Something "new" is coming!

Hello! How's everybody? As you all know, we had a busy weekend with our guests and just this morning they left to Mississauga. Last Saturday we we're not able to watch the fireworks display because of bad weather. It was raining since afternoon so, we decided to stay in the house. As a tradition here in Montreal, every summer they are hosting a fireworks competition and competitors will present their fireworks every Saturday at 10pm.

While yesterday, we tour around Montreal and visited the St. Joseph Oratory, Notre Dame Basilica, Eaton Center and the Old Port. Although with some rain showers, I'm glad we managed and took some nice shots. Of course we didn't forgot our favorite ice cream at the Old port. I guess I'm now having sore throat because of that. I'll post some of our pictures here later. For now, I'm excited to do something "new". I'm so happy and so glad.. but i will post more about the "new" thing in my life soon. See you around and Happy Monday to all!

I did this lay-out last week and thought of sharing it. ;)
credits:
kring paper, CRenee flowers, claudi flower swirl and leaves, BA zoo alpha and staple, KAagard border and sun, SP_HarvestSpice, journal strip

I feel better!

I'm feeling so much better now. My appointment with CLSC was this afternoon and my ear treatment took only 15 minutes. I'm relieved when the nurse told me that I don't need to come back for another treatment. My hearing is back to normal or should i say it's even better.

Last Sunday, we had a very memorable day with our friends at Granby Zoo. It is such a great place to visit with family and friends. It's not just a zoo but has other attractions like the water park, they have lazy river, water games, children's pool which my daughter enjoyed a lot and their wave pool is said to be the largest in Quebec. Even if you're in the zoo, you can still enjoy the roller coaster ride, monorail, merry-go-round, bump cars and train at the rides park. For younger visitors, they can play at the ball in the jungle camp. Here are some pictures of Elyse while enjoying the water:

This Saturday our friend and his family from Toronto will visit us, so i have to prepare our itinerary for the weekend. It will be another busy weekend but I'm sure we will have fun. Happy Wednesday to all.

I'm back!

It's been a while since I updated this blog. I have been busy with my other blog and i just realized that i have this blog so from now on, I'll be maintaining my two blogs.

Last Sunday, we visited the Granby Zoo here in Quebec. It's an hour drive from our place in Brossard. It's not just a zoo but has lots to offer like the rides park (bump cars, roller coaster, train), water park(their wave pool is largest in Quebec, lazy river, children's pool, water games) and camping sites. For younger visitors they have ball in the jungle camp. The place is really nice! Like us, I'm sure every family will enjoy their stay at Granby. Here are some photos:

Weekend Snapshot at Granby Zoo

With our friends and their families, we visited the Granby Zoo yesterday. Elyse had fun seeing her favorite animals like these flamingos. Like us, hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Happy Monday to all!

Rome on Weekend Snapshot

Good monday morning everyone! Here are some pictures from our trip to Rome, the Vatican and Fontana de Trevi. Happy ws!

Elyse and Quebec city on Father's day!

I have been scouting for daycares around the area and so far i like the Les Canaries and Au Pied de lechelle in Boulevard Rome. Both are subsidized by the government and has a long wait list. It pissed me off that most daycare centers here will let you know that it usually take a year or two before getting a place or will ask you to leave your name and phone number so they can call you once there's a slot available. I was in total panic knowing the situation and I guess I'm still lucky when Au Pied de lechelle in Boulevard Grand Allee finally informed me that they have place for Elyse in the afternoon! I think the time and schedule is best for my little girl since it's her first time to stay in the daycare center. So, this afternoon at 4pm we will visit the place and I hope the place is good for Elyse.

We also enrolled Elyse at Le Petit Gym where she will start her first class this Saturday. I'm sure she will not let the day pass without visiting Funtopia which is just beside the Le Petit Gym. We visited Funtopia last week and she had fun playing with other kids, but most of all her favorite slide is there. Now, she always want to be out in the sun, running around the park, enjoy the water in the pool and swinging all day long!By the way, last father's day we visited Quebec city with some friends here. It was a charming city! We've been to Sainte Anne de Beaupre, Chateau Frontenac, we even rode a cable car going to Mont Morency and watched the cycling competition in the city.

credis: aamorin paper, kskd tape, gunhild storeide frame, chere-kaye wordart.

Ready for summer?

Every summer, it's always fun to go out and explore! And now that summer season is just around the corner, we are also getting ready to go out and visit the Laurentian mountains. We are planning to spend our night there and bring out our tent for camping. We will also bring our goggles so we can enjoy our swimming.

It's just an hour drive from our place where we can enjoy the boat ride while sightseeing. And for our trip we will need binoculars, sunglasses for eye protection and additional memory card for our camera. I got all these from Opticsplanet.com anything I need for our summer camping and swimming are available here. So, i guess our summer will be more fun and exciting!

What to do in Paris?

I'm wanting to write this for quite sometime now but I didn't have enough time. I guess i need to start writing and save it as draft before i forget everything. Here it is:

On our first day, we've visited the Arc de Triomphe along Champs-Elysees avenue. It was of course stunning especially at night, the avenue was the home for shops of well-known designer like Louis Vuitton. It was Sunday when we arrived so it's expected that most shops are closed, I've only seen and remembered Sephora as one of the shops open for business that day.

That same day, we immediately visited the Eiffel tower, a breathtaking piece of art. It was already 9pm but the sun is still up so we looked around Eiffel, tried the ice cream sold at the booth along the way and had diner at Fukoshima, a Japanese resto nearby Eiffel. We ordered beef with cheese and chicken yakitori, miso soup, california maki and rice. The food was delicious! Everything was really good! And the price is very affordable, you can enjoy their set meals from 10 euros.

The second day was reserved for our Disneyland tour, we really enjoyed this part! Elyse was overwhelmed seeing Mickey, Minnie, Sylvester and Pooh! The lively music of the parade lighted up her face and made her dance with her hands swaying in the air just like those mascots. We had our lunch at one of the restos inside the Disney park, with grilled burger, roasted chicken and fries that tasted really good. Sorry but I forgot the name of the resto, now i need to go through our pictures and check it again. The afternoon was more fun when we visited Snow white and the seven dwarfs in their castle. By the train, we got inside the castle! It was really dark inside with bad witch, dragon, snow white and the dwarfs telling stories. It was like a nightmare! I even shut my eyes when bad witch was there! Elyse didn't cried but she is now afraid of "bad witch" and "dragon".

The afternoon parade made the queue for "It's a small world" shorter, so we grabbed the chance while Elyse enjoyed the boat ride and the show a lot. She kept on humming the song right after the show and asked me to sing "It's a small world" while she acted playing the violin. We did stop at the souvenir shop and Elyse didn't wanted to leave without Mickey/Minnie hugable in her hand. We also got a Disney shirt and hat for her. We also wanted to try the carousel ride but we're not patient to wait for an hour so, we just visited the Adventure Island instead and tried the Ice cream along Disneyland park. We bumped with Stitch, Goofy and Pluto along the way so Elyse and daddy had pictures with them.

Around 5pm when we decided to leave the park and headed directly to Fukoshima again, for the second time. After the sumptuous dinner, we're just on time to view the magnificent Eiffel tower at night, so we left to Trocadero for another picture perfect view of Eiffel.

to be continued.. :)

Our new home!

Hi there! It's been a while! I still have problems with my connections so i seldom go through the internet, i can still go online with yahoo messenger but it is simply giving me a headache.

Anyway, we've chosen Brossard as our home here in Quebec, 10 minutes away from our relatives living in Latouche and 20 minutes away from downtown Montreal. It's a very quiet and safe community, accessible in terms of public transportation like bus and metro. It's also a few blocks away from Zellers, Maxi, Wall-Mart, Pharmaprix and even Champlain mall. It's a plus that there's a recreation center in the area which I guess Elyse will enjoy this summer.

We are hoping to get the apartment this June so we can start living in our own. Our relatives here are very helpful and supportive in every way and we are so thankful for knowing them and choosing to stay with them. We initially planned to stay in a rented apartment than staying with relatives, but i believe we made the right choice. I really don't know what will happen to us without their help and advices.

As of now, I'm planning to take a part-time French class but only after finding a good daycare center for Elyse. Good luck to me! I'm not eager to learn the language even if i stayed in a french speaking country before. I'm just fascinated and hopefully be inspired to speak the language.

So that's it for now and i will try to visit your blogs as soon as possible. Thanks again and bonne journee! :)

credits: coralie paper, ljd frame, ssa frame, kskd doodles, tking alpha, misty cato date bits and krystalh cluster

Staying for good!

Hi! guys!!! how's everybody? I hope you all are doing great! Thanks for your comments and tags!!! I still have lots of homeworks to do! :) Anyway, we had a wonderful vacation in Paris and Rome, with some showers in Rome, we still managed to visit the Vatican and Fontana de Trevi. I will post some photos soon, for now here's one, I'm just connecting to a free wifi so i really don't know how long it will work out. ;)

Another good news, the day after we arrived here my husband had his first interview and guess what? he got the job!!!! It was unexpected, we didn't even have SSN number yet.. isn't that great? :D He was first interviewed by HR then the Director and Vice President, after an hour or two, he got the job offer signed right away. That was such a lucky day! :)

So my husband finally decided to stay here for good.. we're now scouting for the best place to stay here in Quebec, currently we're staying in Brossard with relatives and we really love the place.
This is just an update and will post more once we're settled here. Thanks for visiting my site and have a wonderful weekend!

Leaving for a while...

I'm so sorry dear friends and fellow bloggers for not visiting your blogs as often as i used to, I'm just super duper busy.. i hope y'all understand. Thank you for your comments and tags, I'll get back to you as soon as i can. :)

We're all set and just trying to patch up few things right now. Our itineraries for Paris and Rome trip are finally done and just hoping the weather will cooperate with us. Recently, it's cloudy for most part of Europe so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it wouldn't rain. See you all and have a great weekend!

I'm still here...

Yesterday, i had courage to finally start my long delayed plan of decluttering our things from those things we cannot live without.. and of course that would be our clothes. As you know, it's not that easy! i have to segregate the pile of our clothes from "let-it-go" to "love-to-wear".. "let-it-go" must go to the black luggage that we can left behind.. "love-to-wear" will go to the blue luggage that we will definitely wear in Canada including our winter clothes... it seems like we're staying for good huh? hmm... we'll see... ohh and there still one more, our "travel" clothes that should be in our hand carry luggage. I'm not yet done with Elyse's clothes and electronic materials, feeding bottles and sterilizer. Whew!!! I'm just hoping that we will not exceed our baggage limit of 64kg per person / 2 luggages per person except Elyse who is allowed for 10kg only? I'm not sure though, i need to verify this again.

It is also "a must" to keep the house tidy and return the furnitures into it's original places so if ever we decided not to come back, the house owner will not charge us extra for cleaning and fixing. My husband is eager to visit "Ifrane", another city here in Morocco but I'm having second thoughts since we're not yet done with the packing. I want to finish everything so we can enjoy our holiday.

So there you go, that is the main reason why I'm not visible in the blogoshere for the past couple of days and i believe it will continue until we're finally settled in our place. I'll just hop around if i have enough time. Thanks again for visiting and see you around! Have a wonderful week everyone! :)

Travel Update and Award

I just learned that the Raptors didn't made it to the semis, the LA Lakers defeated them four times in a row. It only means we will not be able to watch NBA in Toronto. Sad news for my husband.. anyway his ultimate favorite Dallas Mavericks is also out of the game, the only good thing is we can still watch the F1 race in Montreal on June 8.
Everything seems fine right now, our tickets and hotels we're already booked except for our still cluttered things that may take forever before i finally sit down and take time to relax.

~~~~~~0000~~~~~~

Jody and Abie gave me this rose award, thank you sisters! I would like to share this to all mothers out there. Happy mothers day!

"A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path."

-- Agatha Christie

Weekend Snapshot

Some pictures i got from our visit to Marrakech, Morocco. Their traditional food and religious place. It was such a nice weekend! Have a great week everyone!

Birthday preparation

One month away before my daughter's 2nd birthday and this time we're thinking of celebrating it with the orphanage or give something to C.R.I.B.S foundation. We prefer to celebrate it that way so we can help those infants in need.

As early as now, my birthday girl seems excited to celebrate her birthday. Whenever we're discussing our itineraries, she would sing the "Happy birthday" song for herself. We just booked our flights to Paris and Montreal and as our birthday gift to her, we will bring her to Disneyland in Paris. We're still checking which hotel to stay in Paris, so it's gonna be a busy week for me... not to mention i need to ready our things.
Here are some photos of Elyse having fun with his daddy:

Happy weekend everyone! :)

credits:
fmarini yellow paper, flowers and frame, natalie bird paper and bracket,jeann jeannG wordart, sds flower, coralie flower

Move on!

As day goes by, my husband is getting convinced to stay permanently in Canada than to pursue his career here in Casablanca. At this time, I'm still puzzled because I'm not really sure what will happen in the coming days.

All I know is three weeks from now, we will live in a new place again, meet different kinds of people with own beliefs and culture. It is definitely a whole new world for us, but we know that it is the best for our daughter. Some would raise their eyebrows and say, let's see! or some would say that my daughter will grow up without values compared to those children brought up in the Philippines. As for me, we'll never know... we don't have to be judgmental just because we heard the same stories before. As a mother, I will do something to raise my daughter the way I want. I know it will not be easy. I also heard a lot of horrible stories about immigrating or living abroad but I never had that fear to try. Maybe because I'm an optimistic person and I'm up to challenges.

It's been 7 months since we got our visa and I guess it's enough, we have to move on and start a new life to our new home.

credits:
monika69 alpha, kskd staple and journal, cinnamon designs cardboard paper, sgrimwood flower and frame, cmentz swirl and button

Countdown to last...

Our last week in the Philippines was the busiest! I'm just happy that at least we had time for a massage. It wasn't any better compared to David's Spa and Fitness First. Anyway it was unplanned, we've just finished our shopping at Megamall when we thought of getting a massage and checked the Hollistic Circle, of course we thought the place was nice so we give it a try. The staffs are nice and accommodating but the room was too cold with unpleasant smell, beddings, lighting etc.., the massage was so so, i don't even think it was relaxing.

We also visited the Manila Ocean Park and i believe the place has still a lot of room for improvement. If you can use the flash of your camera in Singapore's Under Water World, you cannot use it in Manila Ocean Park or else you want your camera to be confiscated. And because of that, I'm sorry if our pictures are not properly "lighted".

credits: peta boardman elements and blue paper, banner woman black paper, loriem thankful doodle, awp doodle-licious flower and alpha, coralie element, dco heartdesire frame

Holy Week in the Philippines

I'm too lazy today so I will not post a detailed kwento / story of our Holy Week in the Philippines. :)

Holy Monday: We watched the recital of my sister-in-law at UP Diliman. It was great! Maybe, Elyse thought that it was her concert because she kept on singing along with the orchestra. By the way, we had the following pictures taken across the engineering building. Quite lovely!
Holy Tuesday: We reserved this day for our bank transactions.... with Elyse running around and still forgot to applied for an EON account. Hayyyy....

Holy Wednesday: We went to the mall and bought some things for Elyse and finally watched a tagalog movie, "My Big Love" of course with Elyse! It was her first movie! ha ha ha. I know.. we should not be watching movies on Holy Wednesday. We wanted to watch Horton but wasn't yet shown that time. We are very proud of little Elyse, looks like she's only watching a tv or one of her favorite cd's.

Maundy Thursday: Back to Batangas and organize my mother's birthday party. It is also our family tradition to do the Visita Iglesia, unfortunately we we're trapped in the traffic so we moved it the following day. The usual 2-3 hour drive from Manila to my place became 6 hours.

Good Friday: We visited different churches in my place including the Taal Basilica, an old nice church with a stunning view. We also visited our relatives and loved ones who already passed away.Black Saturday: My mother's birthday celebration which also became a family reunion. We went to the beach in the afternoon and stayed there until morning of Easter Sunday. We had a bad experience staying at A. Santos beach resort. It was a nightmare!
Easter Sunday: Elyse had fun swimming at her mini pool while we enjoyed taking the pictures.

Revisiting Singapore

We had a hassle free flight to Singapore, we're just surprised that the plane was smaller compared to those of Emirates. But then I remember that it was just a 3-hour flight, so no worries. On the other hand the food was great! We took the morning flight of Philippine Airlines and arrived at Singapore around 1:00 p.m. We immediately checked in at Strand Hotel where we are booked for 7 days, their rates are cheaper compared to their neighboring hotels Bayview Hotel and Hotel Rendezvous. Good thing they are nicely located and few steps away from Orchard road, train stations like Dhoby Ghaut, Bugis Junction and City Hall.

We're not happy with the room they gave us, it is smaller than we expected. We asked them to find us a bigger room, sadly no other room is available. They informed us about the available room after 2 days, anyway, I'm no longer interested on transferring to another room that time. What good about most hotels in Singapore are their buffet breakfast. My husband had his training at Hotel Rendezvous and we had a free buffet lunch too. Great isn't it?

From the hotel, we decided to have lunch at Bugis Junction Mall. My husband was keen to try his favorite Fried Prawn Mee, but ended up dissapointed not seeing any resto offering this at Bugis Junction Mall.The place was crowded, so we opted to have lunch at KFC. It was so hot and humid that I'm afraid Elyse will catch a cold or fever due to climate change. After lunch, though I'm hesitant to visit the Jurong Bird's park, I finally agreed to my husband that there's no other time for us to visit the place since it's quite far from our place. While we are at Jurong, waiting for the bus going to the Bird's park, a strong wind and non-stop heavy rain suddenly pours down. Very bad timing, we thought. So, we decided to go back to our hotel and get some rest.

On our second day, Fred has to attend his training while me and Elyse will go out with her Ninang "Ukay" Jocay and Ninong "Iki" Niki, but since morning I was really worried when I found out that Elyse has slight fever. Fred already left for his training, so i called Jocay and Niki about the situation.. They went to the hotel and brought paracetamol, thermometer even grapes and food for us. Thank God for having such nice and wonderful friends, without them, I really don't know how will I survive at that time. Thanks to God that even if Elyse has fever, she didn't acted sick.. i believe that her fever was the effect of climate change, as i'm previously worrying about.

The next day, we went out and visited the underwater world in Sentosa. It was undeniably rainy day again. Elyse was happy to see Nemo and jellyfish, but acted sleeping when she saw shark. She was on her stroller and when she looked up she saw the shark staring at her, since then, whenever asked how shark was, she would do this.

The bad weather ruined our plans, but it didn't stopped us enjoying the delicious food of Singapore including the Fried Prawn Mee at Food Republic in Wisma Atria and Suntec City. Most people I know will say that those Fried Prawn Mee in Wisma Atria was the best, but for me, it was in Suntec City. You should try it! We we're at the most visited Electronics sale at Suntec and we almost got a 32 inch of Samsung LCD TV with home theater (no more stock) and SONY VAIO CR Series in Cosmopolitan Pink or Dove White. My husband was not convinced to get the laptop for so many reasons, so let it be. But we've got this Philips portable DVD for Elyse.

On our last day, we had a chance to go out and shop. There was a kid's fair at Takashimaya that time and I'm lucky to find Dora stuffs and Avent feeding bottles for Elyse. All i can say is we had a wonderful time in Singapore, despite the bad weather.

credits:
singapore /dcorbitt tag
sentosa / lucky luci bracket, dfd stitched alpha, alexa crazy paper
shark/ vanilla hush and cinnamon designs

Birthday and Friends

The day after we arrive in Manila (March 8, Saturday), we went to SM Megamall, met some of our friends and grabbed something for Gelo, Iya, Serenity and Elyse at Toy Kingdom. I can't remember when was the last time I visited Toy Kingdom in Megamall, I was impressed because I never had a hard time finding what I want. I'm sure most kids will enjoy shopping there, including my little Elyse who always want to grab a bike and ball of her choice. Oh I just remember, there was something I wasn't able to find.. the hugable Dora. Months ago, I saw them at Marjane here in Casablanca, but during that time Elyse wasn't yet fond of Dora so we just ignore it, unfortunately, now it's out of stock. Did I mentioned that whenever we are at the toy section, we always offer different kinds of dolls to Elyse? She will hold it for a while but after a minute she will either leave it somewhere or throw it. She love to push a bike and kick / throw balls instead. They said that most toddlers of her age act the same, well, I just hope so.

That same day, we we're invited to attend Gelo's 1st birthday at Mcdonald's San Pedro so Ninang Lea, Dianne (future Ninang? hehehe), Ninang Beth, me, Fred and Elyse met over lunch at Yoshinoya, Megamall. Ninang Lea was with her cute daughter Iya, who just celebrated her 1st birthday last February.

At the party, we enjoyed every bite of our McChicken! :) According to my husband, "It never tasted like this before!" Is it because of super hot and spicy chicken of McDonald's China? not so tasty McChicken of Hong Kong? most of all, McDonald's Casablanca doesn't offer McChicken so, i guess it must be the culprit. McChicken in Manila was so far...the best! We had fun at the party, of course Elyse didn't left without balloons in her hands. She got 3 balloons! We've got to mingle with our friend Shai, mommy of adorable Serenity Rane who is barely 3 months old.

Also, we got this flyer from Imee, our friend and mom of Gelo regarding the properties for sale at San Juan, Batangas. They are developing the place like those in Boracay, and selling condo units / shares at 6,000/sqm, if I'm not mistaken. Quite interesting! The design was exquisite and relaxing.

Around 6:00 p.m. the party was over, we got to go home to prepare for our flight the next day. After the party, we're not able to join them for another get-together-over-coffee. We need to be at the airport at 7:00 a.m. for our flight to Singapore. Ciao!

Have a great weekend everyone!

credits: petitesouris elements, KAw paper, freebiemars_fanette element, maryse vincent alpha, gina maria number, tking alpha