dinner at the mexican restaurant

When we moved in Monte Vista area, one of the favorite restaurant that we always go to is the "Calvillos Mexican Restaurant" in Alamosa. It's about 15 minutes drive to Alamosa downtown and its worth to go to that place. Their food is good and you can feel at home when you get there. Anyhow, last Sunday our friend invited us to have dinner with them at Calvillos Restaurant. It was such a nice dinner, I try different things in there that I am not familiar with especially the chili thing, I forgot the name. Everyone are happy and full after. We stay there about 8:30pm I guess, we really enjoy the company of our friends and their kids, the food and of course we will surely go back to this place next time ;-)

Love of my life!

This is a cute photo of my husband and two kids Dustin and Dana. We are about to go to Meeting that night but before we go, I need to take a family photos of all of us. Dana's hair was so funny, it standing up! Dustin look good, very good looking little guy. Daddy too is so handsome, nice smile :-) They are the love of my Life!

Alone with the kids...

My husband will be gone for five days. He was assigned at Steamboat Spring to do Maintenance. Good thing because my Filipina friend will stay here for one night this coming Thursday. I will try to invite some of my friends too to come over for dinner. I missed my husband and I always pray that he always be safe from work. Well, we always keep in touch by phone so I still feel that his here with us. Can't wait for Friday!

I'm back!

It’s been two weeks since my last post. Sorry for not updating my blog this past few weeks. I never had a chance to update because my mother-in-law was here. We had great time together and two weeks is quiet fast. I can’t believe how fast that is and we will miss her a lot, especially the kids. Hopefully we can see her again next spring. Here are some of the photos we took while she’s here.

Getting Together with my Pinay friends...

Last week, i was thinking about inviting Ella and Gladys, my Filipina friend here in Grand Junction together with their hubby to have dinner with us. I told mike that i will going to make lumpia, pancit and chicken strips for our dinner. I have Fil-am couples visitors so its just right that i will going to cook Filipino food that time hehe :-) We went to Filipino store last Friday to get all the ingredients of my pancit and lumpia. I also buy 1 bag of jasmine rice. I like the smell of that rice and i am sure they would like it too. Im glad they came and our getting together went pretty well. I am not really good in cooking but i feel confident on what i cook last Saturday. My hubby said it taste good and they like my lumpia too. So it was nice, but too bad i forgot to take a picture. Well... maybe next time i can take picture with them and us together. :-)

Family tree

I would love to create my own family tree. But the problem is I couldn’t remember the name of my ancestry and my family roots. I even lost contacts with them. I try to find the right database that could help me create my own family tree for free but I never found it. Im glad my friend recommend me this website at findfamilytree.org. She said that I will find whatever ancestry document I need, so maybe I will give it a try and see how it works. How about you? Want to start your free family tree today? Visit findfamilytree.org and start your own family tree too!

Family Photos...

Its nice to have a family photos and im glad i got a new one. We took this photos when my mother-in-law visited us here. This photo taken last Sunday, September 21, 2008. Its nice to see her and hopefully we can see her again next year.

We went to garage sale!

Every weekends when Mike dont have work, we mostly go to garage sale and look for a good stuff. Sometimes we find good stuff sometimes not. Mike and I love to go garage sale at Redlands or in the City of Grand Junction but this morning, we look garage sale here in Orchard Mesa area. We found good stuff though like Kids toys, purse and t-shirt. We only look few garage sale this day and at 12 noon, we went home to eat lunch and then grocery shopping in the afternoon. It went pretty good, the weather is very nice and we saw many garage sale in Grand Junction area but we never had a chance to visit them all. We mostly look at the newspaper to make it sure that we can find a good deal. Next time, we are looking for antique and furniture so hopefully we can find a good one :-)

Grapes...

Mike love wine a lot, so we decided to buy a grape vine to plant in our backyard near to our window. For me, its hard to choose which one is the best grape but for Mike? it's not hard for him to choose. They have several kinds of grapes that you can choose but we got the Niagra Grapes and Nimrod. Mike bought a book about Wine and its a great book. The title of the book we got is the "Wine Basics". This book will help you learn about winery, what kind of wine to choose, how to taste, how to read wine label and a lot more. They have great wines too here in Colorado especially here in Grand Junction Area. But we never try wine tasting here in our area, hopefully next time Mike and I will visit one of the winery here in Grand Junction and see how good their wine is.

Need to saved!

Saving is a good thing to do, but how you can save your money if the prices are going up? Even the food are very expensive nowadays. You still need to spend and even you try to save the money, its hard! You need to spend it or else you will get starving and be on debt. Right now, Mike and I are planning to save this year, i dont know how but of course we need to slow down on spending things that we dont need so much. We need to cut off our bills, we need to cancel the membership that we dont use so much like the TV, we have cable and i think we need to take that away. Mike get a Filipino Channel but its not the one that i like. So we need to let go of that and we need to change our internet connection too because we pay a lot with our DSL. Maybe we can get verizon for a replacement. We need not to use so much electricity and hot water because it cost too much for our bills. There are many bills to think about especially that we have 2 mortgage that we need to pay and until now we still didn't pay the other mortgage because we are waiting until our house in Silverthorne will be sold. Hope someone will be interested in our house there and when that happens, its a big relief for us if we let go that house in Silverthorne. Its a pain in a butt to have a lot of bills hehe :-)

Make a shopping list...

Every weekend, I make it sure to make a list for our grocery shopping. But sometimes i always forgot to make a list because im get used to it to buy anything that we like in the store. But right now, we need to slow down on spending much for our grocery because we have lots of bills to pay. But still, we spend a lot for the grocery. Mike and I already talked about it to saved money this year but its hard. Im trying to keep track all the coupons but sometimes i always forgot to bring it with me. Well... maybe next time i need to remember to always bring the coupons with me so that we can save more for our next shopping. We buy new plants and trees also so that this weekend we will have something to do in our backyard. The cherry tree we have is already died. I think the dog chew it hehe :-)

Serenade...

I remember the one of the sweetest moment that happen in my life and that was when we have our family beach trip in Paradise Island, Davao. When we arrived there, Mike and I noticed that there is a group of people who serenading all the visitors in the beach resort. And one of the singer is our neighbor. I never expected that Mike will going to surprised me that time because he requested our favorite theme song to those group. Of course Mike gave them money for a tip. I am blushing that time because everyone are staring on us. Mike is so sweet that time because he also sing together with the band, he hug me and give me a kiss. He held my hand and tell me i love you. Isn't that sweet?

Mike request 3-4 songs i think and all songs that he requested are all my favorite song. It touches me so much, Mike always make me feel so special and im so happy because i found him. Dustin is sleeping that time so its good. He is so tired of playing in the water and in the sand. We all tired when we get home, i feel so sleepy and sticky too as well, so i need to take a cold shower and take a rest after while Mike and my brother-in-law are busy watching movies. We ordered Pizza for dinner so that my brother-in-law wont cook anymore because we all tired for the trip so it went pretty good. Everyone like Pizza but my family are not used to it to eat Pizza for dinner. hehe :-)

Dustin dont like the sand...

When we arrived at the Paradise Island beach resort, dustin always want me to carry him, he scared on the sand hehe :-) he is not used to it with the beach sand. He cry everytime i put him down and let him woke. I let Mike carry him because Dustin is heavy for me or sometimes my sister carry him. It takes about an hour before Dustin wants to walk in the sand and swim on the beach. He likes water a lot so i never had problem with that. He even dont want to get out in the water. He laugh a lot and he play with Reynen too. I took a lot of pictures of that moment and everyone enjoying our beach trip. We are looking forward to come back again in the Philippines and spend another 3 weeks vacation with them and next time maybe we can travel to Bohol and see some of our relatives there. Will see what happen when we come back after 2-3 years from now.

My friends are visiting us!

All my longtime friends visit me in the house and it was nice to see them all. I missed them of course, its been a long time I never seen them but im glad they come over to the house to see us.

Dustin having fun, he always love to see the movie Cars and he is so quiet when he is watching that movie. He is just sitting down in front of the TV and being a good boy. He even don’t take any toys from other kids, he is waiting for his turn. So Mike and I decided to buy him toys so that he can play with himself and with Reynen too. He don’t like Reynen a lot, Reynen is a son of my cousin but my mom is the one who taking care of that little boy. But they become friends after.

We taking lot of pictures with them and its nice because they are having dinner with us. My brother-in-law cooked a good dinner for us and they buy also mango and pineapple for dessert.

Our 1st Week Vacation...

Our first week vacation in the Philippines was great. Dustin is the center of the attention in our village, all the young kids there are want to play with Dustin and they are happy to see us too of course. Too bad because Dustin is sweating a lot, even though I already wipe his head and his back but still the sweat are all over him. Dustin is not used to it for the hot humid weather not like here in Colorado, we have hot dry weather here and Dustin experience the 4 seasons. He get sick for the first week stay, he got runny nose and fever. But im glad he feel better after 2 days. We stay in my mom’s house. Our house is small so we are very crowded there especially in sleeping but im glad my sister let us sleep on the bedroom. We only have 1 bedroom so my family sleep in the living and at the hole way. Mike and I bought a foam bed so that we don’t need to sleep on the floor and it helps a lot for Dustin you know so that he can sleep well at night.

We go out with my family, eat in the restaurants and go shopping at the mall too. It was fun and im so happy to be home!

The Arrival...

When we arrive in Davao airport, I feel very happy and excited because at last I will going to see my family. Dustin is really happy too, he is running and playing while were waiting for our luggage, everyone out there wants to help us carry our things, they are looking forward to get a big tip from Mike. I can also see my family waiting outside in the airport. It takes long time to get our luggage we need to wait a couple minutes and when we got our luggage we go out right away and be happy to see my family! Mike carry Dustin on his shoulder and everyone is staring on us. Well of course I hug my mama and my sister, hmmm it seems like something change hehe. They look so dark to me, and the weather there are very hot and humid. Im already sweating when we go outside the airport. We decided to get a taxi because some van driver there are asking too much, we don’t have our own car and we don’t any service so we just got taxi that time. It went well, we are all fit to one taxi, Mike is sitting in the front, my mom, my sister, my sister husband and me are fit on the back sit hehe, it was so crowded and I let Dustin sit on my lap. It was funny because Dustin is not moving, he is just moving his eyes and maybe he is wondering who are those person sitting because me. He is so quiet that time and shy but after that his shyness go away and he let my sister carry him.

The Wait is Over!

The wait is over! Because right now we are packing all our things, ready for our 3 weeks vacation in the Philippines. I missed my family and its nice to be back home. I know it’s a long flight but I don’t care as long we will arrive safe in Davao airport. We leave September 2nd and we arrived in Davao airport September 3. It was a long long flight, Dustin feel terrible that time because that is his first time to be on the plane and he is not used to it. I think his ear is hurting when the plane stop in Canada. He is screaming and cry a lot for almost an hour. I never had enough sleep that time because im worried of him and I feel pity to my little one. But I cant do nothing about it because he needs to be on his sit and put the sit belt on. He don’t like sit belt, he try to take it off but he cant that’s why he is crying many times. But after that he fall asleep though, he get tired of crying. We arrive in Manila at 4-5:00am and we transfer to the other plane at 7:00am, Manila to Davao.

Our Car Engine blow-up

While were driving home from Las Vegas to Grand Junction, our car engine blow up. We are so worried that time but im glad its still 3:00pm in the afternoon. There are few people stop and help us, they tried to contact someone who can tow our car going back to Grand Junction but too bad because they have no signal on that area. Mike need to walk a little bit further to get a signal but he still never got signal. We are so thankful for that guy who gave us water and they help us to get out on that area. We stop in cedar grove I think, I forgot the name of that little town, we stay there for about an hour and hoping that they can fix our car but they said it takes about a month before they can fix it so we decided to rent a U-Haul van to tow our car going back home to Grand Junction. It was raining so bad that time, but im glad we arrive in Grand Junction safe. We arrive at quarter to 12midnight. I was really tired and im glad Dustin been good boy he just sleep on his car seat and eat his snack, he never gave us hard time and he did good so far!

Went to Las Vegas for second time...

I was very excited because Mike want to go back in Las Vegas to spend 2 nights and 3 days. At last we can have a chance to look around and go to nice places in Vegas. As usual we drove up there for about 8 hours. We leave same time at 6:00pm Friday after Mike’s work then we arrive at 2:00 am in the morning. In the morning after we eat breakfast we went to store and buy some snacks. Then look around in the City, in the afternoon we decided to go to Hoover Dam. That was really nice view out there, im glad we go to Hoover Dam but too bad because it was too hot that time, its about 104 degrees. We never stay too long though, we just took picture and see how big Hoover Dam is and im so thankful because I see the most popular tourist spots in Las Vegas. Then for our 2 days stay, we went to “Miracle Mall”. That was a great mall, it seems like you are outside but you are inside because you see the clouds and sky paintings above, you can hear the thunder and storm. They have wishing pond there where you can hear the thunder and storm and its raining too! Hehe.. That was amazing, I took video for that but I forgot to upload it in you tube videos because it has a big file so I cant download it. We saw a dancing fountain show, we saw lot of Casino around but we never tried play casino because its not Mike’s thing and even me I don’t know how to play it. Our stay in Las Vegas is done so we drive home.

At the Pool

Dustin really love to be in the pool. He even don’t like to get out on the water, every time I take him out on the water, he cry and push himself back to the water. He is 19 months old that time and he really enjoy every moment that he is in the water. He is very excited and even the water is kind a cold but it doesn’t bother him anymore. Maybe he remember the first time he went to the pool when we visit Mike’s mom in Michigan. Near in the townhouse where Mike’s mom lived, they have a clubhouse there where all the people in the village can go there and swim in the pool. I took video of that moment and im so happy to see Dustin enjoyed swimming as well his daddy. This is the video where we Mike, Dustin and I swim together in the Pool and that video taken at Comfort Inn Hotel last August when we went to Las Vegas for the first time.