Dancing through the years

Here is a video of bits and pieces of ReyMey dancing in school activities through the years starting when he was 3 y/o till last year. Now that this has been put together, you can actually see the improvement .



Yesterday was the first day of school for ReyMey-- new school too. He is in a vertical class 8/10's of 8 to 10 year olds, combined Gr 3 & 4. Not a big class mind you if you saw his last dance in the video, they were 19 in Gr 3. This time he only has eight classmates, . He's been very excited to go to school. I hope this year turns out well for him. :-)

Last wed Jun 13, my paternal aunt & uncle arrived from Hawaii for a month long vacation. Next week my Lola paternal grandmother (92y/o) & another aunt will also come and visit which means my dad's family will be complete for a few days. It's going to be great seeing them all together.

Since I have been poring over pictures this last week, I think it might be a good idea to make a collage :-) I hope I have enough time.

Then last saturday, a very pleasant surprise my sister-in-law who has been in China for almost 3 years now dropped by for a few days enroute to the US. It was really great to see her again & hear of stories first hand instead of at YM. I miss my neices & nephews so much but their life there is far better than if they were to live back here.

The Story of Us in Photos

Part 3 (2003-2005)

This blog is about learning new app's and organizing one's memories. Realizing that I have in one PC 2001-2007 year of digital photos, I have decided to make a slide show.

At first I thought it was easy but my Sanyo Ulead software only saved to a CD or DVD :-) so I can't upload. I can't quite figure out picasa's and combined with windows media player resulted in a low filesize but poor quality output. Bugger this.

Next I tried WinDVD Creator. Seems OK except for the fact that it's not quite editable once projects in place so some photos are not right side up---

So 3 parts done Part 2 (2001-2003) in previous blog. Part 3 (2003-2005) Part 4 (2005-2006).

What about Part 1 (1997-2001)? Now that could be a bit tricky and labor intensive as it's not yet the age of digital camera for me-- short of scanning prints from the albums-- err forget it. It will take a while before Part 1 will be made-- kinda like Star Wars.


Part 4 (2005-2006).

first week of school, immunizations, YM

It had been a distressing week for MaRey in school. One of her good friend and classmate, with his family, figured in a horrible accident in NLEX on their way to Manila from La Union, to send off their son who lives the school dorm in the school. MaRey was first very upset because news was that his friend was also in a critical condition. It turns out his friend was the luckiest as we learned when we visited the hospital monday. The mum died immediately, the dad was badly battered and almost lost his leg and still critical, the sister, she died three days later, never having woken up from being comatose and a cousin had a slight blood clot on his brain. The sister, a college freshman, was a dormate of my niece last year in Baguio. It was just so sad, our thoughts and prayers were with the family the whole week and maybe for a wee bit longer. It will take a while for the family to get healed , we pray that God be with them and help them cope.

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Well that was hard to write. I had a good mind to just skip and delete the whole paragraph, but my daughter, she's a good friend and she was a real trooper sympathizing with her friend...I hope they continue to let the son study in Manila.
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So the second, MeyMey, aside from the fact that she feels unfairly treated as she has no girl classmate from her last year's class and her bones ache from basketball drills of PE-- she seemed all hunky dory.
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Now ReyMey, he asked MeyMey to teach him to login at yahoo messenger and he had been having a blast pestering and harassing his cousins in China and in Marikina with most all the audibles and laughing and posing at the web cam--- grabe those audibles , it's just too much-- hey sexy, you look like my ex GF my dead ex-GF, guffaws etc. It hangs the PC's all-around. Now, I need to find me a cyber nanny.

Last Friday I took him to our pedia as he had mouth sores a week now, turns out he has stomatitis and they gave him mycostatin for it. Since he didn't have any other ills and we were in the doctor anyway... it's immunization time. I asked what jabs needed to be done and he had 2 -- for the pneumonia (flu vaccine) which is yearly and he also got for Meningo. (Lets not forget June 8 '07, repeat after 5 years).

He is also due for a booster MMR. He should have had it years ago but I keep putting it off . I will get it done within the year. ReyMey had the first MMR when he was 15 months, and then all hell broke loose about it causing autism on the internet and then he got diagnosed 7 mos after. To be honest, after the news broke, for succeeding nephews and nieces I begged their parents to delay the shot, give it when they are two (2) and not 15 mos or 18 mos. Mind you I did not ask them to not give, just delay, Measles kills, I had mumps the normal way, I got infected, but complications can be had ... I'm a believer in vaccines, it is needed for everybody's safety. He has also been jabbed for Hepa A and Hepa B and chicken pox vaccines.

It's just that a few years back he really hated injections and screamed and squirmed to high heavens. It's difficult and near impossible to pin down a boy in a state of panic. It started because a few years back, he had a very nasty ear infection that when cultured was positive for aeruginosa psudonomas , very mean bugger, it needed mean antibiotics injected daily. The year after another infection that created a big lump of pus on his arm that needed minor surgery (small incision) for to be drained. Screams like "help, somebody help me", "what are you doing to me, mum help me", "No" -- Hence we had to declare a hiatus with injections until he forgot the trauma. Now he's cool with it he learned in school that immunizations prevent diseases from spreading.

I asked about that HPV jabs for female teenagers that will help prevent ovarian cancer. OMG the pedia said it cost pesos 7000 a jab !!! and I have two girls :-( Very expensive but it needs to be done so I'll start saving for it-- at least I can tell them to delay having sex yet maybe for another year -- yippee.

as for me, I just found out that the backup CD of our digital photos since 2000-2004 was not readable. Ngek! So I resurrected my old Win98 laptop and searched for photos so I can press another CD. The upside of this is that--- my children, they have grown up so beautifully it was a delight to see it all again. So since ReyMey has no piano recital this year owing to family problems of our piano teacher made it impossible, I have decided to do a slideshow of the photos to post on you tube, spanning 7 years.

Mayhaps. :-)

Let's see if this works

of emails, tasks and xavix aerosport

Whew, I'm all sweaty at the moment got to just rest a bit. I did it. I burned 300kcal according to that xavix aerosport game I have. I got it for my birthday 3 weeks ago, I need to slim down and lose weight, so hubby got me a trainer and my trainer is Jackie Chan, sweet. But the real fan of the game is ReyMey, he has been actively using it also to trim down he is very heavy (132 lbs waist 34in) for a 10 year old, so together him & I are cutting down on burgers, fries and fried chickens (re McDo & Jolibee)

Anyway I normally only do about 15-20 mins of the game, beginners, which roughly translates to 150-200 calories -- you ask so why the jump?? I was challenged by ReyMey through an e-mail he sent me that If I did 300kcal he will treat me when we go to Marikin, my folks place later.

Well, ok, I must admit I was surprised... It's almost start of school but he still has a lot of free time so I told him I'll teach him how to use e-mail, and he agreed. So we sat at the PC, showed him how to sign up for an email account in yahoo and got him his very own e-mail--- of course sneaky mum has to know the password :-)

So his first example was to send me an e-mail that says that he has an email and if I could just reply back. I showed him how to save in the address book also. OK that sent, I logged in in the other PC to get my mail, and it was not there yet so I sent him an email and he got that immediately. Then I showed and sent him how to send an e-mail with an attachment-- and he also sent me one.

Next lesson will probably how to use YM . Maybe he's still a bit too young but he if it tickles his fancy....

When I supervised him doing the lessons on Type To Learn 3 by Sunburst Technologies; I downloaded the 30-day trial he was recptive. He did all 25 lessons in 55 days (about 25 mins a day) so what I did was reinstalled another trial in a different computer (as it won't allow reinstall after trial period on the same PC); transferred the database (scores) and reindexed it. Now he can type properly in the correct fingers (all of a sudden he could be a medical transcriptionist) ..... Hahaha why did I not just buy the software--- hahaha no money. I'm skint!

So e-mail, I showed him how to read it and how to reply (difference between to sender and to all) and I said I won't peek and he wrote that and sent it. What was he thinking---maybe this was because this morning I made him do another of the Bond Assessment Paper Tasks (9-10's) for verbal reasoning again, in exchange for a snack and he agreed. Sat down, got to work on paper 9 and asked for help on some items the usual. He even told me he noticed that I already got the next book which was for 10-11's. It was for future stock and use--- I seldom see it on the previously owned section that when I did, I just bought.

So after I reached the marked I ask him what he was going to treat me and he said he will share a glass of the 800ml soda I will treat him. Sweet.

summer in singapore

Singapore for 5 days 4 nights. That was the main highlight of this year. After we went to HongKong last year, (ReyMey's first trip out of the country, it turns out he like travelling. So we promised the children another trip. 12 months of saving at least 15K pesos on the monthly budget plus some more from deep savings and we were off.

Sentosa, and the southern most point nearest the equator, we spent a day there and MaRey & MeyMey finally got a chance to touch a dolphin, a pink one even. We went everywhere, Little India, Chinatown, Lucky 7 Mall, Jurong Bird Park, Night Safari and Singapore Zoo (3in1 tickets).
In sentosa we watched the 4D pirate movie, swam at the beach (not nice waters the philippines has definitely better beaches!) did the aquariums.. a whole day-- next time we go back there we can picnic-- food's expensive but yummy.
OMG I forgot we also went to Snow City, the kids have never seen snow before-- and here in Singapore, near the Science Discovery Center there's Snow City--- and we all went sledding down an incline with cold jackets hats gloves and all--- that would be the family photo when school requests for one. That was fun!

The tram to go aroung jurong bird park.

That would be me taking picture of ReyMey and the Ates took a picture of us.
I liked Singapore, better than HongKong probably. It was a great trip. We'll do it again sometime :-)
Enough pictures (rotfwl)

subic last march

We went to Subic at the beginning of summer, mar 10-11 a delayed birthday celeb of hubby. We were there with my 2 sisters-in-law and their family. So they treated ReyMey to a dolphin encounter-- they children except Marey and MeyMey get to touch.









We also spent the afternoon at the same beach Camayan.













Zoobic that's a zoo in subic with lots of tigers and one of the attractions is you get to feed a whole chicken to the tigers while inside a caged vehicle.















After the beach take a swim at the pool of the resort. Forest Hills. I thinks this is why MaRey got stomachache, she kept doing handstands and tumbles, which led to her appendectomy two days later. (very memorable trip)

last hurrah summer 2007

Subic, Camayan Beach, June 2. What a way to cap off a glorious summer, BBQ at the beach, yum, yum.We started March in Subic, Ocean Adventure (dolphin adventure) and Zoobic adventure (tiger safari) and ended May in Subic with the beach. I'm trying out Google's Picassa in adding pictures to the blog. I just wish it could add more, maybe I should do albums hmmm...



anyway-- there didn't seem to be a lot of pictures as I just chilled. If it were the daughters taking pictures/video it was 'ala Blairwitch', if Reymey taking pictures/video , it's of his face 'ala Mr. Bean the Holiday'.


Wonderful beach, we rented a cabana by the beach and I re-read, HP the Half Blood Prince in preparation for Book 7 this July.












Dad & ReyMey, that 'salbabida' (trucks interior tire) has been giving joy for 4 years now, better than a regular inflatable :-).Digging a 'bath tub' for the brother to wallow in :-) This trip made us realize day trips are fun of course there's a 5 hour drive back & forth involved but it's a great way to de-stress.

So, Monday the first day of the schoolyear 2007-2008 for the girls and I am free to use the PC. ReyMey starts school on the 18th, because new school, new time slot 8:15am - 3:15 pm -- no good schedule for speech and sped during the weekday so Saturdays are fully booked for speech and sped 9-10 at shine then 11am-1pm at speech clinic....no more overnight trips during the weekend but maybe we can squeeze in a day trip every now and then.Definitely a lesser commute for me. Down to 30km a day whereas last year 70 kms daily driving. and the best part I have a 6 1/2 hour waiting time in between pick-ups.... what to do, what to do with precious time, what part-time job could I do? hmmm.... oops my coffee's gone cold. I like this picassa blog this. Gotta go, bye.

some summer photos

So photos, I realize that I don't seriously intend to link to my daughters' multiply site for photos . Those give out way too much personal info and insights. So, let's play with picassa.

Baguio, the place to go to when Manila is so hot in the summer as it it high up the mountains the weather is cool 12C-28C. When we were there, the rains had already started brrr.... the scent of pines was just so relaxing.

Having done this I need to get that ReyMey photo atop a horse from hubby's cellphone. At first he didn't want to go but when he saw everybody was riding he just went with the flow and hopped on one also.

The last photo is mini-golf, first time for all the children and it had been fun and at the same time frustrating for ReyMey. He did not want to take turns and he was being rushed by his younger cousin. We had to be on the lookout that he won't whack the golf club on top of his cousin's head (hahaha) he was swinging at random !! but alls well and ends well topping it off with ice creams and choco-late de batirol (local cacao chocolate drink) -- lovely