On A Wonderful Day Like Today

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."  -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (quoted from Beth of Mysimplerlife.com) Happy New Year everyone!

Sometimes, God sends us some tests for Him to see if we really, really trust Him. While we felt moved and somewhat a bit troubled, we did trust Him (!!!) and thus, we celebrated my sister's health with a huge banana split! Of course, we did have remorse after finishing it all up and vowed to diet once again. Hahaha. I love you Ate! I wish you a long life of grace and good health.

My recent OB appointment got me at my wit's end about my pregnancy condition. You see, I've been getting pretty high marks for my blood pressure. It's something that I didn't experienced during my first pregnancy so I really don't know what to do. At any rate, I know that God will keep me and the baby safe. In fact, I've already entrusted him/her to St. Joseph for protection. On top of this, I'm doing my own bit of research on toxemia and high blood pressure during pregnancy. I know that I need to be brave (for the baby) and at the same time very obedient to my doctor's orders for things to turn out fine. I'm watching my diet (yes, I'm trying!) and resting more. I guess this means I've got to slow down a bit on the use of the computer (that is, after I look up a thing or two about my proxy settings) and also cut back on the overtime. Thank you in advance for your prayers!

True to tradition in my family, the day before Christmas, we prepared some Christmas give-aways and shiny 5-peso coins for those kids (and parents too) who pass by our house and greet us with a "Merry Christmas po!" on Christmas morning. And although we all know that these people sometimes greet just for the sake of getting something (particularly money), we in our family, nevertheless, take advantage of this day to be a little bit more generous to the others. This year, our loot bag composed of 2 pieces of daladan fruit and a variety of candies. We also handed out some money to the kids. When Zoe is a little older, we hope to be able to instill in her this virtue of charity and the actual experience of sharing your blessings to others. By this, she will live the tradition and hopefully pass it on.

Hi everyone! It's already 2009. Happy New Year to you! It's the first day of the year and I find myself blogging again after a rather long rest from blogging. The house is quiet and it's nice. I could smell something good coming from the kitchen (I wonder what's for breakfast). My hubby is still asleep while Zoe is with her yaya outside so I have the whole first floor to myself. I want sana to write a longer post but then I just realized now that, in a few hours, my relatives will be arriving again and I still haven't cooked a single thing for lunch! So maybe I'll just log in again later tonight when the party's done (oh well, if I'm not too tired). I still have a lot of stories and pictures to post! Meanwhile, I wish you all good health, happiness and love this new year and the years to come!

Don't keep on talking about your health, your family name, your career, your work, or your next step... How annoying this can be! It would seem you have forgotten that you don't have anything, that everything is His. (The Forge, 1050). Enough said.

Being stressed out with financial woes during the past month, I got very interested in the BillsIQ test and as expected, I wasn't so happy with the score that I got. In summary, it is saying that I am currently not saving enough and paying too much interest because of the many debts that I have. That is why I need to consider getting a comprehensive Debt consolidation facility soon or else, I'll be struck with just being with just paying off the monthly minimum payments of my debts. Until I begin to pay majority of my existing debts, I'll never be able have time to save enough for my retirement or for the rainy days. And if I don't have enough savings on my retirement years, it simply means that I might not be able to retire at all. Now who would want not to retire? Nobody can deny that life now is most difficult with all the prices of basic commodities going up and the salaries of people not going up as much. In a way, at least I still can manage our finances. Ever si...

At last I'm feeling so much better today. I've been praying hard that all will fall into place. It's not that bad naman pala. Actually, it's even turning out better than I imagined. To remedy my problem, I decided today to sneak out of the office for a while during lunch time to rush to my gownmaker. I brought along my good friend Riza who's good with people (babaeng bakla kumbaga) to help me with my dilemma. I'm so happy that I did just that because she was able to help me deal with them, get things settled and at the same time, laugh & smile. Hay, you know I realized that I'm still such a worry-wart as before. I've not really changed much. You know, I've been a worry-wart for ages! That's my weakness. For example, I still have vivid memories getting to school when I was grade 3, falling in line for the flag ceremony and then realizing that I forgot to do a Math assignment that day, I end up grappling my bag wanting to have a quick dash on t...

Hi! How did your weekend go? Mine was spent utterly forgetting about our weight game and giving in to the delights of bingeing and home cooking. On Friday night, we dashed to Dampa Julia Vargas for some buttered shrimps and squid. We wanted to spend some time together (just the two of us) so we didn't bother to follow our friend who invited us to drink with him. Hehe. Early Saturday morning, after morning mass with Zoe, my husband and I went to Makro for some meats and other groceries since our stocks were already depleted and the helper claims we don't have any more food to eat for lunch. For the longest time, it has been my Dad who does the weekly marketing (shame on me hehehe). And since he still plans to go to the market on Sunday, we took it upon ourselves to plan the menu for the weekend. First meal was inihaw na liempo. Yummmmmmy! We chanced upon a really good piece of liempo in Makro that turned out super crunchy and delicious when placed in the turbo broiler. On the si...

Eversince we started a family, expenses have been never ending. From the weekly grocery expense to the big utility bills, to be able to sustain a comfortable level of living is definitely not cheap. To be able to make it to the next payday, we sometimes had to resort to using our credit cards and making personal loans. But with the rising interest rates of these credit card companies, we end up spending a lot more that I thought on finance charges and what-not and I know it's not far until we feel the cringe of these charges on our dispensable income. That is, until we find a good solution to this problem of bad credit loans. Being tied to these bad credit credit cards , I am relieved to find out about Bad Credit Offers. They can very much be the answer to our credit problems. They offer valuable information and various assistance for your housing, auto and credit card loans. I'll guess it doesn't hurt to try it out. In fact, this might be the end of our seeminly unending d...

Here's the continuation of my story about the current sales around the Metro. After going around the different shops for kids, I checked out Bayo but sad to say, the clothes there were either have a weird style or were a wrong fit for my body-type as well as my body-size. LOL. Empty-handed, I decided to just head to Rustan's for a quick look-see of the latest stuff there. Haha. Since I was pressed for time, I only got to go around in one floor. I saw their Crocs stuff and was disappointed that they didn't any agreeable colors for their Crocs Malindi. The Havaianas store too was running out of good stocks and sizes. As if to cheer me up, salesguy there told me that brand new stocks will be delivered by tomorrow morning so I can just come back by then. Ha! I guess, it's just not my lucky (shopping-for-myself) day today. Shopping has never been this hard for me. But I guess, that's better since I saved myself any additional credit card swipes and bills to pay! P.S. SM ...

Thanks to Jona, Hailey, Jody, Pat, AidiSan, Tet, Tracy and Jesse (Did I miss out anyone?) on your well-wishes for me to win our Lose 15 and Win 25 contest. Did you know that I actually get dreams (err...more of nightmares?) regarding our deal?! Many times, I just want to drop out from the whole thing and give the 25k cold cash to my hubby. But no!!!! I'm not giving up yet. My aim is to hit the 15 lbs weight loss mark so that I could be more fit and healthier, not to mention more ready to have a second baby soon. I could just hear in my dreams my OB scolding me for not keeping my weight down. That's actually enough motivation for me to continue on. My OB is a very strict doctor, you know. She scolds every time I go to her clinic and I exceed my weight gain limit! LOL. Back to the contest. What did I do on the first week? No, I didn't exercise yet. I was so tired last week from doing the work which needed to be finished before I go on leave for my retreat. Imagine me going ho...

Here are some things I took note of during my 3-day silent retreat: 1. Do not skip doing mental prayer over something that may be more important. All the more you need to prioritize your time for prayer in order to get things done -- and done well. God is the owner of our lives and many times, we tend to short-change Him. 2. "Vale la pena." It is worthwhile. It is worthwhile to give up that certain whim. It is worthwhile to be detached from your opinions. And it is definitely worthwhile to give your whole life to God. 3. There has to be joy in making amends. Thus, I need to live humility without complaining. 4. Lukewarmness is the biggest obstacle in our interior life. Live your life with a premise to improve your situation and not just going with the flow or doing whatever suits you. 5. Learn to fall in love and you will not leave Him. (This one's coming from a great saint.) Ciao for now!!!

Hi everyone! I was in on a 3-day retreat last week and I feel so rejuvenated. Prayed a whole lot and had my little "horns" chopped out a little, or maybe a lot! Well, it's time to face reality again! Now back to work! Bring it on!

Lose 15 lbs and win 25k pesos, that is. I was inspired by the idea from Jacqui who will be getting $1,000 if she loses 15 pounds in 2 months (that's if her husband doesn't lose more pounds than her). Then she can buy whatever she desires. My story naman started one night on our way home from work. My sweetheart and I were discussing possible travel plans for next next month. Our initial plan is really to book a Swingaround promo from PAL for Hongkong for a 5-day vacation. When I said 5 days, whoaaaa, biglang halt ang mga plans. We can't seem to accept that we wouldn't tag the baby along. Given that this is supposed to be like a second honeymoon for us plus a birthday celebration cum shopping of sorts, we're still both feeling very bad about leaving Zoe with the yaya for that long. Anyway, along that line I asked him if instead of going abroad, maybe we can just have a "pustahan". Since we became friends a decade ago, we have been fond of making "pust...

After much reflection and prayer during the Lenten Season, one of the things we can do is to resolve to offer small acts of service and good deeds for others. Jesus has offered us His very life and we, as His followers, should try to live by His example. Doing some kind of service for the others not only benefits the one receiving the kind act but also the person himself. It doesn't have to be something big or fantastic. On the contrary, it can just be a small sacrifice or mortification. It could be giving up a material thing to help the others who would need it more, offering your time to someone who needs assistance, doing a good deed for a brother or sister without them knowing it (tidy up their beds when they are rushing to go to school or to work), smiling to a loved one to lift up their spirits, keeping your opinion to yourself and trying to understand more the others, telling your husband you love him and giving him a hug at the most unexpected moment. As I have been trying ...

NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT. SOON. Someone very very very close to me will be saying " I DO" this May!!! Hush, hush muna about the details. :-) Basta, I gotta look pretty and slim enough to fit in a nice gown by that time. Plus Baby#2 awaits (but not until I gain back my fighting figure daw so tago muna ako from my OB LOL)... Help MEEEH!