A late Happy New Year Greetings to all! Wow, I can't believe it has been that long since I last published a post on this blog. My last blog post was from September of last year 2010 and it's a little disappointing that it took me this long to even remember that I still have a blog waiting for my new posts. 

Anyhow, life has been so good and even with the challenges life threw at me last year, I still managed to move on with the help of my family and friends. 

My father  passed away last year and it was one of the hardest thing to ever accept. He had been such a great father to us, his kids, and it is so sad to think that he passed away without even seeing his only grandson. I feel terrible for not being able to help my Dad out and just make him feel like it's my turn already to take care of them.

Growing up, my dad had such a hard life anyone could ever imagine. He was an illegitimate child who moved from place to place under the custody of different relatives. He never experienced the feeling of having a mom or dad. His dad is still around but he just didn't care much about him when he was little that's why he's always been under the care of either his aunt, grandma or uncle. At a young age, my dad started working and actually managed to provide for his self and his family. So, I can really say that my father was such a great provider and I greatly appreciate him so much for that which is now so sad because, I was not  able to say, nor show that huge appreciation for him because he's  gone.

I know that wherever my dad is right now, he is proud of where I am at and what I have achieved in life so far. And, to show him my gratitude even when he's not around anymore, I'll do my best to take care of the family he left behind. 

To Papa, Thank you so much for everything. I wouldn't be here in this world without you. I'm sorry if I was not there when you needed me. I do love you so much and you will always be in my heart and in the hearts of everyone who loves you especially Mama. May you rest in peace...

I love Sales!!! I guess right now my closet is a little too full already with clothes I got on sale.I actually don't consider myself a huge shopper or  a shopaholic because I'm just really not but, I do buy clothes I don't need as long as they are on sale:).

Now is the best time to shop for stuffs you want or need for a big discounted price. Other than the holiday sales, stores are also getting rid of  stuffs from last season. Winter is coming you know, that's why summer stuff prices are now ranging from 2-6 dollars which is really good.

Right now, I have been looking around for more stuffs for Eben as he is now a growing kid. The children's place is a great store too if you want kids clothings but they are still a bit pricey in terms of their sale. There are times that you get lucky to catch a great sale in that store but most of the time, even if they put a huge Big Sale poster at the front side of the store, the prices are still  too high for an on sale item.

As I sat here in front of my computer looking at my blog, it's surprising to see how far behind I am on my posts. Never did I know that it's been a while already since the last time I posted something on here. It's amazing how time flies by too fast without you even knowing it. I always feel bad everytime I have a couple of postless months because,  I really want to keep up with my blog as much as possible.

Blogging, as I have mentioned before, is one of the things I really enjoy doing especially on my boring hour/s. I guess, I'm not bored lately huh, to have not written any posts since last month. Well, my excuse for that I think would be, as a mother, life is always busy that sometimes I don't have much time to spare even for my own self.

Anyways, for the update, I have been working on my baby's scrapbook for three days now. I started working on it when he was still a newborn baby but it suddenly stopped for a while due to some of my irrelevant reasons and one of them is just being lazy.. Now, I am motivated to finish it because my baby even had his first birthday already. So, if I'll add everything up from the time I started the scrapbook until now, then I really have a lot of catching ups to do. Now, back to my scrapbooking...

My husband just bought an iPad and that gave me a chance to mess with it. iPad is a bigger style of the iPhone although it's not a phone really. It's more like a laptop but still different basically because it's  a tablet computer. There are a lot of cool things about iPad that people like. What I like most about it is the iBook. There's a lot of books that you can download for free and to think that even the not free ones are still cheaper than the books at the bookstore. Although it's great but I think Apple needs to update it a little bit where we can bookmark the last page we read.

The one we have is a 3g one and I love it. It is so handy like anywhere we go, we could always get online and that's what I would call hassle free. I have this laptop which I carry all the time when I go to malls or coffeeshops, or even when we're just driving somewhere and the really annoying thing about it is that, especially when we're at a place where there's no wifi, we still had to plug in our at&t wireless usb to the laptop and turn it on and wait for it to get a signal. Most of the time, it doesn't really get good signals which makes it frustrating.

So anyways, today is the fifth day since we bought the iPad. So far, it's great. I enjoy downloading free cool apps like that one app that my son really liked a lot. It is a great educational app which is good for my 16 months old toddler. He likes it a lot that he spents more time messing with the iPad than us.

That's it! I am so happy with this iPad. Actually, we were gonna get the cord that will connect the iPad to the TV so we can watch movies anytime we want. If I hadn't mention yet, you can now rent and watch movies from iTunes or Netflix in your iPad. It is way better than keep going back and forth to the movie stores to get them.

You can get the iPad that you want at your local Apple Stores or online but we got ours from our local Apple Store. Due to the overwhelming demand of this product, they ran out of stock at the store and we had to make a reservation which took them like a week to send us an e-mail saying that our iPad was ready. But, everything's good. We now got our iPad and we really like it a lot.

There's a saying that goes "A Mother's job has no end" and it's true. Being a mother myself, the hardships that you'll have to go through motherhood is endless. There are times that you get frustrated about things and you feel like there's nobody who could help you with it. That's how hard it is but on the other side of it, there's that unexplainable joy that you feel every time you hear your baby's laughter. 

Never had I thought I'd become a mother. When I was little, I used to be this stubborn kid who doesn't even listen to what my mom says. There were times when my mom would call me for lunch or dinner and I am still outside playing with my friends. Even though I know that she was calling for me but I was playing deaf as if I didn't hear her loudly yelling for my name. My friends would even sometimes push me in our house so that my mom wouldn't get mad at them too. A lot of times, I could tell that my mom was getting tired of our stubbornness. There were times at night that she'd cry  in silence. Back then, I didn't have any idea how hard it is to raise kids. It took me a long time to realize that my mom had suffered and given up a lot just for us. Then, I got pregnant and gave birth to Eben. 

As a first time mother, I felt helpless even though my husband was always there to help me out. Sometimes I wake up in a nightmare. I was clueless as to why I am more afraid to get hurt now than before. I was always afraid about my child getting sick and this and that... Then finally, I got to talk to my mom and asked her questions about motherhood. She assured me that everything I felt was normal and that one day soon I will get over it and yes I did. My journey through motherhood became easy and I felt good about finally having my own child to cuddle and play with.

This experience made me appreciate my mom even more. This also helped me realize that you wouldn't know how hard it is to be a mother until you become one. 

English is the second language spoken in the Philippines but I know a lot of people who are not fluent with it including myself. This has always been my problem eversince and my everyday living here in America is like a stepping stone to my improvements. I believe that I have improved a little bit already though. Most Americans here that I met now can already understand what I'm talking about compared to when I first got here where almost everybody keep telling me to repeat everything I say because they can barely understand a word that comes from me. 

Everytime we go to the Philippines, I am always the translator because there's nobody in my family who speaks English even my sister who is a high school graduate and my brother. They can understand the language but they are too bashful to even say a word. So, I always end up being the translator because my husband doesn't know any filipino either. Once in a while I teach him some words but most of the time he only remembers the words that are kinda explicit:). I wonder if it's always that way with people trying to learn a different language. They only remember something that they can't even use verbally in their everyday lives but rather mentally. 

I know that I have a lot of grammar errors and typos in my posts here on my blog but nobody's perfect you know. At least, I am doing my best. I have told a friend once that writing is not just all about perfecting the grammars in a story. It doesn't even have to be a perfect story as long as the readers could understand and get what you are writing about because in this bloggers world, perfect literacy is not necessary.

Yesterday, we took a trip to Denver just to get out of the house because we have been stuck in our house lately. The weather hasn't been nice this past few weeks so when finally it started getting sunny outside, we took advantage of it. We drove down to Denver and visit the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It was Eben's first time in a Museum too. 

Denver Museum is just like any other museum that I've been to although it's a little bigger but everything is just the same. Having said that, we enjoyed it a lot especially looking at Eben's reactions to these stuffed  animals. Also, the weather was really nice so it's really worth going out of the house to take a break being stuck in it.

I also feel so blessed these days because I met a couple of friends. The first one is a girl who is still in the Philippines but is already on her way here in the US. I met her on the internet and I am excited to meet her in person when she gets here. The other girl is from Denver Colorado. Like most of my friends, she's also married to an American guy. They were nice people and I hope that we'll get together again one day. 

When you are in this foreign country, it's always nice to meet people from your own country so you won't have to feel homesick. Although, I am and will always be happy with my husband and my  baby and my husband's family around but I guess it would still be different when you got friends to talk to using your own language. I do have friends here in the US but they live in different states and we just kinda communicate with each other once in a while and mostly just on facebook. Speaking of my husband's family, they are so great because they're all so nice to me and I love them so much.