Pics with the Kids

As promised here are some pics of the kids . Not exactly at home in these pics but with my sister and Jerry at Eastwood.

Sam imagining the food he'll be seeing on the plate. Yum!

(L-R) Jerry, me, Sam (playing peek-a-boo behind the menu),
Gemmalyn, Silas, Gio

Resting a bit and having dessert before heading home.

Three stooges.

Silas, Gio, Sam and Nana

Blogger's Ability to Post Date Entries

Testing Blogger's newest feature....

wrote this post May 18 08:04

will publish this May 18 20:04.

Glad Blogger has this feature

Amado = Find of the Century

I now qualify for the award of "Find of the Century". Guess who I've spotted? Obvious naman sa title....Amado. Yes Amado Villavicencio. Nope I didn't see him in person but he viewed my profile on Friendster and am now just waiting for him to approve my invite. Need proof? Here's the link to Amado's profile and his pic.

Hey Mads you trying to win Motormouth? ;-)

Joining the PPP Bandwagon

After years and years of resisting the PPP (payperpost) pull I have finally joined the bandwagon. Andrea dn my sister are the mainly the ones who've convinced me that it's profitable enough to join. I promise my dear subscribers though that I wouldn't be flooding this blog with pitchy posts. Will of course be posting more frequently though I'll refrain from posting more than once a day. For those who have been blogging long enough to have a pretty decent page rank I suggest that you also take this opportunity to earn more money. Don't worry about getting spammy. If you have a deep aversion for it you'll probably be able to strike the proper balance between earning enough money and the number of posts. Besides with a good page rank you'll get offers to post stuff for even up to $80 or more making too frequent posts unnecessary.

And guys if you catch me becoming too commercial for your taste please do tell me. Don't want my friends to stop reading my blog just to earn stuff! If you're my friend though you wouldn't mind me trying to make an extra buck. :p

An Extraordinary Experience at X/O Philippines

I've been trying to put off this post till I get some pics to go with it but since I can't find anything about X/O Philippines on the net except for this one Inquirer article I'm posting anyway. If you want to see the food then just visit the place yourself. Sorry!

The last time my sister and I went out and watched a movie/concert together (U2 3D was great btw) we ate at Banana Leaf. The food at Banana Leaf was NOT spectacular nor the service great. We were doubly disappointed after riding the escalator up The Block at SM and saw the cool ambiance of X/O Philippines and wished we'd dined there instead. Anyway a couple of weeks back Mark, Jamuel, Gemma, I and Sam decided to eat out and it truly was an extraordinary experience for me for several reasons:

• The place was really nice. I looooved the chairs...at least on the outside part. The whole ambiance was pretty nice.
• The service was ok. The people were nice and though they didn't have the best service it was passable for a small and new restaurant.
• The food was truly extraordinary. I absolutely loved their take on the kare-kare. Kare-kare is almost always good but usually all you can say about it is that it is good. Their kare-kare was really innovative. All the ingredients was cooked and served separately with the bowl of sauce on the side. Some of the veggies were fried while some were simply either blanched or steamed (not sure which). The pork was the best part with the ribs roasted and spiced with slat and some other stuff I do not know what. It was delicious. The rest of the food was equally good although the tapa tips was a bit too tasty, I guess it was a bit overpowering though only because we didn't eat it with the bread and the buts, which it was supposed to go with (we ordered the appetizer last...LOL). The Bicol express would also satisfy any true Bicolano although you'd better be careful with the sigarilyas (winged beans) because as Jamu found out too late some of the sigarilyas were actually very hot green peppers.
• And last but not the least, the most extraordinary part of the meal for me was that the leg of the chair I was sitting on broke and I fell in slow motion... It wasn't too embarrassing since there was only one other table with people but it still made me lose my appetite...but only for a few minutes. No, I'm not yet that heavy but the leg was already ready to give. We ended up having one free dessert (yummy buko pandan) but as my sister pointed out I ended up spending more for the BENGAY I needed to ease the muscle pain the next day. Hmmm. Should have asked for BENGAY instead of dessert. If anyone asks me though I'm willing to go back to try their other dishes though I fell flat on my butt and all that, which says a lot about how much I enjoyed the food.
  

I Love Having 3 Kids

They're quite a handful and I have to countdown several times a day to get them to do what I want but I'm loving having 3 boys at home (5 if you count Mark and Jamuel). Sam seems to be having a grand time with all the kuyas (titos in truth) showering him attention as well and has been picking up on Silas' and Gio's fights so that he likes to scream and throw mini-tantrums every now and then. Since he's too well behaved I'm actually happy that he can now communicate his unhappiness. Mark and I are also love seeing Sam's cute face scrunch up when he's about to cry after being scolded a little. Haha. Ang sarap magpaiyak ng bata. It's all we can do to resist toying with his emotions. Truthfully we would if it wouldn't have a long lasting negative effect on Sam. But that is not a good thing so we refrain from doing it. Plus we're pretty sure his lolo and lolas will give us hell if they find out. Bad bad parents! I now understand why Luz and her sibs love to make her niece cry. ^_^

Will be posting pics of the three kids together once my sister uploads yesterdays pics.

We Heart Tito Lito

My Tito Lito just had an angiogram which showed the doctor that he has 5 clogged veins/arteries. He needs to have an angioplasty as soon as possible but they're still going out of the hospital to raise money. They only need a deposit of 100K to be admitted at the Heart Center although they need around 1M to cover the entire operation. BTW they do have a health card but it's already maxed out. If you can help, or know of anyone who can, please do contact me.

Tito Lito is Silas' true dad. All my close friends know about their weird family set up between us and the Carpios. Silas is counted as a real bunso of both families. Tito Lito is one of the kindest and mild tempered person in the whole world. He's so nice that he always gets teased as being "under the saya." I've NEVER heard him raise his voice in his whole life except when he's announcing something on the mike during church services though I have seen him irritated several times. I don't want to spill all their family anecdotes over the internet but suffice to say that when he gets mad he just keeps quiet and after a few minutes comes back with eggplants from the veggies section of the grocery and tells my Tita Ni, "Heto love oh...kumuha na ako ng talong."

Right now the two kids are staying with me. They're having a grand time but Gio, who's going to high school understand what this means more than Silas does. I know his mom doesn't want to burden him but I had to tell him not to ask for his money with his mom because I know how little they have right now. He's lying down on the bed right now pretending to be asleep but I know he's trying to be brave not only because his dad is sick but because he knows this probably means he won't be able to go back to his old school come June. I'm proud that he's starting to understand how it is to be responsible and how he can help his parents by not being a crybaby at the same time it breaks my heart to seem him at this point which will help define him as an emerging adult. It sucks to grow up sometimes.

Please please please God let him be alright.