i’ve recently had people ask me when i’d start blogging again so thought i’d try to set aside a few minutes a day to do so. there have been lots going on since my last post in january. it’s been an emotional roller coaster ride the past 6 months and i can only hope and pray that the next 6 months contains only good news.

hmmm, what’s been going on the past few months?

- my nephews and nieces turned 2, 4, 6 and 10
- my ex sister in law met someone (so glad to see her happy again)
- mourned the loss of loved ones (too many in a short time)
- experienced some health issues
- went on a few mini vacations and annual family vacays
- my baby “graduated” from kindergarten
- attended a beautiful wedding
- and tons of parties for all ages!

i cannot believe 2009 is almost half over…looking forward to a great summer and rest of the year!

as we get older, some of my friends dread celebrating their birthday…not me! i look at it like…hey, i’m alive another year…woohoo! my 38th birthday (yeah, i know right?) celebration started with an early birthday dinner at this benihana type restaurant in fremont. i had been craving it for some time but the one in cupertino was closed for remodeling.

we were excited to take tobey as we thought he’d be excited and amazed at how the food was cooked right in front of you. we were partially right? hahaha when the chef started off dinner with a huge flame, tobey spent most of the evening leaning far back into his chair and constantly asking him “is there going to be a big fire now?” he eventually relaxed and ate his meal…he loved the chicken and the fried rice! actually, we all loved our food, we’ll be back for sure!

(1) me, tobey, mel right before dinner; (2) mommy and son; (3) our funny chef, lenny

my actual birthday on friday was spent at home, relaxing with hubby and baby. we hadn’t done that in a long while, just stay home and relax…it was really nice. earlier that day, i had lunch with my good friend jenny. coupons at chevy’s…woohoo…i swear were the only ones that seem to appreciate those hahaha!

the next day was another treat for tobey (and us). we decided to go to the state fair! none of us had ever been so we were excited! we thought it would be hot so we weren’t planning on staying very long. we ended up staying a lot longer…just exploring, getting on a few rides, checking out exhibits, etc. no surprise we were all hecka sleepy on the way home. did we rest when we got home? no..hahha we headed over to jenny and robbie’s for dinner and to do some catching up.

(1) one of the car rides tj went on; (2) his 1st win at a basketball game; (3) my little guy in a fire truck - you all know how much i LOVE firemen

then came sunday…BBQ with my side of the familiy! we were celebrating august and september birthdays - there’s 6 of us! hubby did his thing and grilled some yummy BBQ! the family brought pansit (have to have noodles for your bday!), fruits and ice cream cakes for dessert! they ate so much they had to walk it off - so tobey took them for a walk towards his school. the oldies left shortly after the walk while edwin, edison, jenn and joshua stayed to hang out…and play rock band!

(1) grubfest!!!; (2) check out photobombing at its best…can you see ramel?!?; (3) august and september birthday celebrants

our family recently lost our uncle in the PI to a heart attack. it didn’t take long for my mom to decide she needed to go back for her younger brother’s funeral. my grandma and ninang jumped on a plane 2 days after they heard the news and mom followed the day after.

in her absence, we found ourselves trying to figure out who was going to take tobey or his cousin, joshua as she had watched them during work hours and after school. we all worked full time and grandpa did too. even though she was only gone for 1.5 weeks, it made me realize how much our parents do for us! we found ourselves switching our work schedules and trying to figure out how in the world could this work if it were long term? papa pitched in by taking a half day one day to help take care of tobey. jenn and edison changed their work schedules around to stay home with joshie and we ended up having his old preschool take care of tobey for 1 week!

mom is back now and already at work! this woman is amazing! she barely had time to settle down from her trip and is already back to her schedule with tobey and joshua! thank you mama lita and papa bruno! we want you to know how much we appreciate and love you!

my brother edwin is always trying to get me to try new networking sites. first it was friendster…i told him i would never use it and boom, i signed up and started using it. he then suggested myspace and i told him, i’m fine with friendster, i’ll probably never get on myspace. wrong! i found myself using it more! then he’s like, you have to try facebook, you’ll like it! again i said…uh, no thank you, i’m fine but reluctantly signed up.

months later, i find myself on this freakin’ site more often than i would have ever thought…mostly due to reconnections with high school and middle school friends! you try not to get addicted but you can’t help it, it’s like being in touch with all those people that you see around the quad at lunch or break time, those that shared a class with you!

my friend rona isn’t much into networking sites either and i finally got her to sign up for my space. when i forwarded her the request for facebook, she probably deleted it because i never saw her online. we talked a few weeks later and i was telling her about all the people that were popping up from high school. she asked me to send her the link again…hehehe…and the rest is history! we laughed about it on the phone yesterday saying how we find ourselves online more than we’d like! she’s been on it a week so i told her she has a few weeks before she can find herself weaning away from it…hahaha!

the biggest surprise about FB? realizing that a lot of people we know are connected somehow…talk about a small world!!!

man, back in the day, it was either a walk to the 7-eleven, meeting at the mall or a simple phone call that would allow us to catch up with friends. who would have ever thought that “KIT” now means…email me or i’ll catch you online! hahahha

thanks edwin!

this day totally snuck up on me. with tobey starting kindergarten and my uncle passing away, this was the most hectic week. early saturday morning, yes, my butt did wake up at 4:30am to get ready and head down to tourney central. tobey and i slept the whole way down (hehe) and woke up just in time to see neil, ivan and allan driving right beside us with their heads sticking out the windows to get our attention hahahah

for more details on the tourney, check out www.betergolf.com

yeah i know….hahahahha

my friend sent me this email today and it totally just cracked me up knowing what i know about some of my friends…HAHAHAHA!

Proof that Men Have Better Friends…

Friendship among Women:
A woman didn’t come home one night. The next morning
she told her husband that she had slept over at a
friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best
friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among Men:
A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he
told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s
house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends.
Eight confirmed that he had slept over, and two said he was still there.

this past week was busy as usual but not in that hectic way it normally is. it was the kind of busy that i miss, the kind of busy where you actually enjoy the things that you are doing and don’t really feel drained from it.

progress at last! last week i received a text from ramel saying that tobey participated in his taekwondo class without any hesitation. … yay! he had trouble adjusting in the first few classes and thankfully a breakthrough occurred during this last visit. the streak has continued this week as he is now excited to go to class!

the timing was perfect as it coincided with a special trip with his cousins from stockton. venus planned the trip and it started off with us meeting them for lunch. we then headed to micke grove zoo..the kids were soooo excited! the sea lion and monkeys were popular with the 4 cousins! we then headed to fun town (amusement park next door) and spent the afternoon on a few of the rides. tobey’s favorite was the scrambler! the weather was beautiful so we spent some time relaxing by the picnic tables while the kiddos ran around and did relay races..hahaha…great way to tire them out because as soon as we got into the car..BAM…zzzzz city!

it was a pretty relaxing week - work was actually manageable and the week’s activities were enjoyable.

we slept in on saturday, something we hadn’t done in a while. mel woke up at 1030am and i woke up close to noon! we spent saturday lounging around and then started unpacking some boxes..yes, we’re still unpacking! that of course took and is taking forever…ugh!

jump to sunday - a craving for dim sum brought us to san jose where we met up with edwin, edison and jenn. we haven’t had dim sum in a while so we scarfed! a target run followed by a halo-halo run rounded off the afternoon before we headed to see the movie “Wanted”. ok, i’m still recovering from the whole brad-angelina-jennifer thing and didn’t think i’d enjoy it but it was actually pretty good.

omg..the longest week ever started last friday, 6/20 when i received some bad news from one of our closest friends who miscarried. as i listened to her tell me what happened, i could not hold back my own tears. it’s never an easy thing to hear your friends be in pain, even harder to find the words to try and comfort them. all we can say is that perhaps God had a different plan and believe in that.

later that friday afternoon, i drove to tobey’s pre-school graduation..an event i thought was suppose to be on 6/27! where the heck was my momagenda?!!? it was a potluck so i prepared something quick and headed to the school. it was a hot friday, luckily we were inside for the program…then some einstein decided to put all the food outside! wtf..i mean seriously, it was like high 90’s! it was no surprise people grabbed their food and went back into the school to eat! after the program, ramel was going to drive the suv home…uh, not…the car wouldn’t turn on! the battery had died…waaaaaa! so here we were, outside 95 degrees, waiting for the AAA guy to come in 1 hour. luckily it didn’t take him that long and he replaced the battery quickly. thinking we were out of the woods, he left and when hubby started the car, he realized the AC, windows and radio controls DIDN’T WORK!!! we called back the guy he had no idea what happened so we had to drive the car to my parents house! ramel drove it with the windows closed..poor guy..10 minutes in a closed SUV that had been sitting in the sun was ugly! we were going to bring it into the dealership so i made a call…uh, ok so the dealership closed in may 2008 due to bankruptcy! OMG at this point it’s like really…really…who’s playing a joke on us? the car eventually got fixed on monday (we brought it into a AAA garage) - thank goodness it was only a blown fuse!

we then received news on sunday that one of our friends had passed away. he was only 37 years old. we were not sure at the time about what happened but eventually learned he may have passed from a heart attack as he had 85-90% blockage in one of his arteries. as we attended the viewing and the funeral this week, we saw a few faces from high school…faces we hadn’t seen in 20+ years…it’s just so unfortunate that it was through these circumstances that we had this type of reunion. i pray for his family that they will get through this difficult time…RIP Dennis Aquino.

the week started to turn around as tobey attended his first gymnastics class. he did so great! at his trial class last week, his teacher told us that she had the competitive coach check him out as tobey had shown advanced skills than the toddler class we had him enrolled in. we brought him back on wednesday to take a full class with coach paul in his developmental class but when it was time to go to the class, tobey started crying — i think he was a little intimidated. he attended his normal toddlers class then at the last half hour, he got comfy enough to do the last set with the competitive class. as his teacher and i watched him, she told me that although he would be the youngest in that class, it looked like he could hold his own! after class, the coach told us that the spots in his class were by invitation only and that he would like to see if we were interested in putting tobey in his class! he said “tobey’s really strong for his age, has good body control and is very coordinated” …that was nice to hear… (for all you haters out there that roll your eyes when you read the previous line, shame on you - find it in yourselves to be happy for others…) anyways, ramel and i will have to talk to tobey to see what he would like to do!

i also learned this week that another dear friend of ours is prego! sooo excited for her and hubby…it’s about time! i can’t wait to see her as i left before she arrived! congrats to them both!

and then to end this week…we finally got our garage door fixed! when we first moved in our garage door would sometimes keep opening and we would have to stand there for a few minutes before it would stay down. for the longest time, ramel thought it was me not knowing how to press the buttons properly..uh, really wtf? even using the remote, it would happen to me sometimes. when it finally started doing it to ramel, he goes “oh, there’s something wrong with the garage door opener.” …oh you mean it couldn’t be you dude? so we got it checked and when the garage guy arrived this morning, the first words out of his mouth were…”you’re getting a free upgrade on your garage door opener today!” turns out there was a manufacturer’s defect and he’d had to replace at least 20 garages in our community alone! he completely replaced the garage door motor and i am officially relieved!

told ya it was the longest week ever…ups and downs emotionally, i am completely drained. i can’t wait for the weekend!

mother’s day weekend was full of activities! we visited edison, jenn and joshua and spent the afternoon with them on saturday helping out with some of the packing and cleaning. dad, mom and the aunties had done a ton of it so there wasn’t really too much by the time we got there. later that evening we headed over to visit with venus and the rest of ramel’s side. we ended up having dinner there and i swear i had EVERYTHING and then some…i was sooo full! we got home about midnight and you would think i would have gone straight to sleep but i couldn’t. i stayed up until about 2 or 3 am not really doing anything, i just couldn’t sleep.

we left for the south bay the next morning to meet up with my side for a mother’s day brunch. we tried the world gourmet buffet place in fremont. i’m so glad we were early because that place got packed quickly! the food was good, i had mostly seafood so i can’t really attest for the other stuff…hahaha. we hung out the rest of the afternoon at my parents house and then we all split our own ways..the girls to target and the guys to best buy…hahaha

my hubby and my son surprised me with the best gift….a 500GB portable drive..hahhaha…yea, i know i’m weird right? i was sooo happy to receive one because i’d been wanting one for all the pics and digital scrapbooking i’ve been doing. i can’t wait to transfer all my stuff on it!