8 years

It's been eight years today since our dear Lola Agre passed on.

the way we were

Lolo Cente, Lola Agre and all of us!

Tita Mary recently arrived from a three-month vacation in America and she brought back with her this precious photograph from Tita Gloria's album. This was taken circa 1975 during one of Tita Gloria's visits.

busy sunday

::It's my mother's 78th birthday today so we've been busy with food and stories, food and stories, food and stories...::

lolo and lola

We had dinner tonight at the Monkey Grill near the boulevard. Lolo Vito scanned the menu and declared, "I want to try the Monkey Grill Iced Tea!" curious as to what jungle delights it could bring.

But when the drinks came, there was nothing reminiscent of a monkey or a grill in them. Oh, well. Lolo and Lola are the easiest people to please. They happily sipped away anyway.

nieces and nephews

birthday boy Onin in yellow

Angel and Abegail

Aya

Cedric

lola agre's birthday

We had a little dinner gathering at home tonight to celebrate Lola Agre's birthday. It was also a time to check out the wedding (Ivy and Clyde's) and family reunion pictures in Houston, thanks to Lhet's posting in Facebook!

15 years ago, in 1994
Lola Agre with me and Carlo (4 months old)

ivy and clyde

Here's my dear, dear cousin, Ivy, with her parents, Tito Felix and Tita Paro, on her wedding day, June 22, 2009, in Houston. Clyde is somewhere there near the altar, beaming his big smile.

Isn't she lovely?

June Birthdays

Lots of birthdays and lots of eating this June.

Anton, Jean and birthday boy Jovitt

Jean and me feasting, on the occasion of our niece Anari's 8th birthday. There's a lechon at my back and humba right in front of me, and lots of other goodies all around.

Opadas* all aboard the Ocean Jet

*My paternal grandmother was Maria "Iyay" Opada. Uncle Loloy, Uncle Joe, Uncle Mado and my father are her living male children.

Jean, Lynette, Ruby, Lyndon, Jovitt, Lolo Mado, Lolo Vits, Anton

Uncle Loloy and Uncle Joe

the Opadas from Ayungon, who will be hosting the next reunion

night and day

There are a dozen things I want to write about but have not been able to because the past nights and days have been extra busy. So it'll have to be representative photos only for now.

This first image shows the Dumaguete Boulevard at 8 pm, the time that our Ocean Jet fastcraft from Tagbilaran, Bohol docked at the pier, after we attended the two-day Opada Clan Reunion. I did not know I have so many relatives in Bohol!

shining, shimmering, splendid

And this second picture here is one of the few shots we took during the day, while we were basking in the white sands and crystal clear waters of Panglao Island in Bohol. I said few shots because the water was just so perfectly delicious it was almost sacriligeous to do anything but soak and swim in it.

cuz Tata, toasted me, and the lovely blue southern sea

bingbong and tonette

Finally, a picture of the Mirafor family during the wedding of Bingbong and Tonette, that btw, I missed going to last December. That young lady in yellow is my niece, Paula, who graduated from Grade 6 with honors last March. She is multi- multi-talented: she can sing, dance, teach dance, write, lead, and also she weblogs!

the lovely bride, my new cousin-in-law, Tonette

Cheers to the newly weds!

(click on the photos to link to more wedding pictures)

valentine's birthday

HAPPY 83rd BIRTHDAY, LOLO VITS!

ernie, antoinette and batch '78

Today is my cousin Ernie's (aka Bingbong) wedding to Antoinette and almost all my relatives are in Cebu to attend the big event but here I am, left alone in Dumaguete... duty calls and all that. I was supposed to follow them (my relatives who kept running commentaries and updates by text messaging) as soon as possible but it turned out work finished at almost seven pm so it was way too late to go to Cebu.

It wasn't too late though to attend the Batch '78 Christmas gathering held at the Hayahay Restobar in Piapi. This was an instant tapok as text messages started circulating at around 6 pm already, but a good number of Batch '78ers were there. Atit, Erlyn, Mitch and Hya from Manila were present as well as the usual Dumaguete suspects.

This year's Christmas party was sponsored by Ingrid G., who is on vacation from Obama country Chicago. Ingrid was here in 2007, twenty-two years after she left the country. And Ingrid so thoroughly enjoyed that last visit that she vowed she'll come home more often. And the very next year, 2008, she made good on her promise. Salamat, Ingrid, for the tons of delicious food we (over)ate!

family reunion 2008

It's been a hectic day. The highlight of which was our family reunion party and exchanging of gifts. In the words of my nine-year-old nephew Onin: "The best Christmas ever!"

Next up: We're all (well, almost all) going to Cebu for my cousin Bingbong's wedding on Monday.

aya princesa

Though the men in the clan had the better singing voices, little princess Aya had ample time with the microphone as well. It was her second birthday party, afterall. XOXOX, Aya!

cousins galore

happy birthday, Aya!

We had a party last night to celebrate the second birthday of my sister's youngest child, Aya. Cousins from my mother's side and cousins from my father's side, together with their spouses and toddler kids joined us and it was just incredible to see so many little ones scurrying around!

It was chuckle-funny to hear my male cousins, who used to be such carefree bachelors living their singlehood to the max, now talking about diapers, feeding bottles and developmental milestones of babyhood. :-D Plus they couldn't sit and banter with each other over their beers as some little hands would tug at them and drag them away, "Daddy, here! Daddy, I want this!" Or some little feet would be climbing all over them, from leg, abdomen, chest and right over the shoulder.

Really, I lost tract and count of the number of kids running around, there surely was a lot of them! Nicknames of the kids are confusing, too, so I just sort of stopped trying to match names and faces. Let me try. Ruel and Estela: Luke Daniel. Tomas and Annie: Tom-Tom and Anari. Ging-ging and Jane: Cedric. Bubong and Limay: I think they had four kids with them with ages ranging from 9 months to 12 years old. Jovitt and Jean: Anton. Christine and Bing: EJ. Dodong and Cecille: Jeff, JC, Paolo. Edgar and Nanet: Onin, Bhea, Aya. Not sure if I missed any...

I have a little problem at present. My card reader cannot read the memory card from my brother-in-law's camera so I can't get the pictures out of the camera to my computer, for now.

So I'll just have write a thousand words here so you can have a mental picture of said party. But since I'm so sleepy already, I'll just leave you with this mental and possibly auditory image:
The males (cousins and in-laws) gathered in the garage and did the Philippines' number one past time => karaoke sing-a-long! And it just so happened that all of them have very good singing voices. So it was a treat to be washing dishes with good live music playing at the side. ;-p

octobertdeys

It's my Lolo Cente's birthday today and though he is no longer with us, we celebrated his birthday yesterday with a potluck lunch at home.

Lola Agre and Lolo Cente, late 1970's

Yesterday was also my sister-in-law Jean's birthday so it was a double celebration.

birthday girl, Jean, flanked by Bhea, JC, Jeff2x, Onin, Anton & EJ

Tita Paro and Tito Felix in Houston "joined" us for lunch via Skype. We placed my laptop on the dining table so they could participate in our table talk! Cousin Ivy from the mesas of Pinon, Arizona also Skyped in. ::sigh:: How they missed our good old Filipino fare and wished they could have a plateful of our lunch.

May I enumerate? :-)

Halaan soup (again? why not?)

Shrimps (fresh as can be, like some of them were jumping before turning red in the pan)

Binakhaw (new experiment by Edgar)

Pork disaster (hehe, joke lang. it was supposed to be sinigang but it turned out to be something like adobo!! not by me, by the way. it was by... ummphh! ::hand covers my mouth:: akk...ukk... ok, i'm not allowed to tell. ;p )

Sinugbang pork

Pancit palabok sa bilao

Dinuldog (by Tita Mary)

Biko (for snacks but served during lunch as well)

Puto and Tsokolate (painit)

Birthday Cake (demolished in three secs. it was good.)

anton at ten

My dear nephew, who had dengue a couple of weeks ago,

is now a ten-ager!

happy birthday, Anton!

with Papa, Mama and Ronald McDonald

be patient, dear patient

Now I know why patients are called patients. It is because they have to wait, ever so patiently, for their illness to run its full course. Such course of illness can be derailed, can take expected or unexpected twists and turns, but it cannot be rushed.

Such was our experience when my nephew, Anton, was afflicted with dengue this past week. We could not do anything but wait and watch as the fever spiked then abated, as the hematocrit rose to alarming levels, as the platelet count steadily dropped. He did not have the classical dengue, which is milder, but he had the dreaded kind of dengue which merited admission to the pediatric ICU for four days and three nights. All those times his parents stayed by his side, attending to his needs, waiting for the med techs to come every six hours to take blood samples, sleeping only in snatches by hunching over the foot of his bed.

After four days in the ICU his platelet went up to a comfortable level and his hematocrit went down to normal. We were all so glad, relieved, jubilant, grateful.

After more than a week at the hospital, Anton was discharged this afternoon and is now back home. Oh, happy day!

m.i.b.

Some of the guapo men in my life, with their Filipino and Americanized names: l-r

Gingging/Leandro - in black shades

Ontoi/George - in black suit

Toto/Arnold - in black suit

Ying/Gary - in black suit

Tata/Paul - in black shades and black suit as well

They are all my cousins (the two men with black shades are brothers and the other two men with red vests are brothers, too) except the guy in a blue shirt, who is my brother.

at the Hyatt, SF

They are all naka-porma because it was the 8-08-08 wedding of my cousin, Bingbing/Frances to Allan, in San Francisco, CA.

Best Wishes to the newlyweds!


(sorry, i don't have a good rez picture of the couple yet, hope somebody will send me one!)