Christmas might be for kids but I sure have my share of presents for the holiday season. Besides the stuff that I bought for myself this Christmas, the real surprise was the gifts from my dear hubby. There's actually a funny story behind all our gift-givings. A week before Christmas, I felt so sad and disappointed because I never saw Jeff shopping gifts for me. For two weeks, we went to the mall together and grab gifts for us and for family and friends but I never saw him carry shopping bags so I assumed that he didn't shop at all. I told him that I was disappointed with him and emotionally abuse him one night in bed because of this reason. He didn't say a word. I mean he could have pointed out that he got me something weeks before but he was just too sneaky and very good in keeping surprises but he chose to stay quiet, just let me pour out my baseless accusations and offer a hanky to wipe away my tears. At the back of his mind he thought, I would be greatly surprised when Christmas comes. Yes, he's right! I never thought he got this GUESS purse that I was eyeing for weeks. The best part of all is the WII Sports game console that he gave me. I get to play Super Mario Galaxy. There are stages in the game that's hard to figure out but it was fun though. I love my WII. The remote controller was the best part of it since it's different and easy to use. The WII itself is small so I just set it below our tv stand so I don't have to move it every now and then. Thanks to My Loving Santa for granting all my wishes this Christmas.

A new Guess purse

Snow boots from sister

WII video game console

I could not believe it! My Google page rank went from 1 to 2! I mean this is good news, right? I'm just a little skeptical because the PR checker on my site still shows PR1 but when I logged into PPP today and check out the status of my blog, it's showing PR2. Yeheey! I'd like to believe PPP is more accurate than my PR checker, hehehe! I actually get opportunities that require PR2 rankings so probably this is for real. Thank you to whoever it is that's updating the rankings. Happy New Year!!!

My nephew, Brennan is one of the lucky kids in this world that's showered with love and gifts on Christmas. My sister and BIL gave him not just one but dozens of toys on this special day. When me and sister were kids, we were never this fortunate when it comes to receiving gifts on special occasions. We didn't take it against our parents though 'coz we understand that our parents' priority is to have food on the table. That's why my sister wants her son to enjoy the things that we were not given the chance to enjoy when we were still kids. One lucky kid! He got a teddy bear which he specifically requests from Santa, a RC dinosaur, a RC helicopter, a toy laptop, a dancing Wubbzy, a Cars-inspired study table, a RC tank, and educational books which he just tossed in the corner after opening it, hehehe. Christmas is sure happy for Bren because Santa came and left gifts for him.

As I've shared in my previous posts, we spent our Christmas at my sister's place in Illinois. We had a great time despite the bad weather all throughout the drive up north. Besides the food, opening up gifts on Christmas Day is what makes us all excited. They say Christmas is for kids, so my sister and her husband made sure that Brennan, my nephew will get a lot of toys on Christmas Day. He only asked for a big teddy bear though, but they gave me him that and more and I can really see the excitement on his eyes when he was opening them. The photo below is taken at Jingle's (sis) house.

I apologize to my readers who had been visiting my page but didn't find an update for quite a while. We were supposed to drive back to Arkansas on Saturday but the weather was sooo bad and hubby had colds, so we had to stay an extra day in Illinois. We didn't mind it though, because my sister and BIL were both nice and accommodating. My sister is a good cook, she always cooks nice meals for me and hubby. We had a great time bonding with my cute and tisoy nephew as well. I'm going to share photos of us for the trip when we get back home. Right now, we're 5 hours away from Ozark, Jeff is still asleep and I'm blogging using the hotel's WiFi connection again. I appreciate the fact that I have a laptop and that WiFi is almost always available in hotels and travel centers. I wish I had the luxury of time to do my Entrecard dropping but obviously, I did not so please please bear with me. I'll visit your blogs again as soon as we reach home today. Ciao!

Oops... Before you confuse yourself of what I'm trying to convey, I am referring to the scent that I am wearing right now. My perfume package arrived today and I love the scent of Vera Wang Princess. To be honest, this is my first ever perfume here in the U.S. I don't go gaga over expensive perfumes so I usually just settle for Victoria Secret and Bath and Body Works products. But I ordered 2 perfumes for my mom that I'm going to send in a Balikbayan box so when I told her that I just use cheap stuff but I bought expensive perfumes for her, she told me to buy at least one for myself, hehe! So here I am, enjoying my first ever Vera Wang experience. I don't like strong perfume scents. I am sensitive to overly scented perfumes so I carefully choose Vera Wang because of it's moderate scent for casual use. I'm lovin' it!

It's been a while since I wrote about our local entertainment industry. What prompted me to write is the on-going "love triangle" controversy between Marian Rivera and Karylle over Dingdong Dantes. Alright...for those of you are not updated with GMA Kapuso stars. Karylle is the 5-year girlfriend of Dingdong while Marian is his on-screen partner. It seemed like Dingdong had fallen out of love with Karylle because he developed an affection with his reel partner Marian. Hmmm! Sounds complicated. Karylle is hurting right now. As a matter of fact, she moved to ABS-CBN to avoid any complications with Marian and Dingdong. There's been a recent rumor that Marian is pregnant with Dingdong's child. Whoa! Neither of them admitted that they are really together so it's kinda weird that there had been talks that she's preggy. Gosh! I hope it's not true. I like Marian's beauty and acting skills so I hope she won't just put everything to waste because of Dingdong. Duh! Showbiz life, hehehe! Kakaloka!

I was absent in the blogging and Entrecard world for 2 days. This weekend was our last schedule to help with the IS Team for the move to their new building. I was astounded with the size of the new site. I mean it was surprisingly huge when compared to all the other branches of our bank. I got lost a lot of times while we were going back and forth to the different floors of the said building. It was not totally complete construction-wise but for the most part, it was done. I had to go there this weekend to help break down and set up these PCs. It was a lot of hard work. I was missing my babe. It's our first time to be away from each other ever since we got married and we didn't enjoy it. I could not sleep even if two of our female IS officers offered to open the adjoining doors in our room just for me to feel safe. They were assigned to share one room while I stayed alone on a different room but they were just right next to my room so we opened the adjoining doors so it will make me feel like we're only staying in one big room. Very nice of them to do that.

The work that we did there was no fun. We got nasty, felt beat, tired, bored and overworked but the good part was that the food was GREAT! We ate at Kobe Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar with staff cooking your food right in front of you in an extraordinary show on a Teppanyaki table. I don't normally pick out a Japanese resto since I know nothing about their cuisine but I was glad somebody did. I ordered steak and shrimp with fried rice and oohh it was so delicious.

They finally let us go home around 7:00 P.M. yesterday but oh boy, my thighs and calves hurt like crazy. I miss blogging and EC dropping and I'm just so glad that I'm back here in my hubby's care. By the way, Jeff and I would be leaving for Illinois tomorrow night. We'll be spending Christmas at my sister's place so I will be absent from Entrecard again. I'll bring my laptop so hopefully, if I don't feel soooo dead tired, I'll EC drop while we're in a hotel. I'll definitely be back and my apologies if I won't be able to visit your blogs in 4 days or so. Until then...

...I made it to the PayU2Blog circle. Thanks to Margie Crader for the blog approval. After a week from being approved, they gave me 2 opportunities already. Their TOS are slightly different from other blog paying websites and I like the fact that they allow the bloggers to express their creativity in their writings with their freeform blog opportunities. I hope the opportunities will just keep on coming. I'm happy to be part of PayU2Blog.

I haven't written any updates on my blog lately. I just did not feel motivated to write anything but actually, there's been a lot of good things to write about. Over the weekend, Jeff and I had a movie date.

Have you heard about the movie "Twilight?" You have probably watched it yourself as well. I was hoping to read the book first before watching the movie but I've read from a blog that it's ok to watch the movie even before reading the book so we went ahead and give it a shot. We liked it! I didn't think Jeff would but yes, he did like it too. He went inside the theatre not knowing the plot of the movie so he was a bit surprised when he realized that it's about a lovestory of a vampire and a mortal with its complications. They say it's still good to read the book so we're gonna get a copy of it as soon as it'll be available in bookstores again. This will be our next Harry Potter book reading bonding. Yes, you've read it right! We've read the whole HP series together before going to bed. It seems like Twilight series would be our next book bonding session.

Alright, time for work updates...We had our Christmas Potluck today. We have food and everything but it's not quite the same as what we used to do back in the Philippines. No exchanging of gifts, no games, no program, no nothing, hahahaha! We simply had lunch and that's it. The food was yummy though. There was a dessert there that I really like. Too bad I didn't know the name of it. But it's kinda like an Orange dessert. I love it!

Now, for winter weather updates... We had an ice storm since last night. I was surprised to see Jeff in our parking lot when I get off from work last night. He was worried about me because he knew that I am inexperienced when it comes to driving on ice so he went to pick me up at work. Wow, my ever thoughtful husband was in action again! The weather didn't get better this morning but at least they put sands and salt on the roads to melt the ice and create more tire traction. I was late at work for the first time but I was not the least bothered about it. My co-worker didn't even get there until it was around 10:30. You can only see few vehicles on the streets. This is like one of those typhoon days in the PI, when classes are suspended and most people just chose to stay at home than work or have fun. I asked my boss if I could leave an hour early today so as not to drive home in the dark on a very icy weather. He was ok with it and I'm thankful. I hope it's going to be a better day tomorrow.

Hmmm. I can smell the steak from here. Hubby is broiling some steaks for dinner. I gotta end this and eat dinner now. I am famished!!!

Life is too short to wallow in sorrow and misery. I am the type of person who would easily laugh even on the corniest jokes you’d throw at me. I remember back in the Philippines, my officemates used to be amused with my distinctive laugh whenever jokes are thrown around the workplace. Here in our house, Jeff likes to do goofy faces and crack some jokes as it is one of the traits that I love about him. I could be pretty playful and sneaky too as I would play practical jokes on him sometimes. Life just seems to be laid-back and fun if we know how to laugh. As the famous phrase goes, “Laughter is the best medicine.”

I saw this tag on a couple of blogs, but I am not so wild of joining because I know I'd look disgusting after a long day at work. But I just could not say no to my good friend, Vikki Lyn, that's why here I am sharing to all of my readers the real me on my jammies while blogging. Thanks for this tag, my dear. I'm gonna tag Lou, Joanne, Juliana, Mystique, Monica, Wena, and Hazel.

Here are the rules:

1) Take a picture of yourself right NOW!.
2) DON'T change your clothes, DON'T fix your hair... Just take a picture.
3) Post that picture with NO editing.
4) Post these instruction with your picture.
5)Tag 10 people to do this..

I’ve noticed that we have shorter days and longer nights in winter. It’s pretty much dark outside when I get off from work at 5:00 P.M. To be honest, I’m a little scared of how dark it could get as days go by. My apprehension stems from the fact that I’ll be driving home after work. I’ll have to admit that I don’t think of myself as a very good driver. Yes, I’ve got the license to drive but that doesn’t hide the fact that I am so inexperienced on the road. I don’t like to drive when it’s dark because of limited visibility of the things that’s happening ahead of me, let alone join the throng of vehicles seemingly in a rush to get home first. My only consolation is that we just live 2 miles away from work so it’s not actually that bad. I just missed being in the Philippines where I didn’t have to drive especially after a long day at work or on an inclement weather.

I had a very stressful day at work. One of our branches in Little Rock had to move to a bigger and nicer building and last weekend, our network guys moved all the servers to the new building. It sure does sound easy but the truth is, it's such a pain because they will have to change IP and all that technicalities. I wasn't part of the team who helped with the move last weekend but I sure was bombarded with calls today about no internet connection, no network connection, not been able to print, not been able to get into their computers and all those computer problems with the users that were moving. I would not have minded it if I have a partner to help me fix their issues but the thing is he was also installing some scanners for our Credit Department so practically, I was left on my own to fix the mess in the new branch. I had a headache after the shift and I didn't have any energy to make dinner at all tonight. In times like this, Jeff usually takes charge with the dinner but he's also been busy and exhausted from work so the ending, we'll just go out and drive to KFC for dinner. I wonder how will I lose weight if we don't refrain from eating out a lot, hahahaha!

It's not even halfway through wintertime, but Jeff and I had already been making plans for our next summer vacation. Now that we’re both working, it seems a little bit difficult to enjoy a long stretch of vacation. While he has quite a number of vacation hours, I, on the other hand, have limited number of vacation days so it’s necessary for us to plan ahead of time for every vacation we’d like to take. We may not have kids yet, but that does not stop us from going to amusement and water theme parks to unwind. As a matter of fact, the very first week that I got here, we went to an amusement park in Illinois. We like to visit other states and we’ve never had the chance to go to the East Coast yet, so probably next year that would be our next trip and definitely New Jersey is one of the places that we’re going to visit.

A Jersey Shore beach Vacation sure sounds excellent, don’t it? I’ve actually read good reviews from other blogs about Morey’s Piers in New Jersey. I checked their web site and guess what I found! They are currently running its annual holiday sale from December 1st to January 9th and you can get as much as 40% savings on a Season Pass to their water parks. Isn’t it amazing? Now, finding a place to stay and dine is not a problem at all. Jersey Shore and Wildwood hotels is just one of the places that you could stay for your Jersey vacation. I can’t wait to be on the beach again!

Hubby turned a year older last Thursday. He didn't think his birthday was a big deal, he worked that day and all that. But for me, his birthday is special so I didn't go to work on that day and cooked something special to surprise him. I also wanted to have a birthday cake for him but since I don't know how to bake a cake, I just ordered it from the grocery store. It was good but of course, it pales in comparison to the strawberry-covered cake he baked for me on my birthday because that was full of labor of love. Unlike me, hubby is not materialistic, hehehe, so instead of buying him fancy stuff for his day, I chose to give him stuff that he could use on this very cold season. I gave him some jammies, sweater, windbreaker and some flannel long-sleeved shirts. He liked the gifts because it's practical and functional. We had a very special evening on his birthday and it felt wonderful that once more I was able to put a very big smile on his face. This wonderful man that I married is such a very simple guy and he always appreciates the thought and effort that I've put forth in our relationship more than just the material things. I love my hubby so much and I thank God each day for the opportunity to share this love with him every day of our lives.

It has been a drag getting out of bed lately. While I was never been late for work, but my time logs shows that I'm logged in just in the nick of time. I always never get the chance to eat breakfast anymore because I don't have enough time to do it. The reason...I'd hit snooze a couple of times before I manage to bring myself up. I blame it on the cold weather. It just feels so nice to close your eyes, curl up beneath the sheets, and wish the world would go away. I miss those times that I don't have work for over a year. But thinking about how boring and depressing those days were gives me enough reason to continue working. While I did enjoy playing the role of a plain housewife for the most part, I began to miss the interaction with others that you get in a work environment. Ironic as it may seem, but now that I am busy with work, I am missing the old lazy days when I can just sit around the house, watch tv and use the computer, feeling no pressure at all to wake up early and deal with people on a day to day basis. Yeah, I know what you could be thinking right now, I could not seem to make up my mind. Sometimes, I'd ask myself, Is it probably because of the December weather?....Or am I just being a lazy sloth.

We spent Thanksgiving at my DIL's family and relatives which is 2 hours away from home. We went there last year too so the whole family was expecting us to be there. I had some fun spending time with Jeff and his relatives. They were really nice especially the host of the dinner. Of course, I am the only Filipina there but I didn't feel left out. They gave us a warm welcome and most of all, the food was great. I didn't eat a lot though but I love the Turkey and the pumpkin pie which is really my favorite. Too bad I was not able to take pictures while we were celebrating with them but Jeff took a couple of quick shots of me before we left the house. Happy Thanksgiving to All!!!

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