Rajendra Chozhan's Summer Holidays

Anirud had six weeks of summer holidays this year. Despite our best intentions to take him out for a decent short term holiday (our initial plan was for Belgium, which was downgraded to Wales or Lake District), we couldn't do it due to many reasons. Number of children of his age in our neighbourhood has also come down this time, as a result of which Anirud spent most of his time indoors. Thanks to the rains and miserable weather in between, he couldn't even cycle around our apartment. To his credit, he didn't complain much and as always was at his creative best with the building toys in doing various different stuff. In the first five weeks, all we did was to take him out to the park few times, a movie (Toy Story 3) and to a play area nearby.

To make up for the lost opportunities, we decided to go to Birdworld during the August Bank holiday weekend but weather gods intervened again. Not wanting to give up, we suddenly changed our plans and drove up to Bournemouth beach, although we were sitting in the motorway for a good 2 hours due to traffic. Beach was fun. We were there for about 4.5 hours or so and every moment of it was enjoyable to the core. It was such a joy watching him play in the sand and it did rekindle our memories bringing back the days when we as children used to play in the sand building castles, tunnels and what not. Anirud had a go with the 'Walk on the Water' ball as well.

While building up two sand hills and a castle on its top, suddenly Anirud's face brightened up.

'Appa, what is Rajaraja Chozhan's son's name?' (Thanks to my constant reading of the book Udayar, he has heard about Tanjore Big Temple and the King who built it).

'Rajendra Chozhan'

'Ok, now. Lets pretend this way. You are Rajaraja Chozhan and I am Rajendra Chozhan.'

Pointing to the sand hills, 'This is your temple and this is my temple. Lets build a road connecting them'...

Once started his imagination, as always started to run wild. So, he made plans to build a road connecting them, decorate the temples(!) with stones, filled the tunnel with water and what not.

Some pictures of our very own Rajendra Chozhan, working hard on his masterpiece.

Bringing water for his castle.

Castle on the hill - upon completion

Looking for his tools

Inside 'Walk on the Water' Ball