Tag: Christmas

Oslob New Village Christmas 2022 Celebration

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

How’s everyone doing? I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday season!

It’s been a year since Typhoon Odette hit us and just remembering that makes me feel all the more grateful because this Christmas, the weather has been good to us. Though it’s a bit cloudy and sometimes windy here in Oslob, at least so far, there’s no typhoon in the horizon. Thank you, God!

And so, we decided to celebrate our Christmas here at Oslob New Village. The original plan was actually to check in at a nice resort like what we used to do before in Cagayan de Oro but then we figured it would be more fun to celebrate it here at our own mini resort because we have Jona and Wenie (our staff at Oslob New Village) to celebrate with.

I created a vlog about it. Enjoy!

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Holiday Musings [and a Recap of Halloween]

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Our 2022 is about to end. I’ve been reviewing my previous blog posts here and my life has really been “more of the same” kind of thing. Just like last 2019, when I wasn’t even able to blog about our Halloween celebration because of my jam-packed schedule at work, with motherhood, and family! And it’s happening again this time of the year!

Don’t get me wrong though — I DO LOVE OUR LIFE AND THE LIFESTYLE WE’VE BEEN LIVING — it’s been the best year so far — so many celebrations, so many happenings, so many blessings despite the sleepless nights from my VA work, being a homemaker, and homeschooling our now 7-year old kid! So, I’m gonna give myself a little pat on the back here…

Jen 1: “You’re such a superwoman, Mommy Jennie!”

Jen 2: “I know… I know…” 😉

Anyway, I am not going to let 2022 pass by without documenting here my most favorite holiday. For those who have just started to follow me here, Halloween is my most favorite and Christmas comes second. Though I like Christmas, Halloween is just more fun for me with all the trick or treating, candies, and costumes. Don’t you think? So though it’s already December and we’ve started decorating our little home resort for Christmas (you can check my FB page for updates), sharing my favorite holiday here with you this late is better than never, isn’t it?

But before that, let me just give you a rundown of our Halloween activities since Tuz was born. Re-reading my blog entries here… Oh what a roller coaster ride it has been! So many trials, joys, financial troubles, and tribulations. From being in a long distance relationship with Mahal, to finally living together in my first dream home, to giving that up in exchange for living the hard kind of life at the farm, then back to city life and experiencing tiny home living and finally, living the beach kind of life which has always been my dream. It makes me all the more grateful for the life we have now because we are living our best life so far and we can’t wait for things to keep getting better and better…

(2014, 2015, 2016) Nuvali Night Sky Cinema

(2016) Thoughts This Halloween

(2016) Nuvali Night Sky Cinema 2016 Family Event

(2017) Halloween 2017: How to Let Go of Attachments

(2018) Halloween 2018 – Transformative Lessons and Realizations

(2020) How to Celebrate Major Holidays During a Pandemic: Halloween Feature + a Guide

(2021) The Root of Happiness (And How I Found It Around Halloween)

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Typhoon Rai (Odette): Nightmare Before Christmas 

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Just when you had everything planned out for the remainder of the year — your tasks, projects, finances, celebrations… the biggest typhoon of your life hit you — metaphorically and literally. 

We were minding our usual business… I was working and finishing my deadlines for the week and getting ready for client meetings. Mahal was busy with the resort. Everyone was working. Though we were getting news reports about an impending typhoon, upon checking, the eye of Typhoon Rai or locally known as Typhoon Odette won’t be hitting us but instead, it will head straight to Cebu City which is 3-4 hours away from where we are. We had plans of doing our Christmas shopping there that weekend so we figured that we just had to reschedule. Plus, we’ve already experienced so many kinds of weather conditions here that we became complacent. We felt confident that it’s just another one of those storms. There could possibly be a brownout (electricity getting cut off) that will last for an hour or two, or at the most overnight, but that was it. We didn’t do any kind of preparation at all — we didn’t save water; we didn’t charge our phones and electrical devices; we didn’t check if we still have enough gas; we didn’t buy supplies… nothing. It was as if it was just another day in our beach kind of life. 

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unboxing Christmas gifts

5-Year Old Tuz Unboxes His Christmas Gifts [Christmas in the eyes of a Child]

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This is the first Christmas that we’re giving Tuz Christmas gifts. In the past years, we would just spend Christmas at a hotel resort, party, feast, and be merry as a family with no gifts! Now that he’s five years old, we thought that he would be able to appreciate receiving gifts from Santa, just like it was the first time for us to give him birthday gifts when he turned 5 last November.

The idea for what gifts to give him (they were mostly toys for unstructured learning) came from a lawyer I spoke with last month. We were having an affidavit done to process Tuz’s last name and for Mahal to formally acknowledge him and use his last name (long story short, I had Tuz when I was still married to my ex so to avoid problems, his last name on his birth certificate is my last name and he has no middle name). I’ve been annulled for two years already (declared null & void ab initio – meaning the marriage never really happened in the first place and that I’ve always been single) so it’s just about time for us to start processing his paternity. Anyway, in the middle of chit-chatting with this lawyer, she suggested that we buy unstructured toys for Tuz… toys that help him solve problems on his own… He already has some of these toys at home but I bought some more as part of his independent homeschooling program. 

Here’s Tuz getting excited about Santa delivering his gifts and him finally opening them! I hope you enjoy the vid! Christmas is really for the kids!

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Christmas

Unexpected Christmas Wishes Coming True

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It’s true what they say… when you least expect it, that’s when the magic happens. For the most part of the year, and the last 3 years before that, I thought we will have the same Christmas as before — we used to live in a tiny pad, so decorating our home for Christmas was not an option then. Instead, we’d go to a hotel resort here in Cagayan de Oro City and spend an overnight stay for both Christmas and New Year. Although on our first Christmas here in 2017, we celebrated it at our farm with our people. I’ve still yet to blog and vlog about those amazing hotel resort stays we did but I really plan to (next year, hopefully, as throwback features). Oh wait, I did blog about our Seda Centrio New Year Stay.  

Well, this year, (in a way, thanks to this pandemic — we got to transfer to a cozy house — looking at the silver lining here), my long overdue wish of spending Christmas in a beautiful, cozy home I personally decorated, hosting a party if possible, and just chilling and pigging out over a simple Noche Buena feast in our pajamas — finally came true!!! I’m so happy, I really can’t stop expressing it! I’ve been saying it on my social media posts and even offline to Mahal. I’m just really so happy. Hallelujah! 

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hustle and bustle

Hustle and Bustle of a Momtraneur’s Life

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Hiiiii!!!! I’m back!!!! How’s the holiday season going for you so far?

Back in September, when I said my calendar was fully booked, I didn’t realize that that was nothing compared to what was ahead of me the following months — October, November, December. I know I’ve always been the busy kind of gal ever since I can remember (I’ve been a busy bee since my grade school years, lol!) but really, the past few months until today (and I predict including the coming days ahead until April at least!), have been nothing but a blur… I’ve been ultra, mega, super, duper booked with activities, business stuff, family hooplas, usual work, and other extra-curricular activities that a week would pass me by and I don’t even feel like it’s been a week! One week is like one long day for me! And there are times when all I wanted was sleep because honestly, I don’t know anymore how I’m still alive with so much lack of sleep in my system. I feel like one day, I’ll just drop dead from all this overfatigue!

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successful online giveaway

Tuscany Highlands x Momtraneur Successful Online Giveaway + Yummy Musiga and Mushroom Polvoron Reviews

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September is really one busy and blessed month! And it’s just the middle of the very first Christmas month this year… 3 more months to go… not that I want it to end since this is my most favorite quarter of every year. I just wake up every day with more zest, more energy, despite the million tasks I have to do because of the many exciting things happening for us. Praying to God to always guide us in this exciting endeavor we’re venturing into.

Anyway, I just want to update you with the latest happenings in our part of the world…

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Christmas Giveaway

TUSCANY HIGHLANDS MUSIGA AND MUSHROOM POLVORON 2ND ANNIVERSARY and EARLY CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY!!! 

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Hello September!

At last, the Ber months are here — my favorite last few months of the year because it means that Christmas is just around the corner, Jose Mari Chan’s Christmas in Our Hearts has started playing in the radio again, and of course, my most favorite holiday, Halloween, is happening before all the pre-Christmas and New Year hullabaloo! In short, I’m just in a very festive mood! Weeeee!!!

A huge part of this joy I’m feeling right now is the realization that I really am blessed despite all the seemingly stressful dramas I indulge myself in from time to time (lol). I am officially and legally single, I am loved, I have my babies with me, we are healthy, Mahal and I are growing our businesses and life together, and it’s all great!

And because of these blessings and the overwhelming gratitude I am feeling towards God and our life in general, I am also inspired to give back. We don’t have many material things as we have been living sort of a semi-minimalist lifestyle since I exchanged my big Alabang townhouse lifestyle to tiny pad living in Cagayan de Oro City, but we can definitely give some things to people, albeit strangers, we consider important to us, and these “some things” are no other than our farm products, for our precious target market, the very people we would like to keep serving through our organic mushroom food product offerings.

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Placeholder Recap 2018

How to Travel with a 3-Year-Old Kid (A 2018 Travel Recap)

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It’s March 1 already? How time really flies when you’re oh so busy and enjoying life’s ups and downs! I can’t believe that summer is here (despite the cool weather we’ve been having, which I’m grateful for, less use of air conditioning at home, lol) and it’s again time to head to the beach and travel some more! Actually,  we’ve been heading to the beach since the start of the year (you can read a bit of background here): but of course, it’s a lot more fun when done during summer. Weather’s about to get hot (hopefully!) and perfect for the beach;  Vacation from school is coming up for many students; and the Holy Week (April 14-21) seems to be just around the corner which means more holiday break for Filipino working parents. Whether you spend it at home, or visit churches, or explore places you’ve always dreamed of, summer is really the peak of travel activities in the Philippines and for some, it starts today. As I look back at the places we’ve traveled to in 2018, you might also get some ideas on where to go next.

Writing about how to travel with a baby / how to travel with a toddler has now become my tradition since I started this Momtraneur blog. It makes me look back with fondness at the previous year’s travel adventures we’ve had as a family and it makes me all the more excited to explore some more places we’ve never been to before or go back to our favorite destinations because they’ve simply become our second and third homes. It’s also a reminder for me to blog about those places we visited so expect more travel posts from me soon. I’m serious this time. This is also the 3rd gratitude post I was talking about in my Jan. 6 blog post – A LOOK BACK AT 2018… GRATEFUL FOR THE YEAR THAT WAS.

Moreover, it’s been different every year since our son, Tuz, was born. Traveling with a 0-1-year-old baby has been a little different from traveling with a 1-2-year-old baby, more so now that he’s three years old! Tuz has always been a hyperactive child and he just gets more and more hyperactive every single year! God help us! (Lol)

So without further ado, here’s how you can travel peacefully and happily with a three year-old-kid in tow: Continue reading →

Christmas 2017

Thoughts After a Blessed Christmas – From Having Zero Balance in My Wallet to Having Almost P200K

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It’s the day after Christmas and this month has been such a whirlwind of a ride! I work 16 hours a day now and sometimes even more (as a CFO to our mushroom farm, a full-time business development manager to a new foreign client, a virtual assistant to another foriegn client, and a social media manager to 2 other long-time foreign clients as well); I am surprisingly in a long distance relationship with Mahal and baby Tuz for 4 nights a week (which I never thought was possible) just so I can focus on work and making money and still be able to sleep (they live in the farm during weekdays while I’m left alone in our tiny pad down the mountains where there’s stronger internet signal); I am zombie during weekends coz that’s the time my babies are home. And from U.S. Time Zone, I immediately shift back to Philippine time so we can run errands and be together; In short, I am tired. BUT… I’ve never been as fulfilled. I feel like all the talents that God has given me are being put to good use and not just for the welfare of my family, but to help make the lives of the people around us a little bit better as well. Here’s my story… (More like FB story coz I don’t have the time now to curate photos from the original album so I’m curating them from my FB posts… you can friend request me here: https://web.facebook.com/daenerysmom)

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2017

Hello 2017! Three Questions to Ask Yourself This New Year…

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It’s almost 3AM, Philippine time, on the first day of the new year and this is the first time, in a long time, that I am able to breathe, relax and write down my thoughts… I hope this is a good sign… sort of like saying that the new year will bring me more relaxed moments to just be. *crossing my fingers*

Anyway, the house is now all cleaned up, quiet and dark after a whole day of preparation — running errands, picking up groceries and slaving away in the kitchen so we can all have a feast come media noche. And hurrah! Indeed, we were able to fill our dining table with yummy dishes that I think will last for another week just like our Noche Buena did last Christmas which lasted until New Year’s Eve. Hihihi! We feel so blessed! No more cooking the rest of the week, yey! I’m sure a lot of you can relate.  Continue reading →