Filipinos Love To Sing

Posted by Marivic

I don't know if we should be proud or mortified. You tell me.

Mama's 78th Birthday-SFO Day Trip

Trick Or Treating At The Marsdens

Mama really loves kids, costumes and giving candy away. So Marivic decided it was a perfect excuse to have Mama and her siblings come over to her house on Halloween night and let Mama be the one to answer the door and give candy away to trick-or-treaters. They don't get that many trick-or-treaters at the apartment complex. Last year Mama bought a bag of candy and they got ONE trick-or-treater. One! Apartments are lame. Pretty disappointing. Well, our mother has simple joys in life, and why not let her enjoy Halloween? So that was the main motivation for having a Halloween "party" at the Marsdens. We get so many trick-or-treaters every year it's insane. And it worked! Mama had a lot of fun answering the door. I'm sure the kids had a kick, too, having an old Filipino lady wearing an Indian head dress (she borrowed Jessin's) answer the door, ooh-ing and ahh-ing in Filipino accent and giving candy away. She got tired soon though (after effects of radiation treatment), so Jessin, Alan, and Marivic took turns taking over candy duty.

In between answering the door, we had dinner. Filipino barbecued pork ribs and beef ribs with rice to humor the Filipinos. And grated potatoes and chicken rolls (Alan's big sister Lesley's recipe) to humor Alan the lone white man :-) The rest of the Marsdens were out: Tara dropped by after work on her way to a Halloween party, but AJ was out all night partying with friends.

Just in case everybody starts saying what a good daughter Marivic is for letting Mama enjoy Halloween, think again. She made Halloween punch and filled it with gummy worms (!!!) knowing how creeped out her mother is by snakes and worms. Everyone but especially the rascally Marivic thought it pretty funny except Mama, of course. But we knew not to push it. Mama absolutely is appalled when we watch scary horror-thriller movies. She calls them "devil movies". So guess what we watched on Halloween night to our mother's boundless delight? "Beverly Hills Chihuahua". Aii-yaii-yaii!

Anyway, here are some of the photos from the night. Jerome, Tina, Kyrsten and Jett---wish you were here!

Kyrsten_Linggo Ng Wika

Our little Kyrsten, of the next generation of cute Cuyos girls :-), participating in her school's Linggo Ng Wika (National Language Week) celebration'

Some News...

Mama has been diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor says it has been detected early enough, and the lump is still rather small. Mama is having a lumpectomy on Monday, August 24th. She will be released from the hospital on the same day, so it sounds like it's nothing major. But we would still appreciate prayers. Thanks everyone.

posted by Marivic

Happy Birthday, Mama!

Mama and her darling baby Marle

The family celebrated Mama's 77th Birthday by going out to dinner. Mama's choice: Outback. She had the Lobster and Mushroom Topped Tilapia. We're still not very sure why she picked Outback. It was pretty random for Mama. Maybe it's because Outback is the closest she gets to Australia which is the closest she gets to the Philippines? Whatever. The birthday girl gets what she wants. We had fun as usual. Grandson AJ joined us. He was a pretty good sport sitting there eating his steak surrounded by what must seem like the tower of Babel going on around him. We tried to speak English so he'd understand, but you know how that goes :-). But it was appreciated. If his Filipino grandmother was rich he'd have a big chunk of an inheritance written in the will :-) too bad she is poe!

Mama's Boys minus Jerome who is in the Philippines:

Mama's Girls minus Vicvic who is taking the picture:

AJ (in the yellow shirt) patiently humoring the Filipino-speaking people around him with his courteous presence :-)

Two Beaches On Opposite Sides of The Ocean

Posted by Marivic Marsden:

One of my earliest memories as a kid was spending almost every weekend at the beach. That just seems like the natural thing to do when you grow up on a tropical island and when your maternal grandparents' home was walking distance to the beach. I remember swimming with my siblings and cousins in the placid waters of the sea. Not quite like the violent, adrenalin pumping surf of the waters on this side of the globe. My parents watched us, of course, but for the most part we splashed around uninhibited. I played my heart out during the day. I ate a lot, too. Somehow I always associate going to the beach with grilled fish and steaks. On the ride home my brothers and sisters and I would fall asleep and next thing we knew we were in bed. It was a carefree, fun and happy time in my life. Somehow that sense of well-being is partly recreated for me when I go to the beach now that I am an adult. I'm sure it is for my brothers and sisters, too.

This summer I was able to spend time on a beach in San Clemente with my kids and husband and his extended family. I didn't splash around in the surfy waters, because I'm just not that carefree anymore, but I still had a blast.

Meanwhile, my brother and his family also spent their vacation on a beach eight thousand miles across from me on the Pacific Ocean. Here are pictures of my brother, my ister-in-law Tina and their kids in Moalboal, a resort on the island of Cebu in the Philippines.

Here are photos of me and my family in San Clemente in Southern California.

One day soon, we hope, our families will be able to spend time together on the same beach on the same hemisphere. He probably will not like the surfy waters on this part of the globe :-) but he'll get used to it and learn to like it like I did. If he doesn't, well, I'll just tell him to because I'm the boss. I'm firstborn and he's the baby, and what I say goes :-) (Just kidding, Bro!)