Maxine's AWESOME voice!

Bella's First Trip to DisneyWorld!

Some of my favorite pictures:





Last week we had our annual family vacation with Grandpa, Uncle Tom, Ninang Maito, Ate Max, and Kuya Tom. This year we decided to do the Disney thing. Bella has already been to Disneyland twice, but it's not the same as DisneyWorld! DisneyWorld is AWESOME.... and exhausting!!!
Warning: some of my pictures are blurry, I couldn't figure out how to use my camera in certain lighting. At least the blurry pictures were also captured by Disney Photographers in the park, so I do have better copies of them, I just can't post them here, sorry!
Click here for first set of Shutterfly pictures.
Click here for the second set of Shutterfly pictures.
So Tom and family arrived a couple days ahead of us, since Mark and I stayed back to attend our highschool reunion. Can you believe 10 years has past already? Anyways, we arrived there last Sunday. Our flight was SO stressfull... we never usually fly with a connection, but this flight we had a stop in Miami (where we were supposed to wait for an hour) and then go on to Orlando. However, our plane was about an hour late leaving here that when we arrived in Miami we had minutes to get to our plane. On top of that stress, I had asked the travel agent at the desk here if I could check in my stroller so I didn't have to pick it up at the gate in Miami, and she told me I would have plenty of time... yeah, right. So when we arrived in Miami, I told Mark that I would wait for the stroller, and that he and dad should find out our flight status to Chicago. When he found out it was leaving in a few minutes, he bolted to the gate... guess who he left behind and did not tell... ME!!! So when I got the stroller, I looked around and no one was there... I tried to call dad or Mark, and no answer... So i just started to walk to the new gate, which Miami's airport is kinda confusing. I was totally pissed off though. When I saw Mark, guess who decided to vomit in the minutes that we had.... you guessed it... Bella (talk about GREAT timing!). Anyways, before we even had a chance to clean her and Mark up, we were dragged on the plane, the last ones on, everyone was already sitting down so it was kinda embarrassing. Now we were off... thank GOD!
We arrived in Orlando about 30 minutes later, and we did the Disney Magical Express, where Disney picks us up and takes us to our hotel, and they get our luggages for us and deliver it to us later. This was pretty cool, totally stress free. We got to the hotel, checked in, ate, headed off to Epcot to meet Tom and gang.
I won't go through our trip day by day, but we had a lot of fun! Tom went to all the parks, but we only went to Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon, and Disney Quest. Turns out, Bella is at that age that she's scared of the characters. I guess when we were at Disneyland, she was too little to be scared, but now she's terrified of them. She's ok if they are at a distant, and she'll look at them, but when they reach out to touch or hug or kiss her, she doesn't like. She still likes her rides, and she LOVES swimming and playing in the water. Little Tom and Bella are hilarious together, and Ate Max is her usual good Ate always helping out and wanting to take care of Bella. So we came back home on Thursday night. I'm still recovering, SO TIRED!!! So, THANK YOU GRANDPA FOR AN AWESOME VACATION TO DISNEYWORLD!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Our Memorial Weekend

Here are our pictures of this weekend. Enjoy!

So I decided to finally post some pictures. Alti and Shawn got married on Saturday! The wedding was beautiful! It was raining all day (for good luck!) and when they were saying their vows, the sun decided to come up (the timing was perfect!). Bella had fun, she actually walked down the aisle, but Mark followed her anyways holding the basket since Bella didn't want to hold the basket. As she walked down the aisle, she saw me on the other side and ran to me while laughing! What a crazy girl!!! I'll have to post the video soon!
The next day, Mark's brother had a BBQ... yummy! The kids played outside on the swing. Ate Joy bought the kids bubbles to play with. These bubble machines she bought are AWESOME! Although, it just shows how lazy our kids are these days. To use the new bubble machines, you no longer have to blow on the dipping thingy anymore, you just press a button and thousands of bubbles are released!!!

Anyways, enjoy the pictures and hopefully I'll update again soon!

Bella has hair!!!

We've been so busy, going here and there. Now that the summer is approaching, we have first communion parties, weddings, birthdays, and vacations! Although Bella will never remember all the places we'll be going to, she'll have lots of pictures to look at... so I'm making sure she knows that we put effort into everything she wears. Bella has so many dresses, but one thing I've been really itching to do is fix her hair. The day has finally arrived...

PIGTAILS!!!

Rest in Peace

To the sweetest dog with the biggest heart,
We will always love you, baby!

Starlight: April 18, 1991 - April 6, 2007

I don't usually like to express to much of my feelings on this blog, mainly since I just use this blog to share pictures and stuff with family and friends, but I guess I need to get my feelings off my chest since this week has been REALLY hard for me. So this past month has been really fast for Starlight. We noticed that she has been throwing up more and not wanting to eat. One day she wasn't really moving and was really out of it, so we had brought her to the vet a few weeks ago to check it out. We had always known that she had congestive heart failure, and had expected her to pass awhile ago, put she kept on going. Mark and I thought that maybe that was the day, but the vet said to try her medicines and go in for a follow up in a month and see if there was any improvement. The next appointment was scheduled for April 17. So about 2 weeks later, Starlight was doing really bad, throwing up more and really not eating. I called the vet, and he adjusted her medicine and told us to call him if any problems. She never really improved. So last Friday, Mark was driving me to work. For some reason I was really down and couldn't stop crying. I started having all these flashbacks of my life with Starlight. On Saturday morning, Mark picked me up late and he told me that Starlight had died. My first reaction was relief, then shock, then sadness. I was relieved that she was no longer in pain, I mean if you had seen her that last week, it was awful.
This rest of that day and the rest of that week was a busy blurr, plus I was working, plus I've been sick.
Now I finally have time to just mope around. I look around, and sometimes call out for her and she's not there. I know that some people think I'm taking this way to hard since she's just a dog, but she was my baby. My dad gave me Starlight a couple days after my mom died when I was eleven years old. Through all the ups and downs in my life, there was this one constant which was Starlight. We pretty much grew up together. We did have time apart where she lived with Tom and Ate in the Philippines, then lived with them here while I was at college, but when I came home, she was here lying down on the couch or just moving room to room with me. I really can't believe she's not here anymore. I look at Sami and feel sorry that she doesn't understand what's going on. In a way, Sami probably feels like I did when my mom died... not really understanding what was going on, and still thinking that she'll be back. Mark says that what makes this really hard for me is that Starlight helped me cope with my mom's death, and so technically I'm grieving for her again along with Starlight. I know through time it will all get better, and I have some many great memories with Starlight. But for now, I just can't stop crying. I just have to think of the full life that I had with Starlight. She was there for all my graduations: 8th grade, high school, college, and pharmacy school. She was there in the Philippines for my brother's wedding at Manila Hotel (she was even served water in a crystal glass!), she was around for Maxine to play horsey with her, she was around for my wedding, and she was around to see Little Tom and Bella. I will never forget when we brought her home from the store, she was so scared and so little. She smelled so pretty since the store put that powdery perfume on her. I remember how we picked her name. I was sitting in the back of the cadillac, and Tom was in the front seat. We were thinking of names, and the rule was that it had to start with an "S" since all our pets started with an "S". We already had Sparky (Tom's dog), SnowWhite (my bird), and Snowball (my hamster). Tom started to just sing songs, and he sang the Madonna song, "Starlight Starbright", and that's how we got her name. Starlight was loveable, she loved everyone who walked into our lives... Those who were not dog lovers, loved Starlight. I will never forget you Starlight...

LA and Las Vegas!

Ok, so I think I mentioned that I won't be going on anymore trips and just relaxing at home for awhile. I was wrong. Mark had a last minute trip to California for work, so that being my off week from work, we joined him! So we arrived on a Monday and flew to Las Vegas on Friday for the weekend to visit our cousins. California was fun and relaxing. Our flight on Monday was delayed due to the snow, so we got there pretty late. Tuesday, I decided to just relax with Bella, I was exhausted from the flight and needed to recover from work also. We went to dinner at Universal Studios City Walk that night. On Wednesday, Bella and I went to Disneyland (again!)! It was different going there pretty much alone without Mark. Whenever we went on rides, I would ask Bella, how was it... her reply, "WHOOOOOOOA, ba ba ba ba ... da da?" She definitely enjoyed more this time then when we went last July. We were able to go on more rides, and Bella was so alert and having a good time. Her first ride was the Buzzlight year ride. This ride had zapper guns, and when we hopped on the ride, Bella grabbed the the guns and started screaming, "WHOOOOOAAAAAAAA.l... woooooowww!!!". Then she grabbed this joystick that caused our seat to spin around! Other rides we went on were: Winnie the Pooh, It's a Small World, Innoventions, Jungle Cruise, and Adventures of Pinnochio. I was going to go on Peter Pan and Snow White, but I got scared. We were on the Adventures of Pinnochio ride and were sitting by ourselves in our car. The ride was very dark, so dark you couldn't see the car in front or in back of you. I guess I had forgotten the Pinnochio's adventures were scary. The only thing keeping my from crying on the ride was knowing that my little Bella was protecting me. So after that, it brought back memories of how scary the snow white ride could be. So I opted not to go on those rides.
Anyways, Thursday we hung out and went to Santa Monica. Friday, we went to see the starts footprints. We saw Shirley Temples (my mom's favorite actress!). So I took pictures of Bella fitting her hands into hers. SO CUTE!!! Then we went to the Kodak theater, saw the Hollywood sign, then to Santa Monica again. We boarded a plane and off to Vegas to meet my cousins, and my dad joined us on Saturday!
Vegas was SO FUN!!! Walked to all the hotels, ate all the buffets, gambled (Mark & Dad won, I lost :(, but I did win when Mark bought my DIOR (which I LOVE since the pattern was from the 1970s when my mom had her bag)!!!

Anyways, here are the CALIFORNIA AND LAS VEGAS PICTURES!!!

Belated Christmas Pictures

Totally late, but finally up! Here are our CHRISTMAS PICTURES and a couple pictures of us celebrating New Years at my work. There's a ton of pictures of us trying to take our x-mas card pictures with my 3 babies. So I would just fast forward those pictures. There's some pictures of us making Mark's parents x-mas present of Bella's hand and footprints on a plate, then I think pictures of the stocking I made, then some pictures of Bella trying to open her x-mas presents early. Christmas started at Ninong Gil's house on Christmas Eve with the usual Christmas Eve group. Then Mark and I headed off to church, and then celebrated Christmas Eve again with the 3 grandparents at our house. The next day we celebrated Christmas Day with Mark's mom side of the family. Then off to work I went!

Bella's 1st Birthday Party

Before we left for the Philippines, we threw Bella her 1st birthday party at Maggianos. We had a lot of fun seeing people we haven't seen in forever, we had a magician who was fantastic, all in all a good time.


Click here for more pictures of Bella's First Birthday Party!

Our Little World Traveler

So I just realized that Mark, Bella, and I have been on the go since around Thanksgiving. Every weekend there has been something going on from Thanksgiving at Tom's house, visiting Andrew in Wisconsin/Minnesota, Christmas, New Years, Bella's first birthday party, the Philippines, and Bella getting sick. So we're finally taking a break. I don't think we have any plans in the immediate future, so it'll be nice just staying at home, fixing up our things, and definitely baby proofing this house! So it's really early in the morning now. Apparently Bella and I are still jet lagged, and we slept all afternoon. Bella fell asleep at around 1pm, then I fell asleep around 2ish. Mark came home at 5:30ish and said hello to us, then left for his haircut. When he came home around 8, Bella and I were still asleep! We didn't officially wake up until around 1am when Mark forced me to wake up to take my meds. So hopefully I'll have more energy later on today to share the bday pictures and x-mas pictures. But for now, here's the Philppines pictures. Enjoy!
FYI: Bella is so much better, you wouldn't even know she was hospitalized for 3 days!

Philippines picture 1of2

Philippines picture 2of2

"AHHHHHHH"

There's lots of pictures and videos to post, but no time at all. We're busy planning our little one-year-old-to-be's birthday party, plus busy packing for our big trip!!!
Lots of things happened since I last posted. We had the holidays. We spent x-mas eve at Uncle Gil's house, went to midnight mass, and had our own little x-mas celebration with us and the grandparents at our house. Bella got a little grand piano from Santa, and she gave us a little concert. I will post that video at a later date... it's hilarious... she even gets up a little and bows. X-mas was spent at Mark's aunts house, where we had to leave early since I had to work that night.
Tom and family came home for New Year's Eve, where I was still at work, so the whole gang joined me in ringing the New Year at Walgreens! So the holidays were fun and exhausting, now we're just running around getting ready for this weekend.

So Bella is now a walker. She's been walking from furniture to furniture for a few months now, and she's taken a couple steps here and there, but I never considered that walking. But now she really walks... she walks up and down the hallways, even turning around and walking the other way! She's so cute, she keeps her hands out in front of her for balance... it's so cute!
Uncle Tom taught Bella how to clap to "If you're happy and you know it." Belly's so good, she claps on cue! So now I'm teaching her "Twinkle Twinkle" using the "close-open" hand gesture.

Anyways, so Bella's newest trick was last night. Mark and I ordered out, and we've been pretty much feeding Belly anything now. Mark decided to order her tater tots (apparently Bella has started eating her school's hot lunch plan and she's been loving tater tots). Anyways, we were sitting on the couch eating dinnr, Bella came up to me with her mouth wide open waiting for her tot. I hesistated a little, then she brought her mouth closer to me. I grabbed her tater tot, and was heading towards her mouth, when she suddenly screamed, "AHHHHHHHHHH". This was SOOOOOOOO cute!

Christmas stocking

Just to be clear, that last post was from Mark. Anyways, I've been working on this stocking for 3 years. It was originally supposed to be for Mark on our first x-mas after we were married, but that never got done... too busy with school. Then our second x-mas we went to the Philippines, so no stocking needed. Then next x-mas we were waiting for Bella to arrive, so we didn't put anything up cuz we wanted to keep the house clean, plus all her baby stuff was all over the place. So now that Bella's here, there was no way I could finish Mark's stocking plus get one ready for Bella. So Mark decided to give up the stocking I started for him 3 years ago, and I would finish it for Bella instead.
So here it is!!!

But don't worry, Mark has a stocking. Everytime we go to visit Maxine and family around the holidays, they always have presents and stocking stuffer presents. So Ate Maito always make us a stocking (what a wonderful sister I have!) So this is one of the stockings from a long time ago that Maxine helped decorate.

Daddy's Little Girl

So pretty much during my junior and senior year of college, if you ran into me at school, you can see me wear basically one of two things, my black North Face Fleece during the cold winter days, or my Berkeley sweatshirt during the cool fall days (plus I was probably wearing this sweatshirt underneath my North Face in winter) So I went back to Champaign in October of 2005 for work and bought our own little Bella a 12 month orange Illinois sweatshirt. She's getting bigger as we speak so she finally fits into it. Needless to say, she only worn it once.

Can't wait for Christmas!!!

So we've been getting ready for Bella's first Christmas! It's been pretty hectic finishing Christmas shopping, wrapping all the gifts, not to mention we're also planning her first birthday party and our big trip coming up!

Anyways, we finally finished decorating our x-mas tree. We put it up the day before Thanksgiving, but procrastinated putting the ornaments up. I didn't want to take our Christmas card pictures until the ornaments were up, so we ended up taking the pictures a few days ago, and thanks to my wonderful Walgreens, we were able to mail them out the next day. That was a tough picture to take trying to get all 4 of my children in the picture. First Sami and Starlight were misbehaving, then when they started cooperating, Bella got tired of it, then Mark got irritable. But we got a picture thanks to Grandpa Marvin!
So I've finished wrapping up all the presents and I put Bella's under the tree. I figured this year would be the only year she wouldn't really care about opening presents. Boy, was I wrong! She keeps sneaking over to her presents when we're not looking and slowing picking at the wrapper. Today, she got more aggressive and obvious...

Geez Bella, wait for Christmas!!!!

New Playmate!

So last weekend we went to visit Andy, Melissa, and baby Andrew. We also got to go to the Mall of America for our Christmas shopping... no tax!
Here are some pictures...

Nice long weekend...

So Bella's first Thanksgiving was fun. We had our family brunch at our house in the morning, then we headed over to one of Mark's aunt's house for dinner. Unfortunately, Bella was in a good mood in the morning, but by the evening, she started to feel warm. By the time we got home her fever spiked to 103! So grandpa Tom (also known now as Grandpa Doc) came over at 3am to help us sponge her down. Eventually we got her fever down to 100. We had plans to drive and visit Maxine and family, but Mark and I debated back and forth until we found ourselves in the car halfway to Pennsylvania! Bella slept the whole way, and we figured that Tom could take a look at Belly. When we arrived, LT was jumping and he screams, "Yes! Tracy!" I was totally stunned. The boy is really talking, it's so CUTE! So we just bummed around all weekend... eat, sleep, shop, etc. Eventually, Belly's fever never went away, so Tom gave her a Ceftriaxone shot. Her first antibiotic. So here are some pictures of this weekend...
Belly's x-mas tree in our Pennsylvania bedroom from Ninang Maito and Uncle Tom

Our turkey...

The girls all wearing Burberry skirts...

Belly's buddy, LT

Matching sweaters with Ate Max...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy first Thanksgiving to our baby girl!!! So this year I decided to start the turkey tradition, just so my kids have some kind of memory of mommy cooking on Thanksgiving morning, just like my memories with my mom.
So here is my first turkey...

Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner

So we had our cooking club Thanksgiving Dinner this past Saturday.

Bella's ready to dig in!!!

Can you find my shoe?

So Bella tried to climb out of her playzone playpen. She tried to use this dragon to get out. When we lifted her out of the playzone, we noticed she only had one shoe off. Where could her other shoe be?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

We're still celebrating Halloween, but Bella is taking a nap so I decided to share some pictures of today so far.

No more Erie, PA

So my brother and his family moved out of Erie this past month. Last weekend we went to visit them. Here are the pictures!!!