time camping with our kids (2 and 5-year-old), me and my husband were a little nervous about camping. We did our homework to prepare for the camping and also our VSNE board members had shared the checklist for camping, things to do in the area. This information made us feel confident about our plan. We reached the camping site around 7.30 in the evening after a long 4-hour drive due to Friday traffic all the way ...

Most of us are struggling under society’s expectation to be perfect in each and every way- to look smarter, fashionable, have more wealth and make more money. Do I think that I can be happy about being perfect? My answer is “No” but still I want to be perfect in life. This thought was coming to my mind and made me realize the fact that being happy doesn’t mean to be perfect or being perfect doesn’t make me happy. My thought is “To derive the difference between “being happy” and “being perfect”, and share my self-realization:                         One should not necessarily be happy only by being perfect.   I also think it is possible to be happy without being perfect but being positive /optimistic in our thinking. This thought has become a powerful mantra in my life. This is the thought which is provoking and helping me to find happiness in small things/work I do in my day to day life. I would expla...