Happy Mother's Day

Before I greet all the mothers out there I will greet myself first, "happy mother's day to me"...wink! So what wound I say next? Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, expectant mothers, single mothers, and those who are capable of being a mother! You're all the stars this day! Here is my simple card I made for all of us:

Do you have any special plans for today? I told my husband that he must treat me for a dinner (always naman!) and must let me sit whole day doing nothing...LOL! I miss my kids on this day because they are the reason why I called myself a "mother".

Again, let's celebrate this day and remember always the one that gave life to us, the imost mportant person in the world...our mothers. Happy mother's day!

Vince's 10th Birthday

My eldest son, Vince, kept on saying that this year was the most wonderful birthday he had...because we were with him when he celebrated his 10th birthday last April 4th. We missed several birthdays and special occasions of our kids and we really felt sorry for ourselves, as parents.

Looking at my eldest son's eyes, I saw happiness that I missed to see in person for several years. He entered in his two-digit age with all the bloom in his eyes.

We celebrated his birthday at home with his cousins and friends.

He wanted to go for swimming but unfortunately the weather was unpredictable so we decided to celebrate it at home with his cousins and friends. The day ended with all the smile in my child's eyes and I knew he was very happy.

My youngest son, Charles, told us that he also want our presence in his 9th birthday on June 1st but that would be impossible for us so we just told him that on his 10th birthday also we will be there for him.....for good!

At Central Plaza Mall - Daet

I long for this moment, to hang out with kids in the mall. Last April 3 after we attended the 4:30pm mass we went to Central Plaza Mall (Daet). As expected, we had so much fun playing and the kids were so happy.

I was surprised to know that Vince and Charles could play this car race. I thought that they were only interested in rides.





But all of the games they played in the mall, this basketball was the most exciting for them. They were really shouting for excitement and joy which I almost carried away.


...and how happy I am to see the men of my life.


We spent there for hours..eating, playing, laughing, talking. We all went home with a smile.

Back to work, back to online!

Hello there my friends, I’m back to work and I’m back to online!

Whew! Our 10-day vacation in the Phil has over and now we are here again in Taipei. Time flew so fast. To recall, we left Taipei last March 29 at 8pm to catch the flight at 1am. We felt very tired then because we still worked that whole day. But everything was in place for we were very excited of going home to see the kids. At exactly 10pm, we were at the gate waiting to board. Our choice of airline: Cebu Pacific.

At the gate waiting to board (Taoyuan Airport)

Taipei is just two hours travel to reach Manila so before 4am of March30 we finally checked out. My brother-in-law, Fr. Bert (my husband’s brother), picked us up in the airport. We stayed Manila for half day to attend some important matters. After lunch we headed home in Bicol which took 8 hours travel by private car.

We arrived home in Camarines Norte (where my parents are living with our kids) at exactly 10pm. The kids were still awake and excitedly waiting for our arrival. We missed them so much and we didn’t missed any minute hugging and kissing them after a year of not seeing them.

Taken during our visit in Basilica Minore

I will share to you all our happenings during that vacation. I just drop by here to inform everybody that I am alive again. We arrived here in Taipei last Monday around 1am and resumed to work by 9am so we were still almost dead in hangover.

At the gate (NAIA 3 Airport)

My husband, Gerry

I have to refresh my mind and catch up those pending and upcoming deadlines in my work. I am also starting to check my emails and respond as soon as I can. I miss you all here and I can't wait again to visit your blogs to check updates which I truly missed.

Welcome me again, friends!

We will be coming home for a vacation

Two weeks ago, my husband and I had a quick decision for a vacation. Our company granted our 6-day leave at work making it a total of 10 days including two weekends. We will be having our flight going back to PH tomorrow night so we still have whole day tomorrow to finish all pending deadlines at work. We have not yet totally done packing our things so tonight we will finalize them.

Our last visit in the PH was last year (February). So it was almost a year of not seeing the kids in person. We can no longer sleep at night in too much excitement, so with the kids. There are four things which makes me more excited about this homecoming:

1. Will be able to see the kids and be with them even for couple of days only.
2. Our presence will be there as our eldest son celebrate his 10th birthday on April 4.
3. Finally, I can hug my iMAC.
4. At last, we can see and visit our newly constructed house.

For this very limited time of vacation, I will not go online for a while to spend all of our time with our kids. We want to maximize and spend the most quality time for them. This is the main reason why I have to extend the re-publishing of my Dress Up Your Blogs.

In connection with this, I want to inform my dear readers and followers that I will be out starting tomorrow night March 29th until April 10th. You can still send me email but I can’t promise to response in prompt. We will resume for work here in Taipei by April 10th. So today (a day before our flight), look how messy my office table is, showing how rushing I am just to finish everything before I leave:


But I will clean up my table tomorrow night to keep everything in place again. Please pray for us for safe flight because when we arrive in Manila, we still have eight hours to travel by bus just to reach our place in Bicol. We are expecting to reach home by afternoon of March 30. Of course, no matter how far we'd go, it always feels good to be home. Happy trip to us and catch you, guys later!

She made this by hand

Cecille, one of our Filipino friends here in Taipei, handed us a gift last Christmas which she made barely by hands. This young and funny wife of an OFW engineer is such creative when she used the traditional way of sewing to create stuff like this:

She made this super cute mobile case and what drives me crazier is the little foamy girl. And the button is so cute…I am a button collector and love having one in any of my stuff. She’s very good in stitching. It looks professionally made that you could not see any misplaced thread or cranky stitches.

I failed to shout that time this wonderful gift I received from her but I did not failed to give my big thanks with a matching hug to her for this gift. I received two of this which means that I have a reserved one in the future if in case my present one is already overused.

Thanks again, Cecille. It means a lot to me and you make my world more creative. By the way, can you sew dresses for my barbie dolls? They need new outfits. For sure my barbie dolls will be so happy to wear your creations. I tried several times sewing for them but I am not satisfied with my own hand stitch....I am only for cross-stitching**LOL.

What's in my bag?

I want to show you what’s in my bag when going to office daily. I know this could make no sense but I just want to “bagnap” myself and let it reveal to you what’s inside. I took this picture one typical Monday of our ordinary working days. While waiting for my husband, I was encouraged to have a capture on my things inside my bag.

So what are exactly those things inside my bag? To have a closer look, here they are:

My wallet. I always change my wallet to carry but that time this was the wallet I was using.

My keychain. This is the most important stuff that I must not forget to bring otherwise I will be lost. It includes the keys to our apartment (main door and room), key for the chain in my bicycle, key for my office drawer, and importantly this is where I put my daily time-in card in the office.

My mobile phones. I have two cell phones (pretty old models), one for my international roaming and one for my Taiwan number.

My transparent pencil case. This is where my pens, flash drives, camera cable, etc are kept.


My notebook pad. This is where I write my important personal drafts.

My organizer/planner. This is where all my important accounts are listed so I keep it very privately.

My Transcend external drive.

My Sony Cybershot camera

No more, no less. I don’t bring perfumes, I don’t bring cosmetics even hair comb. In the office I just have a hand cream because sometimes my hands have the tendency to feel dry. Those pictures above were taken during the same day at lunch break in my office table.

What about you? What are the things inside your bag?

I want to eat these!

Who likes burger? French fries, or cakes? One weekend we had a walk on a night market here to trip some street foods (yes, I love them). I want to share to you what we have got before we finally reached the place.

The burger...we bought two. One for me and one for my husband. At first I thought they were beef burger but I was wrong.

The yummy cakes....again, must be two (because half is not enough for me).

The french fries...we got only one because it was the best-seller then and almost nothing left but only one.

The hotdog in a bun...we bought only one since the hotdog was jumbo.

The sandwiches...nothing so much to say but I love them although I was looking then for a clubhouse sandwich. We bought two kinds of sandwiches.

We spent half an hour to that peddler on the street before we head up to our final destination. While we were walking, I kept on looking to these foods we bought. And then suddenly I told my husband that I want to keep these foods forever for collection.

So here they are again and I will indeed keep them in my closet:

For sure you have the idea what are those foods. They are one truly cute and amazing food miniatures. If you could only see them in actual, you would feel the desire to own one for yourself, too. For you see how small they are, here is a capture with my mobile phone:

They are so cute, aren't they? My friend said there is a store just across where we live which sells these kind of stuff so definitely one of these days we will be going there and check for more in addition to this collection and I will post them, too when I got new ones..

By the way, they are made of rubber. Thanks for looking!

Our new 32-inch Sony Bravia flat screen TV

Supposedly, I am planning to share this to you two weeks ago but I failed to publish it on time. So now I am super excited to show you our brand new 32-inch Sony Bravia flat screen TV. This is one of our long time obsession to have. Last November 2010, we also bought 24-inch Vizio LCD TV for our room. Now, this 32-inch is for our living room when we go back to the Philippines...sounds exciting right?

For now that we are still here in Taipei, we have to try using it. So calling my technician....! Here is my husband while setting up the TV in our room with our Philips home theater set.

Tada! I feel so in love with our new TV. The screen is so big, has remarkable quality resolution. We trusted the brand Sony when it comes to TV so we decided to pick this model. One of our choices before were Samsung, and Sanyo but we still ended to get the Sony Bravia.

Here is the actual TV on playing my favorite Madagascar on DVD.


Our kids will surely love our new flat screen TV. We informed them about this and they were jumping for joy. Later this year we will be coming home (I guess for good..) and this set will be shipped a month before we leave here.

So anyone of you have Sony Bravia at home? Have you find this model worth to have?