Snapshots of my Life

I actually need to search information about investing in silver bars but hubby is asking me to look for Grand Canyon tours first as he is planning to have a side trip to Grand Canyon on our three-day stay in Las Vegas.

And I found a great deal for Grand Canyon tour for only $99 per person. They even have a promo of buy 2 tickets and get 1 free which we can avail since our group comprises of 3 adults, 1 child and 1 baby.

The tour already includes:

• Round trip bus ride from Los Angeles to Las Vegas
• 2 nights accommodation at Stratosphere hotel
• Hoover Dam tour
• Grand Canyon Tour
• Outlet store tour

Though I read the reviews and the time is very limited (I read they only spent 15 minutes in Hoover Dam) plus the main language for this tour is Chinese since they cater mostly to the Chinese community.

But it is a great deal already as I checked for bus rides and it will cost us $200 already while this tour will cost us around $400 but it already comes with two nights hotel accommodation.

Decisions. We really have to make decisions soon as we only have less than two months left before our grand vacation.

Last Saturday, we attended the Book Launching of Anne Mimille Guzman at Museong Pambata. You might ask, who is Mimille? She is the daughter of my good friend Annie and she just graduated High School from Philippine High School for the Arts as a full scholar and I know in no time, she will be a multi-awarded book author.

It all started at home when she was still young as she likesto draw and write her own stories. Her parents are the ever supportive parents, providing her with all the materials, training, and support that she needs. They are actually my idol when it comes to raising not just smart, but God fearing kids because they have raised their kids well.

The launching was held at Museong Pambata where Mimille works as a volunteer, helping the organization with their work in spreading the love for books to Filipino children. That is why the entire Museong Pambata staff was proud of her as she launches her first book.

Before the program proper starts, there was also an auction of paintings done by Mimille and some of her friends and the proceeds will go to an orphanage that they are helping.

The book also has a brail version which they are donating to an organization for the blind.

Congrats again to Mimille (and of course to the proud parents Ate Annie and Kuya Emil). We are all proud of you!!

Hubby got out of bed at 2 AM last March 20, 2011 to take a picture of the Super Moon.

The Super Moon is the term that they use to describe a full moon when it is closest to the earth. The distance of the moon to earth is so close that it will be so big when you look at it, thus hubby was able to take a good picture of it (spooky actually, but nice).


They say that this phenomenon is something that we should not look forward to as the effects of the moon to the earth’s ocean is at its greatest during full moon thus it might cause earthquake, tsunami and other natural disasters. (If only it can just suck the fats in my tummy instead of creating these natural disasters, but that is impossible to happen so I really have to read about myoswell reviews to tone up. LOL).

Everybody was really watching out for March 20 as they are scared of these natural disasters after the earthquake and tsunami that happened in Japan. But I am really thankful that nothing happened on that day.

So prayers is still more powerful than the power of Super Moon.

Yehey, I am so happy because my Flickr and Facebook account is updated again with pictures of the latest events in my family.

I need to work on a lot of things last night as I have a deadline to meet but instead, I decided to sort our pictures so I can upload it to Flickr and Facebook.

I have more than 5 albums to sort, resize and upload so I was up until 1 AM to finish all of it. But the eye bags is all worth it as our friends and family rely on my Facebook and Flickr accounts to get updated with what is going on with our life.

Now, all I need to do next is:

• Buy laserjet ink cartridges so I can print these pictures and compile it in an album as most of our pictures are just softcopy with an online backup and we rarely have our pictures printed.
• Blog about these pictures.

Work load is a little light this week, I think, so hopefully I will find the time to blog and print these pictures.

I always wanted to try riding a zip line (though I am not sure if I will have the courage to really do it once I am there). I know there are a number of zip lines in the country but I did not know that there is one which is just a few minutes drive from our place. And that is in the San Miguel Bay in SM Mall of Asia.

We were there this morning and it is only now that I found out that there are a lot of activities to do there. They have a play ground, mini motor cross for rent, segways for rent, walk on water balls, food carts, exercise station and many more.

Among the new attraction in this area is the Zip Line. It was close when we were there this morning as we were there early. I would have wanted to try it out and I think I will be able to do it as the length of the line is not that long and it is not that high.

Hopefully we can go back there again soon.

Looks like I will have to read about hydroxycut reviews after our food trip in Binondo last Tuesday.

My father picked us up from work and he always passed by the Binondo area on our way home and of course we could not pass the opportunity to go food tripping in Binondo.

We first stopped at Mr. Ube shop to buy my favorite Tom Yum soup. I love this soup because it has the right mix of taste – sour and spicy.

Then we dropped by also at Lord Stowe’s store beside Mr. Ube shop and bought their famous egg tart.

My good friend Peachy has been raving about how good this tart is and so I decided to try it out. And boy I did not regret it as it is so delicious. I ate it for my midnight snack, breakfast, dessert for lunch, and I did not stop until the box is empty. LOL.

I will surely drop by Mr. Ube and Lord Stowe next time we are in Binondo.

I am really glad that our small gadget store is booming. In fact we have expanded our line and we not just cell phones and PSP, but we also sell laptops and digital cameras.

But my brother and I realized that our finances has become too complicated for us to handle and in order for us to properly document and account for our capital and earnings, we need to hire bookkeeping Richmond VA to help us.

I have read about Steiner Business Solutions and on how they can help us with our record keeping and financial analysis so we are thinking of getting their service to help us get started with the accounting system of our small business.

For any business, the cash flow should be well accounted for so we will know the financial stand of our business. But we know that this can be a very complicated task for someone who only knows business and has no accounting background. That is why getting experts to help us for this will really be beneficial for the business so we can leave this job to the experts and we can just concentrate on how we can even make our business flourish.

I have been busy these past few weeks as I accepted another work so I am so behind blogs posts and uploading pictures to my Flickr account.

But here is a sneak preview of our celebration last night, to celebrate the 57th birthday of my dear dad and the 9th month birthday of our Jacobo:
As always, my aunt never fails to amaze us with his cooking wonders. She prepared chicken, tempura, pasta, fruit salad, and onion rings. All I have to do is just buy the dessert and the celebration is set.

Almost all our relatives are present to celebrate with us which we are really very thankful for as they witness every important milestone in Jacobo’s life. I will have to make a separate post about Jacobo’s 9th month on his blog when I got the time.

But for now let me great my dad and Jacobo a very Happy Birthday. We love both of you so dearly.

My mom received a call from her aunt yesterday to discuss the last remaining property owned by the family. Our aunt is the last surviving heir as all her siblings already passed away.

She wants to sell the family’s property which is still under the name of their parents. My mom wanted to help her aunt as she knows that her aunt is in deep financial trouble but selling the property is really complicated as it may look that they will really need help with regards to estate management.

Since the property is still under the name of their parents, my mom’s aunt can’t just sell it right away as the property has to be transferred to her name first but we think that the children of our aunt’s siblings has to give their consent too before our aunt can sell the property so we are talking of more than 10 people involve here. Out aunt is actually confused already as to how the proceed that is why we suggested that he better talk to lawyers who are knowledgeable with these types of cases.

Well, we just hope that this will be settled soon so that our aunt can get the money to solve her financial problem.

I had dinner with my SK Batchmates a few weeks ago. It feels good to seem them again as we were able to catch up with each other’s lives after more than three months of not seeing each other.

My SK friends are one of my closest friends. We spent more than a decade of solid friendship and we have seen each other grow from tweens to teens and now almost all of us are married and have our own family.

This means that we really shared a lot of memories. And since our friendship dates back to a decade ago, digital cameras is still not available that time and all those memories were just preserved in film and printed media, which when I checked last time are slowly degrading already.

That is why I am so happy when I discovered the photo scanning service of gophoto.com. I can just send them my pictures and they will do the scanning for me and I can view everything in their online gallery. Having an online gallery makes it easy for those pictures to be shared with my families and friends.

Now I will be assured that all those good memories are safely backed up online.

Last March 2, my niece Izzie celebrated her 5th month birthday:

It was a weekday so we all went straight to my brother’s house for the celebration from work. My sister-in-law and my aunt prepared a lot of food for the occasion. We have buttered shrimp, baked pasta, barbeque, and cake and fruit salad for dessert.

Izzie is so big already. How time really flies. Imagine she can already stand while holding on to something. She is so fun to talk to and play with also as she knows how to respond already. She loves to giggle while her eyes disappear as she smiles. She is really one cute princess. My mom also showed me her video and she knows how to do the “close-open” trick already. I am sure in no time, she and her cousin Jacobo will be busy running after each other as they play.

Happy 5th month birthday again Izzie.

I so envy my friend A. She has been very busy checking out furniture stores for their new house while I on the other hand haven’t started on anything yet, even just checking out Moen faucets for our bath rooms.

We both purchased our dream house and we will be moving in to our new house at the same time. But since I am so busy preparing for the documents needed for the housing loan, and preparing for our upcoming US trip and add to that the preparations for Jacobo’s birthday, I can’t find the time to prepare for our move.

Well actually, I am not sure if we will have a budget left to buy new furniture as I am sure our savings will all go to the purchase of the new house plus the processing fees required by the bank to process our housing loan. So maybe that is why I can’t find the drive to go furniture shopping yet.

But all that matters now is we are finally moving to our dream house (with or without the furniture. LOL). A house that we can really call our own.

Hubby has been very busy these past few weeks as they are moving to their new building. Imagine, he has to manage the movement of all the servers, the switches, the PCs (and there are around 2000 PCs to move) and he has to make sure that network connections are all working after they have moved and installed all their IT equipment.

But in spite of his busy schedule, he is excited in a way for this move as he will finally be able to have his own room (it is about time). So now he can really feel that he is a boss. LOL.

So to surprise him, I have been looking at different ties to buy for him:

I told him that instead of his usual shirt and pants, he should start wearing real office attire like polo shirts with neck tie and slacks so he will really look like a boss. He actually looks very young so he is sometimes mistaken as a junior office staff by new employees so I told him, now that he is going to have his own office in their new building; it is about time that he dresses like a boss.

As I posted on my other blog, we were able to go to Nuvali two weekends ago. Our daughter has been asking us to take her back there as she already miss feeding the koi fish and riding the water taxi in the mad made lagoon there.

So when hubby finally found one weekend free, we decided to skip Jacobo’s Gymboree class and we drive south after lunch to go to Nuvali. It was already 2 PM when we reached Nuvali so I lined up right away to get tickets for the water taxi ride. We were informed that we might have to wait for an hour for our ride as there is a long queue already. So we ate our merienda in our favorite restaurant there, Conti’s while waiting.

On our way to Nuvali, we saw the poster of Racks restaurant which is a newly opened restaurant in Paseo de Sta. Rosa. So after enjoying our water taxi ride, we all went to Paseo for some shopping and then we had dinner at Racks. As always, we had this:

Baby Back Ribs
Pork Ribs
Onion Rack
Corn and carrots, coleslaw and mashed potato for side dish

We were so full after dinner that we don’t have energy left to shop some more so we just decided to drive home.

I was watching the news and was devastated upon hearing an accident in a construction site where a number of workers have been injured. The families of the victims were interviewed and they all worry on how their family can survive now that the head of the family can no longer work.

Dealing with these kinds of tragedy is very traumatic for very family. Imagine the emotional strain that this will bring to the family plus the financial problem that will follow.

Thankfully they can come to an Austin personal injury attorney who can help with all the legal matters to make sure that the victims will get the proper claim that is right for them so they can start rebuilding their lives after the accident. And when it comes to personal injury cases, the lawyers from O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath law firm are the experts so victims will feel secure that they are in good hands.

My dad’s birthday is coming up this 21st of March so as early as now, I am already planning on how we will celebrate it.

Well aside from the Black and Mild cigar that I will buy for him, I am thinking if maybe the whole family can drive a few hours south and go here:

This is actually a new discovery of my good friend Peachy and she shared it with us. She actually hasn’t been here yet but from the pictures that we saw in their site and in their Facebook page, the place looks promising.

This is Stilts Calatagan Beach Resort. What I like about the place is it is like Plantation Bay in Cebu or Pearl Farm in Davao since their cottages are perched on stilts above the water. Each cottage also has a private veranda where you can enjoy the great view of the place which makes you really feel so close to nature (which what my dad and my hubby like). And if you want to jump right into the sea, you can do so by using the wooden stairs leading straight to the sea.

I will give them a call later to see if they still have an available cottage on the weekend of my dad’s birthday so we can give this place a try.

It was a busy week for me so there are times that I have to sleep late to finish all my pending work (though there are times that I sleep late but instead of working, I stayed up late to finish the House MD series that I have on my iPhone. LOL).

And thanks to my favorite Starbucks VIA, which helped me control my sleepiness and so I was able to stay up late to work (and watch). And I am just so lucky because I got my two boxes of Starbucks Via at a discounted price.

I bought a cake for Jacobo’s 8th month birthday and just the perfect timing since they have a buy 1 take 1 promo for their Starbucks Via. So I did not let the opportunity pass and availed of their offer.

Now, I still have one box which I think will last me for the coming week so I can work late again.

My bad. I have a lot of work to do last week but it is only today that I am catching up with all my pending work and so now I am cramming. The culprit: I was able to download the full season five and season six of my favorite TV series, House MD so I spend my late night doing a marathon of this TV series.

Well, I like the show because of Dr. House’s character. He is so rude but is so smart and witty that he can solve even the most complicated medical puzzles (that is how he treats his cases).

Another reason why I love the show is it is in a way educational. Just like last week when they were talking about beta blockers and so I did some research and learned about metoprolol.

My mom has a history of high blood pressure that is why when I learned the different metoprolol uses like it can treat high blood pressure and prevent chest pain, I immediately told my mom about it so she can consult her doctor about this medicine to help my mom better control her high blood pressure.

I have to research about medicare supplement plans as I want to get one for my mom so she will have health coverage so she doesn’t have to worry every time she gets sick. But I can’t concentrate on my research as I am so much pre-occupied reading about this:

Cirque de Soleil is a famous group of circus performers from Canada and they are coming to perform here in Manila for two weeks only from June – July. This is the first time that Cirque de Soleil will be coming to Manila and so we don’t want to miss this chance. But ticket pries are so steep that I am not sure if we will have a budget for this.

Some of my friends already bought tickets during the first day of release and they say that it is the best time to buy as Cirque de Soleil is still offering Early Bird rates. They were able to get good aisle seats so I am so tempted to purchase our tickets also as I know B will enjoy this show.

I better talk to hubby about this. Who knows, he can offer to pay for our tickets. LOL.

My son Jacobo grabs on to anything that he can reach. That is why for the nth time this week, he pulled my DZI bracelet again and the cords just went loose that I have to bring the bracelet to the store for repair.

But I guess hubby and I just loves having a quick trip to Binondo every now and then as we can get to enjoy the best food that Binondo has to offer. Just like last night, we decided to drop by at Mr. Ube to order noodles for take out and this is what we got:

Tom Yang soup and Cod Fish tofu. The cod fish tofu is a tofu with fillings and the fillings taste like sausage so it is just so-so for me. But I love the soup. It is the perfect combination of spicy and sour that I was able to finish one big bowl in one sitting.

I am now reviewing my disability application as I think I will have a heart attack from the stress that one of my tenants is giving me. Well for one he is a delinquent tenant. He pays his rent every two to three months and every time he gives his payment, it always has several hundred bucks deduction because he claims that he did some repair to the house without our permission.

So I told my mom that I would rather just ask them to vacate our apartment and they only have until March to look for another place to stay. But as it turns out, our law is pro-tenant as the Rental Law of 2009 states that we can only ask our tenant to leave if only they fail to pay 3-months worth of rent. Also, we can’t even ask them to leave right away and we have to give them 3-months notice as well.

So my next resort is to increase the rent as we haven’t implemented any increase in the last five years but as it turns out, we can’t increase the rent until 2013 as mandated again by the Rental Law.

So I guess the Rental law that our brilliant congressman has drafted is really pro-lessee and they even support the delinquency of the lessee as they have until 3 months before we can force them to vacate the house.

Oh well, I guess there is nothing that I can do…