Merry Christmas !!!

Credits: Quick Page by Jennifer Schmitt

All My Bags are Packed, I'm Ready To Go...

Aoûtiens

Camping Advocates

After a lot of last minute changes and hesitations, we're finally leaving for vacation this weekend. It will be a 3-weeks getaway, starting off at the Ardeche area where we will most probably mount our newly-bought tent for the first time. As a growing family, Frenchguy and I both agreed that our miniature tent will not be spacious enough to hold Louna alone so we ended up buying a new one. Tho it won’t be Louna’s first camping experience, we still prepare ourselves to a roller coaster ride with a toddler in tow.

Mountain Climbers

Next in line will be the Pyrenees where we will stay in a nice vacation village situated atop the mountains. We took the option Pension Complete which means everything will be prepared for us, from breakfast to dinner. We deserve a break, okay? A lot of outdoor activities are also proposed everyday so it will be a busy week for us. An in-house day-care is available in case we want to do some sporty adventure sans Louna.

Ocean Adventurers

Next and last stopover will be at my BIL’s beach house at the Vendée area. The house is reserved only for us so it will be a cool moment to spend family time together without worrying about community activities. I particularly dig the ice cream eating session every afternoon.

Back-Packers

All these vacation itineraries had been a pain to organize and I hope everything will turn out alright, that we’ll have a great weather and Louna will go home to Dijon fully potty trained. Frenchguy and I would take separate work destinations direct from our vacation hideaway and the little Miss will spend a week more at her grandparent’s place. Yes, aside from the vacation must-haves that we packed, we’re adding two laptops and our passports on the list.


I’m Living on a Jetplane.

If you have to gauge yourself, what is your competence with process A using machine B ?

That was my boss’ welcome question when I arrived back from a 3-weeks business travel last month.

Bosing, to tell you frankly, I could work with that process using that machine with my eyes closed.

Yabang ko no? But apparently, I hit the right answer. Before I knew it, I got myself named for another assignment and with that came an air ticket and loads of emails. I tried to protest from my boss, telling him that he could surely name somebody from our Asian team with the same expertise, so we could save from air tickets, that I could always act as a support through emails, chat, call conference, video conference yada yada yada, to which he answered :

The request is from our sister company and they’re paying all of your expenses. I’m even checking on how I could charge them your travel incentives and your one week salary. With that said, they’re expecting a credible and reliable support from you…

Oh. Thanks for the added pressure. I really appreciate it.

Now here’s the catch. The sister company is based in the Philippines and I don’t think they know that I’m a Filipina. I just hope they won’t ask their money back because they’re expecting a French expert and all they could get is dark-brown Pinay.


PMN Fam Pics

But before I finally close my bags and hit the road to vacation, I’d like to share to you my un-official entry to the PMN Fam Pics saga’s August theme – Glossy. Here’s my little darling with her Glossy Apple Cheeks. This picture was taken after our summer vacation last year.

Credits: Verena Karolyi for the Papers and Suzanne C. Walker of DSP for the WordArt.

A Star in the Making

And before I end this already long post, please visit this site and listen to the group Plastiq Passion (Jessica Chaos) under the Music category. The woman behind the guitar is a cool mom who rocks between work, family and her passion - music. As she said, some moms do cross-stitching. She plays with her guitar. Ain't that cool? And would you believe that inspite of that seemingly hectic schedule, she still has time to meet blogger friends who lost their way to NY?

And oh, before I forget, please vote for the group ;).


Temporary Hiatus

This blog will officially be on temporary hiatus starting Sunday, August 5. All work and no play make John a dull boy. You wouldn’t want to see me get bored of my everyday life, would you?

See you in September.

Easter Egg Hunter

She's just finished collecting all the easter eggs in Dijon. A bit early, yes. But early bird catches the eggs. She's heading off to Strasbourg this weekend for another easter egg hunt. Happy Easter, folks!

Scrap It

Credits: Backgrounds by Joyce Designs of Scrapbook Bytes, Jamie Rousselle and Beth Nixon of Digital Scrapbook Place, Button Stitches by Tracey Rennemo and Stitches by AC Perky of Scrapbook Bytes.

I was browsing on our old memorabilias and I stumbled on our wild, wild, west adventures last October 2004. It was our late summer vacation getaway as I was tied with work for the whole summer. Tho I was a newbie at work at that time, thus no paid leave yet, I had sufficient days off due to all the Saturdays I've worked for my project in the Philippines.

Going back to the subject, it's probably one of our best vacations together so I thought, it's worth the scrap. As I was working on it, I can't help but smile on the memories which started rushing in: Frenchguy playing cowboy! I was actually with a little boy at that time. In fact, he's of the Western Spaghetti generation. Ya know, playing guns at 8 years old thinking he was a cowboy hehe. So there you go, my Frenchguy, playing actor, and moi, the photographer.

Have a great weekend!

First-Time Gardener

Winter is exceptionally warm this year. The snow has timidly showed only once in Dijon just to remind people that it was indeed winter. The whole February adopted spring temperatures that jonquilles (daffodil) started to blossom three weeks earlier than the normal time.They're supposed to be in full bloom starting March. Anyways.

This weekend, Frenchguy and I finally decided to start on our common project - garden beautification. Early or not, we don't really know. Like the plants, we also lost our mark.

Since we moved to this house, it's actually my first time to work outside our house perimeter. I was preggy on the first spring, a doting Mom on the second. This year seems to be the best time for me to initiate on gardening. We could work on our rhythm while Louna occupies herself with her toys.

We started by removing all the weeds and boy, that was tiring. We then removed all the lavender plants infront of the house and replaced the soil (we will do the planting next week). We ended by putting some fertilizers and now, I'm aching everywhere. Should I confess that gardening is NOT my passion?

This weekend, however, is far more of a gardening experience. For the past years, Frenchguy and I led a somewhat separate life (limit that to gardening time please). He worked in the garden while I took care of Louna. He's tired.. and I was equally tired. But not for the same reason. He thought I was escaping from gardening, I thought he was escaping from being a father. Gardening was translated to friction in our couple. This weekend was a whole new experience tho. We were together. We were both tired but we were happy and satisfied. I guess I will do love gardening after all. Louna does.

Embellishments from Free Digital Scrapbooking.

I Love This!

Credits: Word Art by Tina Chambers from DSP

I had myself an Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 for a Christmas gift and I start to love it. Just starting to learn the twists and turns, lurking for freebies, checking for tutorials, making scrappy scraps. This one's too neophyte probably, but I just love it.

Scraps, Work, atbp.

I never imagined how scrapbooking could take as much of my time that I even have no time for blogging. In return, I have 20 lovely scraps hanging on my kitchen window: from Louna's first smile to her first birthday. I even bought the latest version of Photoshop to really indulge myself to this latest passion. Though it's really fun to create, I have to admit that it's equally tiring. So to unwind, frenchguy asked me to go down south on which I readily said yes with the condition to meet fellow pinay bloggers. That was great, I finally had my first ever EB with Haze, Makis and Jhona! Nice to meet you ladies, that was fun!

Louna singing, obviously enjoying this magnificent view.

But to be honest, work has been keeping me busy too. In fact, after my maternity leave, I was more or less a lazy couch potato at work, dealing with nonsense projects. In consequence, I had no salary raise which is quite normal. I then talked to my boss that Louna's big enough now and I wanted to reboost my career, which meant I needed more work. From then on, I learned another lesson: be careful with what you're wishing for. It could come true. Darn, I'm busy!

As if being busy at work and home aren't enough to keep me turning, I received an appointment last week for an interview at the prefecture. The problem is, I won't be available on the proposed date so I hurriedly went to the prefecture first hour the next day to get another appointment. I was then surprised by all the other applicants crowding the entrance so I moved to get closer just to be pushed after by the applicants-turned-rugbymen when the door finally opened. Para akong nasa LRT! The funnier thing is that these rugbymen tried to block the machine distributing the tickets. But these stupid bastards pushed the wrong button so I ended up 2nd on the list. haha! Gusto ko silang dilaan, bwahahaha!

Ooppps, by the way, Nao tagged me weeks ago and asked me to lie 5x. Bad girl! Though I really tried hard to lie as much, hindi po talaga ako sinungaling (hehe). So now, believe my stories or not, I inserted some lies in between. Don't count 5, I don't think I reached the target.