A Christmas Tale

First of all, we wish you a Merry Christmas! And may we all feel the love of our Savior this season and always!

So Christmas is here bringing us good cheer! We had two Christmas dinners at our home with our dear friends and their families. The food was great… everyone brought in something special… we are sooo stuffed! We laughed… we played… we sing... we chatted… we watched a movie… we had a wonderful time to say the least!

Pre-Christmas dinner

Christmas Eve dinner

Then on Christmas day… we went out to watch movies! Avatar is sooo good! Saw it in 3D! Everyone should see it! Sherlock Holmes on the other hand is just ok :)

First in line!! Woohoo!

Random Things

This is a collection of random things that happened lately. :)

First snow of the season! (I have to put the date on this one, Dec 5, 2009) it’s a beautiful site! Still not liking it though. :)

Made my very first ginger bread house at our RS Souper Saturday activity. Not bad I think :) just don’t place it next to the other ones… or this would look like a shanty hahaha!

I had my dose of the The Twilight sequel New Moon! Watched it with a bunch of girlfriends from church… which made it even more fun!

Rainier turned 2! Since we didn’t have kids to bring to the party… we make it up by being the KIDS! Hahaha!

We witnessed a dream become a reality… our dear friend Roland completed his MBA! Yay!

Drove to the Berkshire in Massachusetts… nice place. Was not able to take pictures though :( just this one on our way there. We’re going back so… next time. :)

Googled my hubby’s name :)

I Google a lot! I Google stuff about anything from a word definition to work related stuff to knowing something about something to recipes to artsy stuff to… yeah, how to put on make-up hahaha (don’t judge me I’m a late bloomer). Then just out of the blue, I googled my dear hubby’s name :) and found this blog entry/article where he was mentioned… it’s pretty cool I think… here is an excerpt and the link to the blog:

Blog Link: About Oracle (http://rwijk.blogspot.com/2008/09/oracle-openworld-day-2.html)

“I decided to have a look what Greg Pike had to say about the forum. His point was that he was amazed at the speed and the quality of the answers in the SQL and PL/SQL forum,…

Greg showed a particular thread he participated in about a quite complicated query combining string aggregation and counting. He was impressed by the answers ("these guys are unbelievable"), and went on to show all the given alternatives by Warren Tolentino, Nicolas Gasparotto, Rob van Wijk and michaels, solving the problem with hierarchical queries, model clause and xmldb stuff…”

Warren is a regular to the Oracle forums website, will try to help on questions that people post regarding things they are having trouble with in their codes or things they wanted to improve in their codes or some general questions about SQL and PL/SQL. I know he’s very good at what he do but his kind of modest about it. And so to see other people recognizing and appreciating him, I think, is kind of cool. :) He’s pretty surprised when I showed him this hahaha!

Thanksgiving and a Wedding

Thanksgiving Every Day
By Karl Fuchs

The table is brimming with good things to eat;
We're surrounded by family and friends; what a treat.
The feelings that fill us today can’t be beat;
It’s Thanksgiving Day, and it all feels complete.

But other days, sometimes things don’t seem so fine;
Those days are not polished and don’t seem to shine.
It's then in our minds, we forget all the good,
And think of the things we would get, if we could.

On days when our thinking causes us dread,
If we could remember, it’s all in our head,
And not let our minds take our gratitude away,
Then we'd make every day like Thanksgiving Day.

It’s always good to be with families and friends on days like the Thanksgiving Day. It always makes us feel more blessed and grateful for the love we feel around and the joy of being together. We drove to South Carolina for 14 hours to be with families on this day… and it’s worth the trip!

at uncle Nanding's house (Warren's mom's brother)

Then on Saturday the 28th, Ivy (Warren’s only sister) and Erik were married. It was beautiful! Everyone was sooo overjoyed and is beaming with pride for the couple as the two exchanged their I DOs. It was very evident that love abounds at the wedding! The reception on the other hand was crazy fun! Everyone seems to have a wonderful time from the food to the dance floor! I know we did! :)

The wedding

and a solo pic of us too of course :)

Prepping for the holidays :)

Christmas breeze is in the air… holiday décor is everywhere…

We have Parol in NY everybody! Look it! We bought this precious little thing from our last vacation in the Philippines and we were so excited and anxiously waiting since for this time to come to be able to hang this with pride on our humble abode. It does make it feels like home even with the brutally cold breeze of winter… it warms our hearts!

my dear warren working hard as usual with me as the spectator and helper too of course :)

So, since we hung the Parol… might as well put up the tree!

Aaaah… Christmas breeze is in the air… holiday décors everywhere!

But of course we didn’t forget about Thanksgiving… its one of the holidays here that we do enjoy. Not only because of all the good food but also of what it’s for… a celebration of being grateful of anything and everything! We’re driving to South Carolina for Thanksgiving and a Wedding… so we’re very excited! :)

Happy Halloween!

Good thing it falls on a Saturday! No need to rush to go home from work, prepare dinner and have the candies out ready for the kids. We even have quite a few chores done that day… so proud of ourselves!

Goofing around while waiting for the trick’r treaters… with our friend Roland.

Then later went to our friends house for dinner… so nice of them as always to invite us over… here is warren with little Elmo… sooo cute!

One of the chores done that day… yes, it’s time for our yearly workout! Look at the sea of leaves! :(

body sore the next day :(