I know it is a bit late for this, but I'd still do it anyway.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

Thank you for everything. Though we know that words cannot sufficiently express our deepest gratitudes for you, we would like to take this opportunity to make you feel really really special for us.





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Since today is a special day for our Mom, we treated her to a scrumptuous lunch at TGI Friday's. Uhmmm...Correct that. Our Dad, treated my Mom, me and my brothers at TGI Friday's. *He was the one who shouldered all the expenses for such treat. Haha!*

I really enjoyed the food! So yummy! Haha! Suprisingly though, I did not order the second to the most expensive meal this time. *Usually, my Dad orders the most expensive meal for these occassions and I always come second because of my voraciousness.* I just opted for some pasta because I was craving for this type of food for some time already.

Yong, my younger brother ordered the second most expensive food which was a whole slab of baby back ribs. His food was so enormous that I thought he would not be able to consume it all because of his relatively small frame. I was so wrong! He was able to eat the entirety of the meat *except the bone of course* with no problem!

I wondered: Where the hell does my brother put all those food? He is so thin for god's sake?!?

I am quite envious towards my brother on this department because he does not get fat even though he eats so much! He is totally unlike me, who eats a lot and gets fatter and fatter each time! Waaahhhh!!!

Anyway, each of us totally enjoyed our meal. I was so stuffed that at such point, I refused to think about food already. Else, I would have puked because of gluttony. Hahaha!

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After lunch, we went to Rustan's to find a gift for my Mom. The gift we were shopping for was my Dad's gift for my her.

The catch: Dad hates shopping. He despises it so much that he does not buy a gift for anyone, independently. When there are special occassions like this, my Dad just asks the person to buy the gift on his/her own, with the money he shall provide. He says that in this manner, he will not be harassed with all the shopping commotion stuff, at the same time, the person gets the gift he/she truly likes. Such logic!

My Mom wanted to buy a new perfume so we went to the fragrance section.

Gawd! I did not realize how taxing it was to shop for a perfume! Aside from all the sales persons hounding you with their product by spraying here and there, one gets sensory overload from such experience. All of the famous and not-so-famous fragrance companies were there. Each of them competing against one another. All of them trying to out smell each other!

Because of so many varieties of perfume which one needs to have a sniff of, one's olfactory sense tends to fail at some point. Nasal fatigue sets in and each scent seems to smell like everything else. Even coffee beans can only do so much.

It was so hard, I tell you. My nose would have fallen off my face if I had not persuaded my Mom to choose from all the scents she had tested already.

So who won?

I had a bias for Dolce for the benefit of myself. But since we were shopping for my Mom, Versace took the victory.

For me, It did not matter  which perfume got the pick from my Mom. I just wanted to leave and let my olfactory nerves have some rest. I did not want my precious nose to die down on me. Haha!

I know it is not December 25 anymore but I believe it is still appropriate to greet people with this acknowledgement of the holiday season. And besides, according to the doctrine of the priest during the misa de gallo I attended with my family last night: Christmas does not end on the eve of December 25, rather it is the beginning of this festive season.

And so, yes, I repeat, Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

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It is our family's first time to celebrate Christmas on our new home. There is nothing much to talk about though. It still felt the same thing as the past Christmas we had spent as a family.

Though I know it is cliche but the company of each other is enough for this Christmas to be worthwhile.

The amount of food that I ate did not change as well. It was still plenty. In fact, I was the last one to finish my meal during our family midnight gathering, or more commonly known as the Noche Buena.

I was so stuffed that I had to force myself to do something worthwhile and time consuming before retiring to bed because I was afraid I might have an encounter with the nightmare man or in scientific term, pancreatitis. Haha!

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This morning, many of my cousins visited our house.

I was not surprised because it was a tradition in our clan that our house will be the home base for family reunion events which include Christmas day. It was an unwritten and unspoken rule that every Christmas day, my cousins would come and visit our home. It was a dogma of some sort in the family.

The bad thing though, my parents thought differently. They thought that since we have moved to a slightly remote place from where my cousins live, there would be a break in such tradition.

They were dead wrong! So many people came! As in!

They were caught off guard by this occurrence. But what can they do? Family is family. So they had to serve whatever they could to the people who came.

Good thing, we had two sets of pasta sauce to serve. We had the regular red tomato based spaghetti sauce and the to die for white carbonara sauce by my mom!

Thankfully, not one stomach felt hollow because the food was fairly sufficient for them. They even had cake for dessert. Good thing as well, someone gave my Mom a cake for Christmas! And another good thing, I was not voracious enough to have had consumed the cake! Haha!

San ka pa? Super impromptu Christmas party huh! Haha!