Five-Day Manila List

Seven days to go before we fly to Manila to spend quality time with family, whom we miss so much.  It's also a rare time for us to do things we miss and go to places we miss and eat the stuff we miss...... so I figured we have to make a list to maximize our five days!

In no particular order, here is a random list I came up with: 

1.   Celebrate Tita Lisa's, Tito Chito's, little Mela's and my Mama's birthdays. This means lunches or dinners or just simply quality time.

2.  Spend time with the babies: 3yr old Mela, 2 yr old Bea, 1 yr old Ina, and little 9mo. old Jacob!

3.  Cook a healthy dinner for my beloved mother.

 
   Been a while since I last whipped up something and if time permits, bake some squash bread! 

4.  Go to a mall and get some oil control film.

6.  Watch a movie in a movie house.  This is what we REALLY MISS DOING.

            I hope Despicable Me will still be showing when we get there.

7.  Visit Powerbooks or Fully Booked.

8.  Bring Nacho to his beloved Gymboree.

9.  Let Elise climb, slide and enjoy the rides in Fun Ranch.

10.  Try to resurrect my Sony Ericsson phone of two years.  It just did not turn on one day.  I take most of my photos with this phone's 5 megapixel camera to document our evolving life here.  It reads documents and spreadsheets, and the WiFi feature is very handy for me, who needs to connect with the world outside the island... I can listen to the radio and my play lists and.....aaaargh! If it is truly dead, I will be heartbroken.

11.  Get some Li'l Hands washable markers, lots of them!  The ink on ours is running out, and am already throwing them out one by one. 

12.  And of course, visit Papa's grave and say hello as often as I can while we are there...

Cannot wait to go home to our loved ones as we sleep in and brunch, play Nintendo Wii, sing our vocal chords out on videoke marathons and enjoy comforting home-cooked meals. 

Countdown starts today!

Home Alone For Five Days and Five Nights

Rene took the evening flight out to Manila a few minutes ago.  He will be back Saturday evening and we planned in advance that the kids and I would pick him up from the airport when he comes back and have dinner out.  It feels very strange that we are here at his workplace, and he is going home to our house in Manila without us there.  Elise even had a short, but intensely emotional episode about missing him this week and not feeling "right" about it.  Nacho just looked deep into my eyes and spoke almost without opening his mouth,"I miss him." Then looked down and continued playing with his cars.

I wore the kids out today swimming and running around so they will be able to sleep by 8:30 P.M. Usually, they get sleepy around 9:00 P.M., but that's the time their father comes back from work.  So when they see him, it's playtime again!  So, this week, it's lights out by 8:30 P.M.   I just read today that kids need 11.5 hours of sleep a day until about 12 years old.  If they doze off during car trips or are hyperactive during bedtime, they are sleep-deprived! Nacho shut his eyes at 8:00 P.M., but Ana fell asleep at 10:00 P.M., after calling Daddy to say goodnight.


Meanwhile, we'll be very busy this week so we won't feel Rene's absence.

1. Make an appointment for next week to view the nice new lot in Baker's Hill 
2. Plan summer activities for kids - ask around if any of the schools we visited has swimming, art, dance or martial arts classes for Elise and Nacho for the summer
3. Map out some extra income plans for the next three months and show Rene when he gets back
4. Finish Elise's 4th quarter lessons and review for her exams next week
5. Sort out clothes in cabinets, mend broken ones and send overgrown ones to little cousins

Long, long week that would probably pass by so quickly, good luck to us!

Our List of What We Have To Do in Our Lifetime

Elise and I were talking over dinner about how many years we have left with each other if Rene and I live until 80 years old.   We computed another fifty years.  I was trying to make her feel better because she keeps on talking about her fear of being left behind after everyone else dies. She asked me to promise her that when I die, I must tell God to immediately please take her, Nacho and our relatives who are still alive in their sleep right after so we can all be together.

The four of us made a list of all the things that we have to do together while the four of us are still alive.

1.  Travel to China, U.S.A., Japan, Australia, France, Rome, Mexico, Prague
2.  Put up a restaurant.
3.  Go to a forest and camp out with fires, tents, and eat fried eggs from a bird's nest (seriously?)
4.  Write eleven books about: Palawan, new (original) fairy tales, horror stories.
5.  Ride a helicopter.
6.  Do the Disneyland-Universal Studios-Epcot Center thing.
7.  Sail a boat.
8.  Live in three other different countries.
9.  Visit waterfalls.
10.  Visit lighthouses.

11.  Little Nacho wants to find buried treasure... at the beach... using his Adventure Set.

Kinda morbid, isn't it?  I have to figure out how to console Elise some more. Maybe find a simple way to explain the afterlife? 

This is Our List for now, but will add on to it occasionally and meanwhile try to schedule everything in the next fifty years.