Goodbye Summer 2011

It has been raining on and off for a full week now. I know the local weather bureau announced that the rainy season's finally started but it was only yesterday that it finally dawned on me. Summer is over.

When I was younger, I looked forward to summer because it meant a respite from schoolwork, albeit a brief one. Then college came, it meant I can finally bond with my sisters or enjoy an idyllic moment under a tree in our backyard with a good book in hand.

For sometime though after leaving college and moving on to become a 'responsible' citizen, I temporarily forgot how wonderful that time of the year was. I was thrown into a battery of paperwork and deadlines. Vacations were scheduled and they never fell on summer. So I forgot. How wonderful it was.

Fast forward to today. I am starting to relive that wonderful period in my life again. The last 2 summers saw us coming home to my amazing hometown to enjoy the beach. Those vacations left such wonderful memories on our little girl that she would rave of them for days...sometimes even stretching to weeks.

So anyway, till then Summer! And as our morning prayers would start these days: Thank you God for the rain for the plants surely welcome them! :))

Sharing some photos from those last two summers we spent with Maia. I keep going back to these photo sets because they always make me feel happy!

Apr 2010. Maia enjoying a walk at a beach resort in Guimaras (and hating Mommy for playing paparazzi the entire time)

Apr 2010. Maia and Daddy having so much fun playing with the waves

Apr 2011. Lovely silhouette of Maia, me and my dad 

20 Bands I Love

Taking cue from a college friend who posted the list of 20 bands she loves yesterday, I was 'inspired' to create my own. Here goes (in no particular order):

1. Foo Fighters
2. Snow Patrol
3. Pearl Jam
4. Eraserheads
5. Smashing Pumpkins
6. Counting Crows
7. Lifehouse
8. Imago
9. Lemonheads
10. Snow Patrol
11. Gin Blossoms
12. Teenage Fanclub
13. Toad the Wet Sprocket
14. Sugarfree
15. The Script
16. Jars of Clay
17. U2
18. Soul Asylum
19. Weezer
20. Oasis

I almost had the same bands on my friend's list. See how majority of our list are from the 90's. Does that giveaway our age? I personally think though that the 90's saw the most wonderful musicians of our time flourish. Sadly, half of them have either disbanded or gone solo.

Celebrating Mother's Day at Home

I initially planned on doing another letter to Maia post for mother's day because after all, she was the reason why I get to call that day MY day along with many other awesome, hardworking moms out there. But then the weather yesterday just did not allow me to get my little quiet time as I'd hope to so lemme just share with you how we celebrated mother's day yesterday.

We slept in till around 8 am which was already late considering we normally start our weekend mornings at 6-630. Then, I prepared a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs for our family of 3. Maia was not used to eating processed meat so she never got around to finishing her piece of the bacon but devoured the eggs and asked for a second helping even.

After breakfast we waited till the daddy of the house finished watching the nba playoffs then we started our main activity for the day which was storytelling and tadahhhhh - arts and crafts! I finally got the go from the big boss to buy some art supplies the day before so when I got the supplies out Maia was just so excited for us to start with the activity. I guess though arts and crafts is not really me because Maia got easily bored with us cutting and tying the japanese papers to make them into flowers and butterflies. So what I did was I got this art set (it was a gift to her a couple of Christmases ago) out and taped a couple of scratch papers unto the floor and her table and voila! - the little girl was immediately smitten by the brush and the pens! She stayed quiet for the rest of the day moving from one paper to another. By the time we tidied up we had a bunch of finished paintings from the little boss. I had to restrain myself from keeping all the junk because they really all looked so artsy I wanted to keep all of them!

The Big Boss and I also planned for a date night (we haven't been out for ages already! and we were saving time for this day) but in the end never left the house because we were just too lazy and never got around to changing out of our pajamas.

Half of our plans did not push through but I was happy of how we end up celebrating my day. It was a simple one but that was exactly how I wanted to do it - home cooked meal, sweets for meryenda, some siesta and bonding time with Maia in between. The little boss was just as happy to have us all to herself the entire day!

How and where did you celebrate mother's day?