Frolics '09 at San Beda . . .

Last Sunday, January 25, the whole family attended the Frolics in San Beda. This is the yearly students' fair and the celebration of the feast of Sto. Niño. Hubby has been religiously attending this activity with or without us. At least he gets to see some of his friends at least once a year. Since the kids are with us, I did not join the procession. We just stayed in the chapel hoping the kids will sleep even for a while. But they didn't so we just had some photo opps while waiting for the daddy. ha ha ha . . . Here are some of our pictures :

Slumber Party '09

The pre-school department of St. John's Wort Montessori had their annual slumber party last Friday, January 23. As usual, JM joined her Ate Kaila in her school activity but they stayed in separate rooms this time. Both kids enjoyed the activity as they have their stories to tell. Here are some pictures taken by our yaya since we left the two kids in school as the letter to parents indicate that the activity is strictly for the kids only.

Kai and JM in their pajamas . . .

Storytelling time . . .

See how behave JM is . . . :)

JM in his sleeping mat . . .

Ate Kaila with her classmates . . .

The two kids playing with their flashlight while waiting for mommy and daddy

School Activities . . .

With barely two months to go before the school year ends, Kaila has a lot of school activities coming up. Here's the line up of activities :

Jan 19 to 23 - 3rd Quarterly Exams

Jan 23 - Slumber Party

Jan 29 to 30 - Sports Fest

Feb 4 - Tea Party

Feb 21 - Family Day

I'm not sure what will be the exact activities on those days but I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun for the kids. Hopefully I can attend to all these activities.

Passport Update . . .

Last week, I received an e-mail from my officemate about the expiration of the green passport. According to the e-mail, all passport ( of course this excludes the maroon passport already ) will expire by January 2010. My passport and Kaila's passport will expire on July 2011. But since it is still the green passport it will expire on 2010 already. Without confirming if this is true or not, I immediately applied for the renewal of our passport through the DFA Passport Direct. I've already experienced their services when I got JM's passport and the renewal of hubby's passport last year. I am very satisfied that's why I got them again even though the price is more than double the normal processing in DFA.

I applied last Friday and they already picked-up the documents early this morning. I got a text from them even before 8am this morning confirming if I have the complete requirements already. Good thing that I immediately photocopied our passports first thing in the morning. The representative checked our requirements and it was ok. I already paid the fee of P1,300 each and the receipt was issued as well. Our appearance will be on the 31st which is a Saturday. No need to take a leave from work. Issuance will be after two weeks from the date of our appearance.

You might be thinking why am I in a hurry to renew our passport? Well, this is a part of that "something" which I'm currently working on that I mentioned in my prior post.

Tempting offer . . .

from Cebu Pacific is now back! The zero seat sale for their international destination is on-going until the 22nd of January. It was the same time last year when I booked our HK trip. I was tempted to book a Singapore trip for next month. Actually, I was chatting my friend from Singapore of how much our "would be expense"already. I even browsed some sites to check out the possible attractions that we can visit. That's how I learned that Universal Studios will be opening already by 2010. I confirmed this with my friend and she said that it'll be open by early next year. So, I decided to defer this Singapore trip in time for the opening of Universal Studios. Who knows we might have a trip by last quarter of this year. It's just a matter of prioritization. I still have to prioritize "something"for Q1. This will be another topic in my future posts.

1-1-4-4-0

You wonder what's with those numbers? No, I didn't win in the lottery nor any game of luck. For sometime already, I've been saving up my P5 and P10 coins in a plastic container in the office. I'm not really sure for how long I've been doing it. Last week when hubby fetched me from the office I decided to take it home and let hubby bring it to his office so that he can count it already. The following day, I've been texting hubby to ask how much was it. He said P1,500. No, I don't believe it! When he finally said the final numbers I was so happy and it's really unbelievable! It reached P11,440 to be exact. I didn't expect it to be that much. I realized that we can save that much without too much effort and sacrifice. I am now starting again with so much excitement and hopefully I can save that much again the next time we count our P5 and P10 coins.

An afternoon in EK . . .

Sunday morning, Kaila is still under observation if she'll get better. Luckily, she doesn't have fever anymore although she vomits from time to time. She doesn't want to eat and drink anything. So, hubby and I discussed that we'll just see Kaila's condition in the afternoon if we'll still push through with the EK trip. We have free tickets given my cousin and it's the last day to use the ticket. Hubby reported to work while me and the kids stayed home. Kaila insisted that she's ok already and we can go to EK. I informed hubby that the kids wanted to push through with the EK trip. So, I started to prepare our stuffs so that we can leave by the time hubby gets home from work. I think we were able to leave the house at almost 4pm already.

When we arrived, there were a lot of people and the parking was full. It took us quite a while before we were able to park the car. Since our ticket is just for the entrance and unlimited carousel ride, we upgraded it to ride-all-you-can and added P250 each for the adults and P170 for the kids. We barely had pictures that day because Kaila was not in the mood since she's not that feeling well. Here are just a few of our pictures:

JM in the carousel . . .

Ate Kaila in the carousel . . .

Daddy and Kaila in the choo choo train . . .

Mommy and JM in the choo choo train . . .

Ate Kaila with Corduroy . . .

Daddy's little girl . . . she's not feeling well already . . .

Bye wizard . . . See you again . . .

We immediately went home right after the fireworks display at around 8pm. Kaila was not feeling well and still doesn't want to eat anything. We hope that Kaila gets better soon.

Good health . . .

is what I wish for my family and loved ones for this year. We are just on the second week of January and both kids have become sickly lately. Last week, we had to bring JM to the hospital because of vomiting. He started to vomit on Sunday morning. We thought that it was just an indigestion because he was able to finish one pack of Yan-Yan all by himself just before we slept the previous night. But the vomiting continued until the afternoon. He had fever already in the afternoon. He got better during the night so we thought that JM was ok already. Monday was the first working day of the year and I was already on an emergency leave. Hubby requested me to stay home to monitor JM's condition. It was the same as the previous day so we decided to bring him to the hospital already.

In the ER, vital info was provided to the attendants. In just a short time, the doctor was already attending to JM. I told her about JM's condition. She just prescribed a medicine to JM and requested us to submit a urine and stool sample. In the meantime, we'll just observe if JM will continue to vomit. If his condition won't get better he'll be admitted already since he's showing signs of dehydration already. Since hubby's office is just across the hospital, I told the attending doctor that we'll just stay there while JM is under observation. The doctor agreed and we were discharged immediately from the ER. I went back and forth from the hospital to Mercury drug then to the hospital again for the stool sample. Luckily, the result didn't show any viral or bacterial infection. JM, on the otherhand, was improving already and didn't vomit from the time that he took the medicine prescribed by the doctor. So, we just waited for daddy to finish work and we went home altogether. JM got better and better on the succeeding days.

Since this morning, Kaila has an on and off fever. Thank God that it's just below 38 degrees. Actually, we were suppose to go to Enchanted Kingdom today but we have to postpone it until Kaila gets better. We hope and pray that this is nothing serious. Kaila is the type of kid who doesn't want to go to the hospital. I'm sure it will be difficult if her condition would require us to bring her to the hospital.

As a parent, it's really stressful when the kids get sick. I would often recall how our parents would say "kung pwede lang kami na lang ang magkasakit at wag na ang mga bata." That's excatly how I feel as a parent everytime the kids are sick. I hope Ate Kaila gets better already.

A post holiday reunion . . .

Our highschool barkada makes it a point to have a reunion at least once a year. Every year, each one of us would volunteer or should I say volunteered by the group to have our place as the venue of the get together and each one would bring in any food to be shared by everybody. This year, the get together was set on January 3 at 3pm in Anthony's place in San Isidro Heights in Cabuyao. We were lucky because it's just very near our place. I volunteered to bring in some tacos for the group. Our family was complete and the second to arrive in the venue.

While waiting for the others to arrive, we started to eat whatever is already there because it's almost 5pm already and we're not yet complete ( for those who have confirmed to attend ). Discussion ranges from current, past and future plans of each one of us. It may be for our families, career and even political plans for the next election. Or course, the event wouldn't be complete without reminiscing people, teachers and events during our highschool days. As what we always say "kawawa ang absent kasi napapagkaisahan sa usapan".

We ended up the night at past 8pm already. The kids were already bugging us to go home. Anyway, in spite of being tired and sleepy due to the previous holidays it was nice to exert some effort to be with old friends whom you have grown with in the past. We are looking forward to the next event and hopefully it would be soon. :)

Paging Tere ! ! ! Please have a despedida party before you leave for Australia.

New Year '09 Celebration . . .

We celebrated New Year's Eve in our Canlubang home together with my other siblings. As usual, hubby reported to work so I did all the food preparation ( a major change from prior events :) ). We arrived in Canlubang at past 6pm already. Hubby and I started with the other food preparation like the chicken and the crema de fruta. My sister and his husband on the other hand was cooking the molo soup. Everything was ready by 9pm. We just watched the TV while the kids were playing around. We went outside by 11pm and started lighting our sparklers and fountains. We watched outside as the sky lit up with plenty of fireworks before 12 midnight. We were simultaneously watching the countdown in the tv as well. After all the fireworks, we enjoyed our foods until 2am. We almost slept at around 3am.

On New Year day itself, all of us went to Cavite. Again, we feasted on a lot of foods. As in a lot! I did not even tasted all of them because I was so full already. Unfortunately, I was not able to take pictures of the foods. We stayed there until 5pm and went to Pacita afterwards. We stayed there until 8pm and headed to Canlubang after. We just got our stuffs and headed home in Cabuyao. We were so tired by the time we got home.

Here are some pictures from our celebration:

Taco salad ( my specialty ) . . .

Broiled chicken ( specialty of Philip ) . . .

Spicy shrimps . . . c/o hubby ulit

Bico . . .

Crema de fruta . . . another specialty of mine . . .

Buco salad . . .

Our media noche . . .

Smile Ate Kaila . . .

The three kids doing their poses . . .

The kids practicing their horns . . .

Fountain galore . . .

JM and Wacks with their sparklers . . .

JM again . . .

Our brave little boy . . .

Where's Ate Kaila and Wacks? ( takot sa firecrackers )

JM show us your cute smile . . .

Stolen shot na lang . . .