Our holidays celebration this year might be different from how we used to celebrate it. My dad is still unsure whether he can come home before Christmas and my mom is not sure where to spend the holidays if he’s unable to go home. So most probably, I’ll be cooking our first Christmas Eve dinner as a family. Not the ‘family’ with my family or Ramil’s family but just Ramil, me, and Mateo. Mateo’s yaya is also planning to go home to spend Christmas with her family so we might really end up with just a trio on Christmas Eve. I don’t know whether to look forward to it or not. It might be nice if it’s just the three of us.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration might be different however. Ramil and I are concerned with how Mateo will handle all the usual noise of a typical Pinoy New Year’s Eve celebration. My mom is thinking about checking in at a hotel on New Year’s Eve to escape the noise and pollution. It would have been nice if we could have some las vegas hotel reservations but most probably, we’ll try one of the hotels in the Ortigas area. The three of us will be tagging along with my mom (read: freeloading ). Anyway, it’s going to a different Christmas season for us and despite our almost non-existent budget, I’m pretty excited about it. Hopefully, Mateo gets to enjoy it a lot too!

Yup, unfortunately I’m still sick. Just when I thought that the colds have let up, it comes back in full force. What’s worse is Mateo has colds now too and since his chest xray still shows some pneumonia in the lungs, he’s back on antibiotics for a week. Everyone in our house actually got something, yaya is developing a cough, most probably from Mateo, and my sister and Ramil are nursing a cold, most probably from me.

I’m trying my best to think positively and to rest so we can all get better but it makes it more difficult when I have tons of things to do. It’s Math Week in our school this week and we’re cramming the preparations. This week is also the deadline for our exam drafts and I haven’t done anything because of the terrible headache that’s been bugging me every night. I need to make seven exams. How the heck do I do that?!?! Even if my thinking cap is working to its maximum, I think I’d have to forget that I’m sick and that I’m a wife and mother just to be able to finish it. I just need to finish one exam so I can breathe a little easier.

I feel excited every time I look outside everyday at 5:30 pm to realize that it’s so dark it looks like 7:00 pm. Ever since I was a child, I’ve used this marker to indicate that Christmas is just around the corner. I haven’t done any holiday shopping yet and with the limited budget and time that I have, I just might go online and get the things that we’ll be giving as gifts. I hope to have more money for Christmas gifts and a contest might do the trick. Simply sign up here, refer my blog url (www.alaherrera.com) when you sign up, and who knows, I could win $500, $300, or even just $200! I’m hoping for the $500, haha! Even if it’s just $200, it’s going to go a long way. So go ahead and sign up! Watch the video to learn more.

I love the Christmas season! Last year, all we had at home was a small table Christmas tree that’s around 2 feet high. This year, I told Ramil that I’d like to have a real Christmas tree. Just when my plans are looking bleak once again because of budget concerns, my mama offered to loan us their Christmas tree complete with all its decor because she won’t be putting it up in our house in Novaliches. She’s staying most of the time now in my grandparents’ place in UP because of the small store that my dad put up there. She didn’t want to go through the hassle of putting up a tree in a house she barely goes home to.

We took advantage of our break last week and did some moving of the furnitures to make space for the tree. Good thing we didn’t have home theater seating otherwise it would be so much harder to find space for it. We put it up last Wednesday night while Mateo was sleeping. When he saw it the next day, he greeted it with a ‘wow, aas tree!’. He loves it so much he’d give it that same greeting everytime he first sees it in the morning. The only problem is he also loves getting the balls, pulling at the ribbons, and throwing his toys in it.

labor of love

are you okay there Santa?

‘aas tree’

Mateo is finally back to his healthy self. Good thing we had a week-long break last week so I was able to take care of him 100% of the time. He’s always been such a loud complainant whenever he’s sick and he has to drink medicines (whose kid isn’t anyway?). I’m always the only one who makes him drink it and it can be pretty daunting whenever we’re in school so good thing he had the whole house to scream and cry to his heart’s content last week whenever it was time for medicines.

Unfortunately though, I seem to have gotten whatever it is that he got. My throat feels as thick as my unchecked test papers, my head would throb like crazy once in a while, and my nose seems to have forgotten that it’s for breathing. If this is how Mateo felt when he got sick then I can understand when there were days when he wouldn’t eat anything and just drink water most of the time. Unfortunately, the effect on my appetite is not as serious as I was hoping it would be. I think that my hopes of slimming down  because I’m sick just like what happened to Mateo would be for naught.

Ramil is also showing signs of the sickies. He complained of a terrible headache earlier this evening and told me that his eyes feel hot. I jokingly told him that it might be from all the anime he’s been watching online or the wholesale electronics he’s been browsing. We opted to sleep with Mateo at 8:30 pm and then set the alarm clock for 11:30 pm which is the reason why I’m up at 12:30 am and blogging. I’m feeling slightly better now except for the fact that I want to go back to sleep. I have tons of paper to check and record and tons more paper to make. So good luck to the sick me