Mixed Emotions

I don't know if its for the lack of anything else to do, too much FB-ing, or just me questioning my self-worth again that I feel really sad and empty. Not that its anybody else's fault. But a hundred questions are actually running through my mind each and every time I hear of someone else in my circle (be it in my acquaintances side or friends side or simply batchmates in the N@W and W@W e-groups) getting pregnant for the second time. I mean second time because I surely won't be jealous of first timers. I have one pretty and loveable girl of my own and its the best source of happiness I can ever imagine.
So why do I feel sad? Jessica is turning three this coming May. Sometimes I think that I should just let nature take its course and stop taking the pill. God will surely bless us with another one if its the right time, and he will most likely shower us with more blessings, much as he did when jessica was born and hubby got his new job then. I guess I feel scared because right now there is really that uncertainty, what with me in between jobs and there's no defined job waiting for me yet, what if we get pregnant and life becomes too difficult? That's not questioning faith right, merely asking ourselves if its the right path to take.
Perhaps one of these days I will find the courage to stop taking the pill and move head-on, allowing God to shower us with another child at the right time.
A year ago if you ask us if we're ready, I'd say no, reason being I am not emotionally ready to give up some of the time for Jessica. But now that I gave her one year of an otherwise successful career, I feel that she can already adjust pretty much to a little brother or sister, and with lots of love to shower. Now its just a matter of crossing that bridge...
Just pouring my thoughts....

Gotta Learn to drive

I have to learn how to drive. and soon.  I know I'm missing a lot but I've always been pretty capable in commuting, so there is no real drive for me to learn to drive. I like the train better. or jeepneys. For a while when we didn't have someone else to take care of Jess, I've thought that its easier if I drove myself and we just had a car seat for her so she can sit in the back. The thing is, Jess was not a car seat baby. She likes to be with me at the back of the car while hubby drove. But with the inevitable trip of hubby looming ahead of us, I have to pressure myself much more now.  Don't worry, I will drive. I promise myself that.

Hubby's amazing diet

Sometimes our partners will amaze us in ways we never imagined. Let me tell you something about hubby. He is the type of person who, when he really, really puts his mind into a goal, he will get it.  That being said, he has proven this again when he decided to lose weight and begin to live a healthy life.
Just last February 1 him and his officemates had a mini-contest for losing weight, sort of like the Biggest Loser. It was when he decided to go head on with the weight loss program he set. He didn't have a nutritionist but he read so much about it, I'm quite sure he did a good job with the research! So to give you a rundown, here are the changes he did to achieve his goal:

Diet: Change in diet and eating habits was a huge contributor to his goal.  I won't say he's not healthy before because he's not the type to overeat and is not really eating fatty foods, but he did change a lot of what he does to make sure he gets the right stuff in critical to his weight loss program:

• Meats: From the usual pork, beef and chicken we ate, he said goodbye to pork and all its derivatives too! I would just cook chicken for 6 weeks, never fried usually steamed, broiled, roasted. and it has to be skinless too. Seafood is ok, but its either grilled or steamed to avoid any fats. He stuck to this and it really, really made a huge difference.
• Veggies: He wasn't too fond of veggies before. But mind over matter, he put in a lot of veggies into his diet. The lunch I would pack for him is really much of veggies - brocolli, cauliflower, string beans, carrots, lots of kangkong leaves (like the one with chowking). Its either steamed or sauteed. Sometimes beef with brocolli but he sticks to the brocolli. No potatoes, no corn. He says its non-value adding. :-)
• Fruits: He chooses the fruits he eats. Mangoes have too much sugar. Its mostly bananas, apples, oranges. He's not into pineapples because of hyper acidity, but he hopes that the change in diet can also help.
• Oats and Cereals: For a time he would eat oatmeal - unsalted, no sugar - for breakfast. It worked a good deal but he got tired of the taste (or lack of it). We use rolled oats by the way. It tastes so much better than the quick-cook ones or the cereal milk drinks. He also eats cereals (healthy ones) with low-fat milk. Fruits with the cereals help too.
• Rice: This is the clincher. He stopped eating rice altogether. Its been six weeks now and he's ok. After their mini contest he can start taking in some but he said he will still limit the intake to maintain his diet.
• Supplements: He just had 1 supplement that he took: Its component is L-Carnitine and Green Tea, same as that of Fitrum but higher mg. He says it will help in his exercise. 
• Lots of water but no salt to avoid water retention. I won't elaborate since I'm no nutritionist/dietician. 

Exercise: When we got married we bought a home-gym for hubby, which he barely used the past 4 years. And then when we moved here in Cainta he bought a stationary bike. Also barely used till this year. When hubby started his program both have been used extensively.

• Basketball - He plays basketball twice a week: Wednesdays and Saturdays. He also shoots hoops every once in a while in the court a few houses away from ours.
• Weights, home gym, stationary bikes - he tries to put around 30mins to an hour for this daily, sometimes morning and evening. Now that he achieved his goal he might put in less time but he says he won't stop
• Walking/running - a few times, not regularly because of too many wandering dogs in our neigborhood.

It was quite a drastic change in both our lifestyles the past six weeks. I had to prepare him the right foods and there were really times we would argue over it (overcooked, too much, too little, etc). But I do understand how much effort and sacrifice hubby put into it and I really, really am proud of it.

The result: 31 POUNDS LOST IN 6 WEEKS. Hubby is back to his pre-marriage weight and built. I'm so happy and proud of him.

Castillo-Sy Wedding

Yesterday Hubby and I attended the wedding of Anj and Lester, Anj being one of my closest friends in Nestle and Les her boyfriend of two years, whom she also met at Nestle. We were witness to their two years of great love which was full of surprises. Lester actually made great effort in coming up with a proposal for Anj, when he asked for her hand in marriage after finishing the ironman race in Camsur, with the cheesy proposal line of "Andrea, will you be my finish line?".  That took their love story to various media: Balitang K, Sports Unlimited and even Weddings Magazine. Ahahaha....
More than 6 months after, they got married at St. Rita de Cascia and reception followed at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas. It was a fun reception, with quite a few not so ordinary gimmiks, and truly veering away from the traditionals, while still displaying the love from family and friends and giving that wedding its own original touch. They had at least 5 AVP's shown throughout the program, from the start of their love story to the beginning of their new life together. It was truly one of the most unique weddings I have been to. And I am so happy for them. I wish for them to keep the love overflowing and keep the surprises coming.
Love you Anj and Les! Congrats on your new life together!

NBI Clearance Rants

Yesterday I decided to get my NBI Clearance already.  This is in anticipation of the fact that I want to go to work very soon and this is surely going to be part of the pre-employment requirements, hence I decided to get it already since its an inevitable thing to do anyway. So I went to NBI Taytay at 7am hoping they were open at that time already (which they were not). There was a long queue already and I was hearing conversations about how you should be there by 4 or 5 am to be first in line. Like duh! So it was 7:30 already when they started to give out numbers, I was 148 of the 150 numbers they gave out. Huge relief? Another thing is that you should be using Taytay Residence Certificates, not Antipolo, not any other Rizal or Pasig residence certificates. So there were some tricycle drivers even asking people there to just get from barangay offices nearby (and of course you will ride their trikes).  I didn't, I had enough time already waiting for the 147 other people in front of me.
At 11am I was starting to panic. I needed to be back home by 12 to prepare for my 2pm interview. Lo and behold, at 11:15 they declared they will stop at 141. And I was 148!!!! Grrrr... We tried pleading to let it finish till 150 but they were rude. :-( i ended up leaving (and bringing the number 148 with me!) empty handed and frustrated.  I just decided I'll try out Megamall branch after the interview, maybe I will have better luck there.
Which I did. I got to Megamall around 4pm. The line was short, around 8 or 10 people ahead of me, and after payment took me around 5 minutes to get the clearance. Five minutes! As opposed to the 5 hours I wasted in the morning. Call that irony.
I'm just looking at the bottomline now. At least I accomplished my mission for the day. However frustrating it was. That's it. No regrets, but lessons were learned. ;-)

Here are a few of my newest LO of the little girl. Happy to be digiscrapping again. Its so fascinating that Jessica has grown up so much since she was a tiny, tiny infant. To see her grow up everyday is a blessing, and me stopping work and seeing her in this period of her life is really something I will never, ever regret.

Last year in July the four of us friends from our previous work in Nestle went to Cebu for an all-girls vacation. It was really a lot of fun and we truly, truly enjoyed the bonding time we had, away from boyfriends and in my case, being the only married one in the troop, away from hubby and daughter.  It was something different from all the vacations I had, I was never the type to go out vacationing with girl friends. For the most part, this is the 2nd time I was away from hubby and baby ever since I got married, the first one being my trip to Boracay which was both work and recreational. :-P

Anyway, back to Cebu.  We left on a saturday and checked in at Marriot hotel. Landed in Cebu around 1pm and we checked in the hotel first, then had lunch at a popular resto in Ayala Mall. We went back to the hotel afterwards to rest and wait for Kate, who would be landing late afternoon. She arrived dinner time already and we went back to Ayala for dinner, then back to the hotel to dress up to go to a newly opened club (sorry forgot the name already). We were at the bar till about 2am, was too sleepy already when we got back. As usual, I am not the clubbing type of gal. never been one, and probably never will. Its also not something hubby and I used to do.

Come morning, we checked out of Marriot and went to Plantation Bay, which was a much, much better resort.  We rested and had to catch up with some sleep, because we were going to Crown regency that evening to test our fear of heights. :-D  And we did, in the evening. We conquered the roller coaster on top of the hotel as well as the skywalk. Well, almost all of us did. Anj backed out last minute on the skywalk, and kate gave up on the idea of scary heights the moment we planned to go there. We ate the very popular pochero of Cebu afterwards, and then back to the hotel, where I slept early while the girls were chatting up with Anj's former schoolmate, Mick.

Monday morning before we checked-out of the hotel, we went for a swim, enjoying the waters of Plantation Bay. Had a blast bonding again with the girls. We had late checkout and went to the airport afterwards.

All in all, it was a very memorable trip with my girl friends. Loved it and hope we get another chance. Oh well, Anj is to be married this month, so she'll be pretty busy adjusting for a while. If not this year, I hope we can get a repeat of our all-girl getaway next year!

Dad and Jessica

The two most important people in my life. :-D

4 years and counting

It has been more than four years of marriage. Its not perfect, definitely, we were like any other couple. We fight, we encounter problems along the way. But in our marriage, there's always love, and laughter.

We have a long way to go, and more upsides and downsides to come, but as long as there is love, I'm sure we can conquer them all.

MamaLa and PapaLo

First (of many, I hope) of my digiscrap work. I'm targetting to finish quite a number of pre-selected pics so I'm hoping my creative juices will soon be on a roll. Once I've done this maybe I can go back to scrapping just ordinary, day to day pics so I can have lots of memories to share as well. This are Jessica's maternal godparents (my mom and dad), and though we don't often spend a whole lot of time with them, they are really such great parents to me and they love Jess very much. I wish I could tell them everyday how much we love them.

starting anew

Ok, here I am again after a LOOOONG non-posting period. And I really do feel guilty about not posting, but then everytime I attempt to write my mind ends up blank so I simply forget about it.

Its been a while, holidays have passed, non-eventful if I may add because I am kinda financially incapacitated with no job the past few months. I'm actively searching now, and since I already have a new housekeeper after more than 2 months without, then I have a bit more time for myself while waiting for interview invitations and things like that.

So what else is new? Right now I am too busy hoarding scrapbook kits that I am finding for free courtesy of some n@wie/plurk referrals, and I am hoping to start and be active again at digiscrapping. I have a lot of pics I need to digiscrap anyway, its just a matter of putting it altogether. hayz. Maybe I should make a target, like 10 in a week. that'd be neat. :-)

Oh, and if any of you have any job leads in purchasing and supply chain (middle manager posts), please feel free to call buzz me, I'm more than happy to try it out!