mcdonald’s date with caila

Last week after work, I was craving for a burger (no, I’m not pregnant again, if that’s what you’re thinking). Only Caila wanted to join me in going to the McDonald’s restaurant nearby, so I got the chance to have another date with her...this time, just the two of us. Off we went, her hand in mine as we walked through the sand to the fast-food outlet. While I ordered a McRoyale meal for me and an apple pie for my daughter, Caila settled herself in one of the booths with a jigsaw board that one of the crews gave her.

fulfilling weekend: date with caila

Two Saturdays ago, after Hubby and I had rested from the KFC activity that morning, while Mama, Yaya Juliet and Sophie stayed at home, we took Caila to Deira City Centre for the 6pm Barney Show at Magic Planet. Even though she’s seen Barney mascots dozens of times already, she was still excited. There were so many parents and kids at Magic Planet by the time we arrived, but fortunately, we were able to settle ourselves in a spot with a good view. The show started promptly with a lady making everyone sing ABC and Old McDonald Had a Farm.  After a few minutes, Barney came out and sang a few of his famous songs, making everyone move and sing.

fulfilling weekend: kfc lead assembly

Friday morning we had the activity for the Junior kids of KFC. Saturday morning we had the activity for the Senior kids which was the Lead Assembly with a camping-in theme. And because of the theme, the kids came bringing their mats/sleeping bags/blankets and wearing their comfy pajamas and slippers. And to make the camping complete, popcorn was served!

It was a half-day activity held in 3 rooms of the St. Mary’s Church Mini-hall. Each room had a tent where YFCs would give a talk and the kids were grouped accordingly so that all of them had the chance to listen to each one. The first room had the Praying Tent, the second room had the Loving Tent, and the last had the Serving Tent. As you can probably guess, the objective of the activity was to teach the kids to be a praying, loving, and serving leader.

fulfilling weekend: it takes a man and a woman

Friday afternoon (after having lunch and taking a short rest from the Dubai Terry Fox Run), Hubby and I had a group date at Sahara Centre in Sharjah with some of the other KFC Parent Coordinators of our cluster to watch the most awaited Pinoy movie of that weekend. To avoid the rush, the tickets had already been reserved earlier that week, and that morning, we had all given Tita Madz our payments so she was able to buy the tickets on their way home after the Run.

fulfilling weekend: dubai terry fox run

I have yet to blog about the great dinner we had on Mama’s birthday as I still need to copy the photos taken from my sister. In the meantime, though, let me share with you our busy, yet fulfilling weekend, starting off with the Dubai Terry Fox Run we joined last Friday morning.

As I mentioned in a post a couple of years back, except for a few years in between, I’ve been joining this annual event since my first year Dubai back in 2004. This year, there was no excuse not to join, and since Hubby was the Team Head for this month’s KFC activity, we decided to have this run be the Junior Kids’ activity. So Friday morning found our group of parents, coordinators, SFCs, and kids gathered outside the Toys R Us sign of Dubai Festival City, warming up, getting ready and having our pictures taken.

quakes and shakes

Two strong earthquake tremors in a week. The first was last Wednesday, 10th of April while the second occurred this afternoon.  When I felt the tremor last Wednesday, I originally thought that I was just feeling dizzy. But after I saw the faces on my colleagues’, I knew it wasn’t me. Even though we could see that most of the tenants of our office building were going out, we stayed put. Thankfully, nothing serious happened to any of us.

to the greatest woman i know

Mahal na mahal ka namin!

 

When I gave this to her this morning, she told me "Dapat linagay mo yung age ko."

O ha!  Anong say nyo? Hindi nya ikinakahiya yung edad nya...in fact, pinagmamalaki pa nya =)

I can only pray that I'll be as strong as her and proud of my age as she is when I reach 72 =)



birthday downgrade

Tomorrow is Mama’s 72nd birthday...and to my dismay, I can’t keep my promise to her that we’ll celebrate it with a meal at Burj Al Arab. Actually, money wasn’t the issue because I already had some savings put away for it...well, it is, but because we need to help out some family members, we had to sacrifice and give way to a more needed expense.

Mama understands, though. In fact, when I told her my plan, she said that she didn’t need to have an extravagant dinner to celebrate the occasion. She was content on having a special dinner at home or we’ll just eat out at a regular restaurant. I was the one insisting on a 7-star dinner because this might be her last birthday with us here in Dubai; but when she said that most probably she’ll “extend her contract with us” and spend her birthday here next year, I finally (unwillingly) relented.

I don’t want to celebrate in a restaurant in one of the malls, though. If we can’t have dinner at one of the poshest hotels here, we should at least have a 5-star dinner. After all, Mama deserves nothing less than a first-class birthday meal.

pick-me-upper #2

Last night after getting my new BOSCH KITCHEN MACHINE (yeah!), I was browsing Facebook using Tisoy when I found out that I was one of the winners of a competition from Emirates Parents Plus. The prize was a La Bonita “Pamper Day” Moroccan bath, full body massage, facial, mani and pedi.

image source

After a bummer day last Monday, not to mention the stressful and tiring week I had last week, I so really badly needed pampering, so this was definitely a wonderful surprise.

Imagine, two great things in just a couple of hours! How cool is that?!

pick-me-upper #1

Even though my spirits lifted after reading those bible verses the other day, I still couldn’t help feeling a bit miserable. After all, I’m still human; you can’t expect the feelings of crappiness immediately disappear. The next day (yesterday), I went on with my life as normal and did whatever I needed to do. I was still offended, but I had already accepted the fact that it just wasn’t time to get what I was hoping for. In the afternoon when Hubby fetched me from work, he asked me what the plan (for the rest of the day) was. We didn’t have our regular upper household that night, so our evening was totally free. I just shrugged and said “Wala. Anong plano mo?” To which he asked if I wanted to go to Deira City Centre.

eraserheads reunion concert in dubai

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, Hubby and I were one of the thousands of people who gathered at the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre last Thursday to watch the Eraserheads Reunion Concert. Honestly, I’m not really a fan of the band. Sure I know some of their songs, but that’s it. Same thing with Hubby, although he knows more of their songs than me. And the only band member I know is Ely Buendia; naturally, he’s the singer kasi. So why did we bother to watch? Because we had FREE PASSES! Naturally, if someone offered you free passes to a reunion concert of the Philippines’ version of The Beatles, you’d go, right? What made it better was the passes were for the Platinum area...at the front!

tumpak

About half an hour ago, I was pissed off. I literally wanted to pull my hair, shout, scream and swear all the bad words I know over and over again. For those of you who know me, I very rarely swear. Those words only come out of my mouth when I'm going to explode and I’m really, really angry at something or someone. So, yes, it came to that point. But since I’m at the office, I had to stop myself and control my emotions. Our entire department works in a big room so everyone can see and hear what you do. No good would come out of me making a scene, right? Another option would have been to go to the washroom and lock myself in there for a while, but if I did, my female colleagues would immediately know that something was wrong, and would pester me to tell them what happened.

meeting donna

The day after Easter and on the first day of my stressful workweek (sorry, I just had to mention that) was the same day Donna and I met up. Donna is the winner of my birthday giveaway and the lady behind the blog More Than Meets the Eye.  Days before, we exchanged e-mail messages and agreed to have coffee at Tim Horton’s in Deira City Centre on Monday at 6:45pm. We both arrived promptly (thank goodness!) and our meet-up began from there.

back from a stressful week

Last week was so busy, hectic and stressful! I took a day off in celebration of Easter Sunday, and upon my return to the office on Monday, I was swamped with all sorts of urgent and important things to do...and it went on all throughout the week! Actually, it continued until early this afternoon. The thing is, our company’s financial year begins on the first of April so there were so many reports to finalize and submit, then there were 4 new people who joined on the same day , plus there was the core meeting for the performance evaluations, and then the letters I had to prepare for the employees; add these to my regular tasks that I do on a daily basis, and AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH! I was so busy which is why I didn’t blog at all last week. There were some times when I had a few minutes of break, but when I wanted to blog, all I could think of was "I’M SO STRESSED!" and I couldn’t think of anything else. And when I arrived at home, I just wanted to relax and spend time with my family.