Our First Vegetable

We already planted our first vegetable today in our side yard. It's a red bell pepper. What I like about bell pepper is that I can use both the leaves and the red pepper in my cooking. The leaves on tinolang manok and the red pepper on other recipes like bihon, chopsuey, kaldereta, etc.

Do you know that I never ate bell pepper until I was 19 years old? I thought bell pepper is only for decoration on the food, to put some color and makes the food attractive. It was not good for my taste when I first ate this veg. I was encouraged to eat bell pepper when I saw my friend (Rosilie) eating it (mixed with bihon). Yes, ate Rose hehe! Since then, bell pepper became one of my favorite vegetables.

Family Planting

We can't wait for another week to start our vegetable garden. Today, we already did what is suppose to be done : prepared the garden plot and fixed the irrigation ( done by my hubby) , I planted the seeds on the seedling pots. Bienne helped me on seeding and so with Arianna. Baby just sat in her stroller the whole time, she didn't cry but instead she observed what we are doing.

The hapifamily are so excited about gardening and we have no idea what would be the outcome of our experiment. We hope that our vegetable garden will be successful because we love eating vegetables especially these veggies that we are gonna plant. They said that the vegetables planted in your own yard are more delicious than the commercial vegetables.

What's Up Yesterday

It was nice to meet them. Who? Filipino Families living in the US. The two Families are outstanding. I called them outstanding families because they are very successful here in the US. What else I can tell about them? Wow I’m speechless! Oh well, in spite of their success, they are still down to earth and very friendly, in deed they are true Filipinos. I’ll hide their names sa pangalang Col and Gate . Aside from the two families that we met in the party, we also met couple from El Salvador and Nicaragua who are settled here in the US. We talked, we watched TFC and of course we ate too! Yummy Filipino foods! And after that we went to the park and watched the fireworks display.

The lady on white belongs to Co family, her name is Maybeline.

Where u Goin' Arianna

We are glad that we didn't miss Arianna's growth and development at babyhood stage. She grows so fast and seeing her new movements everyday make us so happy with feelings. Just this week we saw her first stand without support and wow she climbed up the stairs (16 steps) yesterday. She was so clever to race up to the top! And she was not contented to one round, she did it again after she reached the top. She's now 9months old and 5 days.

Happy Day

How we spent the father's day :

It was indeed a happy day! In the morning, Bienne and I gave our personalized cards to myluv together with our gifts. We hugged and kissed him. I texted father-in-law a happy father's day ( he left a voicemail as response). And I prepared breakfast,we ate and we went to church at 9:30AM. We then had our lunch at home and took a nap afterwards. Hubby called FIL on the phone and greeted each other a happy father's day. At 4pm, Bienne and hubby went to home depot to buy a BBQ gas grill while Arianna and I were still napping.

And we had a BBQ party on the patio. Just the four of us! The hapifamily.

In-Law's

June 16, '09 - Brother-in-law and his wife Valerie stayed with us to celebrate his birthday. This day was thier last day in California and they moved to Idaho yesterday for good. Sad to say that we wont see them as often as we want. I'm sure that mother-in-law will be missing them too, she used to stay with them before and now they are 12hrs drive away. But the good thing is we are still here and not moving. MIL can stay with us whenever she wants.

Inside the Truck

I have mentioned already that the Hapifamily loves to be together most of the time. Even if the husband is at work we are still together as family. The kids and I are happy to hang out inside the truck : singing, listening to the music, eating and reading while hubby is busy working under the sun. Our truck is our outdoor office when we are outside our home. Changing and upgrading the dash kits of our trucks is needed pretty soon when we have already a budget. For now we have to work hard in order to earn more.

Pretty Easy Baby

At exactly 8 months and half, baby Arianna is pretty easy to handle. We have been waiting for this moment that she would just sleep by herself, play without companion and most especially sleep for the entire night. No more 7 to 12 wake ups per night. No more milk for the rest of the night. Do you remember my old post before that she woke up 7 times a night or worst was 12x. On day time, she's now enjoying herself playing inside her super-yard installed in the living room. No more separation anxiety. In fact right now, I'm here in the den while she's there in the living room with Bienne. This scenario is no way for her before, I (or hubby) should always be by her sight or else she would cry and scream.

When she gets tired, she'll just close her eyes and sleep. Lately, she napped for two hours straight, twice a day. That's a great relief for us parent because we can now do chores while she's sleeping. By the way, we noticed also that when she cries, there's only one reason she likes to eat or want milk. She eats a lot but not gaining that much. She only gained 10 lbs since she was born. She'll be turning 9months next week.

Treadmills

Hubby and I are excited to start working-out again (exercise). The last time we went to gym was when we were still in the Philippines. His legs' condition won't allow us to continue doing good for our health. But in few weeks from now, he's ready because his legs are already fixed. He just started looking for a great deal online on bikes, treadmills and other exercise gadgets. No need for us to go to the gym since we have an extra room for the equipements.

Memory Upgrade

Are you planning to upgrade the memory of your PC. Well, you can buy memory at buy.com for affordable price. Their featured memory right now is called Corsair xms2 4GB for a little over $50. To ensure compatibility and performance at its rated speed of this momery, they extensively tested it in multiple DDR2 motherboards and it was perfectly great. So order now and enjoy your new upgraded memory.

Be Kind to Animals

"Be kind to animal" is a common phrase by everyone but I don't think I'm kind to animals. But don't get me wrong, I love to go to the zoo and see different kinds of animals (wild or tame). I also like to take pictures with them. Yes, I dare to touch them and if it's allowed to give them pet supplements, I would. I'm not kind to animals in the sense that I don't want to have a pet in the house, especially cat and dog. If I would like to have one, I prefer to have a bird as a pet.

Bienne is Earning!

You read it right. Bienne is earning money. Can you believe that? She's now an employee of her dad (my hubby). She is loving her job (just paste the sticker on the post cards and put a stamp on it) .. its pretty easy ... no glue required. You know how kids love stickers and stamp right? She's excited each time the job is available. Once a month job for her. She can now buy some things that she wants.

She's really a responsible child. We are lucky to have her. When she has nothing to do, she loves to fix the mess and put the things in order. She amazes us always. Just like yesterday, she cleaned our home office(she always do that). She also loves decorating her bedroom and the office. She's a gift. She helps us a lot of things. She's our little errand girl here. We love you Bienne. Thank you for coming into our lives. We are happy to have you. Thank you also for helping us taking care of your little sister Arianna. You are amazing and we are proud of you. Keep up the good work.

Outdoor furniture covers

Another thing to be happy about : my mom-in-law is giving us a gift as her advance present on father’s for my husband, a patio set including patio furniture covers. Yes, we need a cover because Temecula has a very hot summer sun. We want these furniture to last longer for it has a sentimental value. It’s a gift so we have to take care for it. Do you agree?

Raining Outside

It was raining this morning with lightning and thunder storm. It was our first time rain experienced here so we really enjoyed the day. The only sad thing is, there was a fire somewhere in the City cause by the lightning. But what good about the rain is that no need for us to turn on the sprinklers tomorrow, the ground is still wet. And I saw this morning that the turf grass in our backyard is looking good already. When we moved here last month it was horrible!

M.I.L's Birthday

It's my mom-in-law's birthday today and she celebrated her birthday with hapifamily. As soon as we woke up, we went directly to her and we sang happy birthday. We gave her a personalized birthday cards that we made last night. And we gave her hugs and kisses, and told her that we love her so much. Then, hubby cooked pancakes while I cooked eggs for our breakfast. Lunch time came and I prepared chicken adobo and rice. Hubby lighted the cake-candles and again, we sang a happy birthday and then I took this picture while MIL was blowing the lighted candles (71). It was a fun day. In the afternoon, MIL and the kids went to the park. And me? I'm composing this post. Wink, wink!