It's Gabby's 7th Birthday!

I got supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-ly busy last weekend until today! Wonderfully busy, that is!

It’s Gabby’s 7th birthday yesterday, January 25. We really wanted to celebrate it in Jollibee or McDonalds but our finances didn’t let us so we had to celebrate at home.

We went to Divisoria last Saturday to buy give-aways and to the grocery to buy the ingredients for the food the following day. It was very tiring!

Come Sunday, I went again to the grocery to buy the items we lack. The first grocery we went to on Saturday was, I think, about to close down their business so there were few items on the shelves. I also dropped by Goldilocks to get the cake we ordered.

Pre-birthday celebration pose: Gabby at 7, Sunday at 5

Cooking the food all by myself is also tiring but I enjoyed it!
When the guests came and were served, I had to sneak out and go to a client’s office to pick up the files they left at the lobby guard. I remembered I have to get them so I can finish their design requirements! (My memory served me right yesterday! Odd!)

Gabby doing the now-getting-famous Coke sign

"Whose birthday is it really?" :)

And today, I did mini-pizzas and hotdog-on-sticks for Gabby’s classmates, upon his request. I noticed that when birthday celebrants treat them with spaghetti, almost all of them have left-over. So I opted for finger foods. And it was a success! Almost all of them asked for seconds and thirds. :)They also liked his give-away: a whistle with a balloon on the end. The whistle blows when the kids release the air from the balloon.

From the classroom...

to the playground, the kids enjoyed their toy!

I am really dead tired today. But seeing the happy faces who ate the food and the pot of pasta sauce with only the small bits of ground pork left, saying goodbye to guests with take-home food (which can mean they want the food you made), the happy faces of Gabby’s classmates while playing with their new simple toy, overhearing Gabby’s classmate tell her mommy, “ Mommy, it should have been the food on my birthday!”---takes out all the tiredness away. All the effort was well worth it. :)

Happy 7th Birthday, Gabby! I love you so much! May God bless you always!

Zzzzzzzzz.....

I don’t want my kids to “inherit” my sleeping habit.
As what I’ve mentioned here, sleep is a luxury I cannot afford to have all the time. So when I doze off, it’s a house rule that no one disturbs me, not even when the bill collector is already at the front door and the money is with me! :)
I know how important sleep is to my kids and I’ll do anything to let them have most of it. It will help them grow faster and smarter and be always in the right mood. A sleepless child is a grumpy child, right?
I chanced upon Johnson's Baby Nursery. It evaluated my kids’ sleeping habits when they were young and based on the results, my kids’ sleep habits are just normal. So that means, more eye shut for me too that time!
Here are the results on their sleep when they were aged -2 years old.

Gabby's Sleep Profile: Normal

Sunday's Sleep Profile: Excellent

Also, Sleep For Kids is a website that help us know more about sleep and its benefits. It also has games and activities that your child can do to help them understand the importance of sleep better, bedtime stories (about sleep, of course!), sleep diary and other stuff that will surely help us get more Zzzzz time!
I think I need this more! :) Happy sleeping to me later!

PS: The contest on the J&J site is already finished.

Kids' Fun Visit at the Hospital

Gabby and Sunday's paternal grandfather was admitted to the hospital for cardiac arrhythmia last week. The kids wanted to visit their Lolo so we went there on the second day. To my surprise, the hospital has a no-kids-aged-7-below admittance policy. I had to beg the guard to let us go in. But to no avail. Alas, I saw the Security Head and I immediately asked him to let us enter. Seeing my daughter looking very eager to enter the building, he said yes! We just had to walk our way to the room as quietly and as “camouflaged” :) as we can.

As advised, the nurses should not see Sunday in the room. So we hid her inside the restroom and beside the side table. She had fun hiding that whenever someone knocked on the door, she would hide anywhere she could duck into, including the closet! But we didn’t let her linger there, of course!
Surely, they had fun playing Knock and Hide!

Who says hospital visits aren't fun? Btw, the grandfather came home the day after our visit and recuperated fast to play and visit the kids.

Stinky Spidey: A Picture Strip by Gabby

My kids are really Spiderman fanatics!
My daughter already watched its three movies several times and she just doesn’t get tired of them. She loves wearing the costume, whenever she feels like it.
My son loves to play with his Spiderman toy because of its movable body parts. Last Saturday, he took pics of it using his daddy’s cellphone. His shots were good so his daddy decided to make a comic strip out of them. Here it is: (click to enlarge)
We support our kids' love for picture taking. It teaches them color combination, composition and story telling at an early age!

Sunday's 5th Birthday Blast

Here are the pics from Sunday's 5th birthday last January 4. We just invited her playmates and cousins but we didn't expect it would be a blast! The pics may not show it but just look at Sunday's smile: one proof that she enjoyed her day to the point of changing her dress to a Spiderman costume to show off!

New Year, New Beginnings

“New Year's Day is every man's birthday.”- Charles Lamb

New Year means new hopes and new beginnings for all of us.
Though there is a worldwide financial crisis right now, I still believe that our faith in God and ourselves will see us through. I have listed some New Year’s resolutions which I’m very determined to do, no matter what. I really think some are difficult to do but I’ll still do them anyway! (Clue: weight management! lol)

I’m also giving a new look* to my blog. I always wanted to do this but just didn’t have the time. Why I used orange? I love red and any color that has hues of it!
Orange is vibrant and denotes energy and warmth. It is also a color of summer and I love summer! It is a citrus color which denotes good health---one of my prayers for my family this year!

Happy 2009 to all of us!!!

*credit to Scrapbook Flair for the butterfly images