Monte Vista

October 28, 2007, a day after Papa’s birthday. We finally came up with a decision to celebrate it at Monte Vista Hot Spring Resort located at Calamba Laguna. At 8am, we picked-up Ate and Kyla and start to travel to Calamba. We do not know the exact location of the resort but we have an idea from the location map we had found in the internet site. When we got to the town proper of Calamba, my husband decided to stop and ask the police officer about the resort. Luckily we are still on the right way. From the directions given by the police man, we reach the location. At the parking area, we saw Adis and the rest of my family members (except Ate Litel and JR).

Adrian is excited to see his cousins (JC, Jeremy, Ellah, and Charlie). At the entrance, it is only Adrian who came up free (it is because he is only 3 feet tall) and Papa being a senior citizen has a discounted entrance fee.

The weather is a bit cloudy that day, but since it is a hot spring, the kids and the adults enjoyed the pool.

Car Show at Elizabeth Seaton

My husband is a big fan of cars, so whenever he got news of a car show taking place (especially when held in vicinity of Cavite), he will not it pass by without attending. The location is at Parking space of Elizabeth Seaton School here in Anabu Cavite, when we got there at around 4pm there are few car entries/displays in the area, maybe because it is still early. We decided to go first to Robinson Imus, Adrian is asking for a toy racing car for a week now. We also need to buy some things that we need for tomorrow’s swimming.

At 6pm, we decided to go to the car show. When we arrived in the location, the parking area is already full so we have to park the car few meters away (the main road in that area has four lanes, the two other lanes were used as parking). Adrian is excited to see cars (he loves cars too). My husband is looking for his friend Kuya Larry who also maintains his car, if they do have entry for that car show, when we got bumped with our former co-employee Erick. We have some chat, update on the current condition of the company he works for, he also told us that our co-employee/friend Denis was there few minutes ago with his wife Michelle. We also saw my husband’s friend Fritz, who also a former co-employee.

We have not seen an entry from Kuya Larry, last car show at island cove his car is the grand winner so we are thinking why he do not have an entry this time.

My First Time Using IM

October 25, Thursday – I was trying to connect with our internal messenger (it is same as yahoo messenger). It was Ate Leng-leng who asked me to sign in, it was there for about a year, but I will be using IM for the first time. After trying my best and failed to connect, I ask assistance from my co-employee, well they can’t believe that it is my first time to use that communicator. When I successfully signed-in, I saw Ate Leng-leng is already on-line. I ask her about her birthday yesterday, she said that she only brought spaghetti for her co-employees. When we were younger, I can still remember that we do not actually celebrate a birthday alone, in case that there were birthdays that will fall in the same month, it will be celebrated only once. Ate Leng-leng’s birthday is October 24, while Lala’s is October 19, and Papa’s is on October 27. We usually have it celebrated once to save money.

Ate Leng-leng is the one in-charge with Papa’s 60^th birthday. Our topic then is, where, when and who are coming. I had a meeting to attend at 830am and we did not yet come up with the final decision on the place. We agreed that she will go to Mama’s house after her work (which is until 2pm only) and she will advise me with the final decision tomorrow.

October 24, Wednesday – It is already 6:30 pm when I got home due to slow traffic at Aguinaldo Hi-way (near SM and Robinsons). When I arrived, my son asks about his father, because this morning my husband decided to drive me to the company due to heavy rains. He works until 9pm so I rode the shuttle bus going home.

After the dinner, I ask Adrian and Claire if they were able to continue the puzzle this afternoon. Claire replied that they tried but they stopped when it is down to the difficult part of the puzzle. This is the part when the color of the puzzle pieces seems to look the same. They spare it to me this time, I went upstairs to continue the puzzle while Adrian is busy playing his favorite computer game, while Claire is watching TV.

The remaining puzzle pieces were down to less than 100 this time. The puzzle pieces were really confusing this time so, I have to really take a closer look to each puzzle piece, I am lucky to have a 20/20 vision. There are times that you think that a puzzle piece will fit on that other piece, but when you put it together, it will not. After less than an hour, and a lot of patience, the puzzle is now finished. I brought down the puzzle, so that Claire and Adrian will saw the finished puzzled. They were both happy to see that it is already completed.

October 22, 2007 - Puzzle in the Making

October 22, Monday – When I got home from work around 6pm, Claire is already cooking the meal for the dinner – fried chicken as requested by Adrian. I decided to go upstairs to continue the puzzle which we have started to assemble yesterday afternoon. Adrian also joined me in the room while waiting for the chicken to be cooked. Claire is also helping this time on the puzzle. After eating our dinner, we decided to continue doing the puzzle while waiting for my husband to arrive. At around 10pm, the three of us were busy doing the puzzle that we have not heard the arrival of my husband. He told us to stop and go to bed and continue it tomorrow.

October 21, 2007 - Christmas Tree

October 21, Sunday – Early in the morning, I opened the box that was sitting in the Living are for a week now. It is the Christmas Tree, my husband took it from our room (under our bed-which is also serves as our storage for other things that we use occasionally). It was Adrian who is very excited to assemble the tree, usually we have it assembled after the “Undas”. I soaked it with soap and water and left to dry. When Adrian

went down, he saw that the box was already opened and he was happy to learn that we are going to assemble the tree after attending the mass.

Actually the Christmas Tree was here for about 5 years now, but it is the first time that we allow Adrian to help in putting it together.

October 20, 2007 - Festival Mall

October 20, Saturday as promised to Claire and Adrian, we went to Festival Mall. At first we were hesitant to go to the mall that day because of the bombing incident happened on Friday. This is because I experienced it myself on year 2000, I was in the mall with JC (my inaanak and first born of Ate Maricel). We are going to buy a baptismal dress for Ellah Mae (first born of Lala) but we decided to have a snack first. We are already done and about to go to the Kids section of the department store when we heard the loud explosion and followed by screams. We are lucky that the personnel of the food chain was alert that time that he managed to close the door of the store and he told the customers to go to the kitchen. We stayed there for an hour, until we heard an announcement that it is all clear.

Finally we decided to go, at least this time the security will be tight. Adrian is so thrilled to ride again the mini-car racing ride. My husband is still at the ticket counter but Adrian is already in the entrance of the ride; that is how much he is excited to try the ride again. He also rode in the train and the carousel. Afterwards we went to the kids section of the mall to look for the Christmas gift for our “inaanaks”. There we saw a nice dress, we bought two pieces and off we go (I usually start my shopping for Christmas gifts early October to November to avoid the rush). Our next stop was in the Puzzle Dazzle stall, I was not able to see the JigBoxx 1500-pc jigsaw puzzle - Souvenir de Mauve by Vincent van Gogh. We will try to look next time on other malls for my new project but for this time but bought a 500 pieces puzzle.

Today is Claire’s 17th birthday

Today is Claire’s 17^th birthday. I will cook pancit bihon that she will bring to school today for her friends. It is the first time she will be celebrating her birthday with us, however we have a work for this day. We promised her that we will go out this Saturday or Sunday to celebrate her birthday.

Our gift for her is a pink teddy bear and a birthday card. We choose to give her a teddy bear because she borrowed the teddy bear of Adrian and put it in her room. She loves to hug it when sleeping so we decided to give her one.

She was adopted sister of my husband. She was one of the children of the son of Tatay (my husband’s grandfather) to his second family. She was adopted since she was three years old, when my mother in law wanted to have another child. She knew it all from the start, because every year or whenever there is occasion, her true family visits her.

October 7, 2007- Feast of Sto. Rosario

October 7, 2007- This day is special, not only because of the awaited boxing match but most important it is the feast of Sto. Rosario. We attended the 7am mass at Sto Rosario Parish. My father in law was not able to come with us because we are expecting relatives to come on that day. He already attended the 6am mass at St. Claire so he decided to stay at the house and wait for the visitors.

After the mass we watched the band of PNU-Lopez performs outside the church.

Right after the presentation, we eat breakfast at Rospan (a small restaurant nearby). We ordered pansit bihon, lumpiang shanghai, rice, and fried chicken.

We then go to Monastery of St. Claire. Claire was a choir there; she wanted to see the "Monghas", (especially Sister Jovan) before we return to Cavite. It is the first Sunday of the month, so it is allowed to visit and talk with them.

After lunch, we decided to go home. We chose not to finish watching the boxing match because we know that there will be heavy traffic afterwards.

Quezon (October 6, 2007)

Jelmar and I woke up early to go to market. It was on the news two months ago that the public market of Lopez Quezon was destroyed by fire. Jelmar was curious to see the new market, so he suggested to his mother that we will be the one to buy the food for that day.

Well, the market is now organized compared to last time we saw it (last year). We went home with one kilo of tilapia, one kilo of bangus, and some vegetables.

At around 2pm, her cousin Angel (a teacher) came and we had some chat and around 3pm, Jelmar ask if we can go to the lot that she had just bought. Jelmar took some photos of the place. We also learned from Ate Vangie (mother of Angel) that the nearby lot was bought by her second child Ayi (who is also a teacher-in Don Bosco Makati). I played Chinese checkers with Alham (younger brother of Angel), whom I beat in that game.

After having a snack (maruya), we decided to visit the school nearby where Jelmar spent his elementary days. We took some photos and off we go to the nearby school few blocks away where Jelmar, Clare, Angel spent high school (Alham is 1^st year in that same school). We also took some photos of the place.

Our last spot is the oval, where we saw some students playing. The children seeing the oval, got excited and decided to run. We are too busy to notice that Adrian was carried away and run with his cousins. It caught my attention only when they are already in the half of the oval. We were worried if he can make it, it is good that Alham did not left him, he guided Adrian until they finished circling the oval.

On the way to Quezon (October 5, 2007)

Hearing the alarm at around 4am, we woke up and started to get ready for the trip to Quezon. We double check the bags that we had prepared last night if we do not have anymore things left unpacked. Adrian who is still feeling sleepy asked for some toys to be brought. He is looking for his yoyo, but we cannot find where he last put it. He also bargains about bringing the ball but his father would not agree. At the end his Daddy asked him to just bring the helicopter/robot and we will buy yoyo at Quezon.

At around 4:30am I already finished cooking the breakfast. It was just an easy meal, scrambled eggs, hotdogs, and the left over adobo last night.

At 5am, we are all set. Jelmar started the car, but before he stepped on the accelerator, we asked Adrian to lead the prayer.

We have our first stop on Petron station at Dasmariñas town proper to fill-up the gas tank of the car.

At 6am, we already at the south super highway, we are surprised to see that there is already a slow traffic. As we go along, we saw that the cause of the slow traffic is the rehabilitation of the one of the 3 lanes.

We encountered another slow down as we enter Sto Tomas Batangas. Vehicles were only using one lane, because the other lane has many pot holes.

Again, we chose to use the Eme road to cut the travel time.

Our next stop is at Gumaca, we usually stopped there because of the nice view of the bay. Jelmar had to wake up Adrian to see the beautiful of view. We took some pictures and off we go to Petron Gumaca for refill of the gas tank and to use the comfort room.

Exactly 10am, when we arrived at Magsaysay, Lopez. We stopped over at Nanay Edeng’s house (Jelmar’s Grandmother). Luckily there is also Tita Lotlot who is a teacher, she said that they had no classes that day because of the meeting early this morning. We had some chat and snacks. They insist that we eat our lunch there, but we told them that the father of Jelmar already cooked and is expecting us for the lunch.

Around 12nn, we arrived at Sambat, Lopez. Jelmar’s father, a public school teacher has filed a vacation leave for that day while his mother, also teaching in the same school ask her principal to allow her to leave the school early. Inihaw na tilapia and amplaya were served for the lunch.

Another Day at WellCare Clinic (October 4, 2007)

It is my schedule for the ultrasound, we were there at around 9:30 am but unfortunately the doctor for the 10 am is not yet around. It is already 11 am, Jelmar decided to pick-up Adrian and her sister Claire at school. Around 11:30 am when the doctor arrived.

The process lasted for few minutes, but we have to wait for another 5 minutes for the results. When I handed the envelope which contains the result, Jelmar insisted to read it, although we expected that we may not understand the terminology written there.

We saw three remarks there the other two is normal while the one comment says that they found tiny cyst. It made me silent for a while, cyst runs in our family. Mama and Lala previously had a cyst on breast, while Adis had a cyst on her left ovary (which was removed last 2007).

My OB was not around that time so we decide to go home and schedule the visit next week since we will be at Quezon for the next three days.

Almost lunch time, we decided to go to SM Dasmariñas, we ate at Chowking. The next few hours were spent on buying the things we will need on our vacation.

On our way to home, we stopped at Ate’s house, I informed her about the result and she told me not to worry about it because it is still tiny and can be cured through medication.

We also gave the Barbie bag for Kyla that Adis bought from her visit to Hongkong last week. Kyla is very happy with the gift. She is a big fan of Barbie.

John Rossdale

Michelle is one of my childhood friends. She was my classmate since first year high school at Malabon Municipal High School (currently Malabon National High School). We also spent a year together at MCC (Malabon Community College, now City of Malabon University), I taking up Bachelor of Arts, while she is taking up BS Accountancy.

Now we still have something in common; that is a son.

The last time we saw each other was during our class reunion (November 2006), and since then we communicate through e-mail and text messages. She forwarded these photos of her and son John Rossdale.