I woke up with the world’s best greeting cards in sight. Set on top of my laptop on the bedside table. And so, the day just keeps getting better.

Little greeting cards from my kids and a loving one from my husband.

The kids made me peanut butter and jelly sandwich topped with over flowing whipped cream and chocolate syrup for breakfast even though I was already up and awake so much ahead of them. It’s more like an early lunch already. Crazy yet very sweet idea.

I’m saved from cooking dinner as we had take-out food consist of Super Herfy Burger and Saudi’s best Al-Khareej Broast Chicken.

To complete my Mother’s Day treat, my dear husband brought home a box full of my all time favorite cinnamon rolls from the one and only CINNABON.

I had a day full of surprises. It makes me wish for this occasion to last the entire year. The good thing about it though is that, I am celebrating with all the other mothers from the rest of the world. Lastly, I would give my salute and appreciation to my dear mother who has made me for who I am today. Happy Mother’s Day!

CHICKEN a`la  KING (Pudding girl’s version)

Ingredients:

1 medium size green bell pepper (cubed)

1 medium size yellow bell pepper (cubed)

1 medium size carrot (diced)

1 onion ( chopped)

1 cup of sliced mushroom

2 tbsp. of  margarine/butter

2 pcs. of MAGGI chicken cubes

3/4 cup of milk

1/4 cup of all purpose flour  whisked to dissolve in 1/2 cup water

Chicken Meat (breast part-skinned,sliced and boiled to cook with water. Set aside the chicken broth from cooking the meat)

salt

black pepper powder

parsley flakes

1. In a heated pan, melt the butter and add the onions. Add the bell pepper(green and yellow), carrots and mushrooms. Cook for 5-6 minutes. Set aside.

2. In a separate pot, add the chicken cubes to the chicken broth used when cooking the meat and heat to boil. Add the milk and the flour mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Add the mushroom, pepper and carrot mixture. Stir until it bubbled and becomes thick.

4. Add the chicken meat and simmer for at least 3 minutes.

5. Before serving the dish, add a dash of parsley flakes. It is best if served with plain rice.

It doesn’t take  complicated and extra ordinary dish to make family dinners great. In fact, it doesn’t need to have a special occasion such as Mother’s Day to gather for family dinners. And since my husband’s job takes him away from home most of the time, we took advantage of every chance we get to share together our family dinners and create memorable and precious time of being together.

Cheers!

For a month now, we developed this routine of having Thursday morning as our shopping day, where we can do groceries and pick up stuff we need for the week. Thursdays- a day in a week when WCW is off from work and we can go all together shopping. Since women are not allowed unaccompanied by a man in the family outside the premises of the house and doesn’t have the privilege to drive  here in Saudi Arabia, our Thursday morning activity has become a day that we look forward to as our “outing” day.

We bribe our kids with cheap and affordable toys that wont hurt so much of our budget everytime we go out on Thursdays. We figured that with these little pleasures in boxes or vacuumed wrap with plastic and has a “MADE in CHINA” mark would somehow make their first visit to Saudi Arabia memorable and  hopefully also will make the place suck less.

I miss attending Sunday masses back home and surprisingly our kids did too. Every day seems like a groundhog day. It is always the same that sometimes you tend to forget what day of the week it is. The dullness of the place even made them kids miss school! It was  hell of a lot different during my stay years ago, as back then I was working.

Don’t get me wrong, no one has forced us to be here. We are currently in a situation in which we just have to do the best of what life has to offer,this one included. Positively, I see this as an experience that my kids will gain. To be able to live and follow other countries’ culture is a privilege that not most children has been given a chance to. Humans as we are, it is our nature to adapt. I am just thankful that I am with my family right now and that alone will make this vacation a beautiful one.

With absence, comes along is an explanation. I decided a few months back to take an upgrading with my career path. I am proud to say I successfully reached my targeted goals for this matter.

I am currently on a vacation with my kids in a place where people usually never ever think of as an ideal destination for a so called leisure holiday. Nevertheless, I am  happy and for sure is having a great time. I have mentioned in few of my blog post before that considering the job location of my husband, we are working our a** off and tried to get our selves together. This may not be permanent set up but it is the least of what the company can offer us.

Since there isn’t much to share from this place that would be interesting to my beloved readers, as a come back post, I hope this picture will do the trick.

These are Ancient Mediterranean Ruins that can be seen along the old streets and back roads of the city named Khamis Mushayt in Aseer Region in the southern part or Saudi Arabia. I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. We were just driving along the area and I did my best to discretely take this shots as picture taking in public is prohibited in Saudi Arabia, considering that these ruins are situated next to mosques. The last thing I need in this trip is a nerve wrecking interrogation if ever caught for a crime that most countries will never even bother to notice, much more consider it a criminal offense.

I have seen these ruins a few years back when I was still working in this area and it reminded me of the scenes of the old movies I’ve seen when I was a kid.  Movies like The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Jesus of Nazareth, Moses, etc., where they featured people’s houses that were somewhat made of sand packed like hardened walls. As much as I wanted to, I can never get information as to what these ruins were before. For me, they look like towers that were used to guard a territory and watch for upcoming opponents of some kind. They might be homes where animal livestock herders lived. Like I was when I first seen it, my kids were amazed too. I just felt sorry I can’t provide answers to their curious questions about it.

Saudi Arabia is definitely a rich country. Literally rich! Oil, gold, culture and religion. But, this country is not a normal tourist-friendly. My kids are getting bored for having not much places to go and visit. Despite all this, we are just as happy as any other vacation goers all over the world as we are together as family.

Once again, thank you for continually visiting my site and taking time to read my posts!

The Edge of Never

by

J.A. Redmerski

Applause!!- Well, I love the characters for one. The chemistry between the two is way too hot it is literally smokin’ at every turn of a page. The adventure is really interesting and the songs that accompanied the awesome roadtrip is classic and definitely contributed to the cuteness of the flow. The romance was very "pro-female-joy" and I love how its being described. Yeah! I know ladies that you like it too! Who wouldn’t love Andrew Parish??? I am not so fascinated with the getting inked personally but the idea of the tattoo made me smile and approved it. In fact, I did tried to check online how Eurydice really look like.

On same note, the "terrible turn of events" on the last chapter was such a shocker! Talking about heart attack due to brokenhearted readers! I have to stop and breathe,I was so carried away with Camryn’s emotions that I too felt that I couldn’t breathe when she was feeling out of breathe knowing the damned news. Like I said, plot wise, that part earned fireworks!

Aversions!!- Not that I have a lot, just a bit. I gave a five-star rating but since this is a review I can’t deny the fact that I don’t feel 100% with the ending. It’s somewhat rushed. Nevertheless, I did hate for it to end. It is like a speeding car forced to a halt! I felt there’s still a lot more that was left hanging to pack it as an overall conclusion. Anyhow, it is one of the good reads for this year!

– a disposition free from stress or emotions; a steadiness of mind and composure

- an untroubled state, free from disturbance.

Nobody recommended me this book. I was just lucky enough to stumble unto this. I never knew the author Katja Millay and I wonder why is that? If she writes good, very-good-as-a-matter-of-fact stories like this, how come I just got to hear of her for the first time? Because, this is her first novel. I believed, it has been a success since the day, about two months ago when it was first published. For die-hard lovers of YA-lit, it’ll be surprising and terrifying if this isn’t in your currently reading shelf.

The Sea of Tranquility

by Katja Millay

A lot of stars! I know the usual ratings are up to 5-stars only but I have the feeling that it isn’t enough to what this book truly deserves. The Sea of Tranquility is a novel that has been encapsulated with perfectness. It has no flaws, or, even it if it had, I might have love it too much to notice its imperfections. It is a story of two horribly messed up individuals, who both have horribly messed up past, who were trying to hide in a horribly messed up environment in order to live their horribly messed up lives. What ever bad ideas you have now of their drama, hang on to it because reading this will tell you that what they had in their lives were worst.

The characters, oh my you will love them. Nastya, pronounced as Nah-stee-yah, who is fond of collecting names and their meanings, who doesn’t seem to mind the slutty image and reputation that the school population sees at her, who happens to be not speaking for about a year already due to her mysterious past which requires a total discretion from school authorities. At first, I was kinda skeptical because I recently finished Hannah Harrington’s’ book SPEECHLESS, and I was like “ What’s up with these girls having a vow of silence and totally not speaking? Could this be the in-thing for it-girls of the generation?” How about tough and untouchable Josh Bennett? I just think that, the way his character was molded fits so good with how it is being portrayed in writing.

Reading on, I was wondering where the title fits the story. With how troubled the character’s lives were, I didn’t see any relevance that connects it to the title not until I get to the very last two words in the end.

“Your garage”

As soon as Nastya/Emilia/Sunshine uttered these words, I literally felt myself catching my breath and everything around me seemed to stood still. I zombie’d the night away like having a graveyard shift because I simply can’t make myself put this book down and it just downed on me to realized that the title has in fact, described the entirety of the novel. It brought me back to the question that my mind was once asking but never get answered when Nastya recognized the location she was in when she got lost while doing her evening runs and found herself at Josh’s garage, at that very first night she sets foot inside it. I get to understand why she seems to know the place when in fact she was  geographically lost at the moment. I currently don’t have enough adjectives to describe the book now because,saying that this is beautiful, fantastic and awesome are a complete understatement. I love the idea of making the readers not having to find out what happened to Emilia that resulted her name changed to Nastya. I love the originality of the plot and of how it is intricately arranged and written in both voices of the protagonists. I love that the scenes were realistic and believable which makes the story more alive. I love the style of it being a slow-building, character-loving, suspense-driven and ultra-romantic-amusingly-developed-beautiful love story. The relationships among families and friends are light, colorful and significant. I smiled, chuckled and cried and with that I am sure this book will leave the readers emotionally satisfied and fulfilled. Above all, I love that it has a happy ending.

As much as I believed the story ended well, I can’t deny the fact that I was heartbroken  several times reading through it. It revolves around the life of the members of the MAFIA. I may have a hard time believing if these totally exist,but… what the heck- the book was definitely good. The love story between Haven and Carmine is so raw, naive and beautifully promising. Haven as a character is so delicate yet so brave. She is strong and innocent but equally and impressively smart in her own little ways despite the rough life that she had gone through. Carmine on the other hand is like someone that would fit the saying that goes "don’t judge the book by it’s cover" or perhaps by the words that comes out of his mouth with regards to the case of Carmine’s constant swearing, leaving his dialogues more colorful Deep within he is just a typically macho who surrenders to head-over-heels circumstances of true love.

I admire how J.M.Darhower’s style of pulling up descriptions of the heavy action scenes. Violence in the story are cleverly plotted making readers imagine of how believably morbid and brutal that scenarios are. I have to stop reading for a minute or two to be able to catch my breath. I can literally imagine to scene as if I am staring at a movie screen in 3D. I love the Italian quotes that were scattered everywhere at the book. I may not understand those without the translation but it emphasizes the love story even more.

Finally, this book doesn’t deserve the five-star rating for me because i simply love it but of course for the fact that the lessons that comes with it completes the package.

Family is family- even if you have to reach the point when you have to choose. Concentrate on what matters and pick the lesser evil. Too damn easy to say but too hard to even just imagine doing it.

Sacrifice- when there is nothing left good enough as choices, it is the only way out to continue living.

Loyalty- can be a bad thing, specially for the wrong reasons.

Pain- without it, nothing is gained.

Freedom-cherished and valued for some, abused and taken for granted by others.

HOPE-is forever..Sempre

LOVE-it conquers all.

Few days ago, I came across another novel from Lisa Genova. The book title didn’t get me interested but the author did. She wrote the book Still Alice and made me see Alzheimer’s Disease in a very compelling way. Without reading reviews and synopsis, she amazes me once again with her writing about autism and a lot more about true love, relationships and family.

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Love Anthony is the heart warming and life-loving story of Beth, a mother of three girls, who is struggling with her husband’s infidelity, confused and wondering if she can forgive him and Olivia, a recent divorcee who is trying to know herself once again after a heart breaking separation with her husband following the death of her son Anthony, who has autism. In a total coincidence, these two women find answers to life’s questions through the unspoken voice of Anthony in the form of words composing a book written by Beth.

What gets me with this book is Genova’s brilliant way of putting a voice to an autistic child who doesn’t even express a voice but to no other than himself. I only have a very minimal encounter with autism and I can feel the perfect expression of unconditional love of a parent to a child with the writing regardless if the child is autistic or not. The book simply pictures stories of moms and wives and their frustrations in life. The stress they face everyday and the hopes and dreams they wish to acquire. With the unique presentation of autism, the complexity of the reality of life was carefully fed to the readers in details making it quite compelling and moving. The story of both couples and their marital situations became a side dish to the main course. Unfortunately, I find it quite a bit hanging and wish for more sparks emphasized on Beth’s forgiveness to his husband Jimmy. Nevertheless, the package was wrapped nicely with a bow perfectly done. I consider this book among my best reads for this year and with that I highly recommend for you all to grab your copies now.

My daily routine consist mainly of waking up way too early in the morning, prepping the kids for school and rushing my self to catch an early bus so I won’t be late for my lectures. Yes. You heard it right and I am saying it again. Lectures. I am attending eight hours worth of Medical Technology lectures at least three to four times in a week.

Lectures. It is part of the career upgrade that I am taking. We call it a review or a refresher course and believe me I need it badly. So, how was I coping up? Well, the first couple of days was so stressful as I seem to be clueless of what I am doing. Have you ever been in that scenario where every topic is familiar yet you can’t identify which is which? It made me ask myself how I coped being a student. One thing that really gave me a hard time was taking down notes. I almost forgot how studying requires a high speed talent of hand writing. I checked my notes at the end of the day and I was like “What the hell did I wrote?” Medical lectures are always packed with scientific names, anatomy parts and chemical compositions consists of words having a minimum of two to as much as thirty alphabets in a word. My spelling suck so bad that even the abbreviations that I am so used to writing before appears like aliens to me. I can’t understand most of the words that I wrote. I told myself, how come I am so good at this before? My notes in college were neat and complete and of course, very legible.

I pretty much adjusted to this new routine that I have. I am the only review student who is around past 30’s. The other “kids” in class were fresh from college and I feel so intimidated. Ha!Ha! They were so hyper active during discussions and interact so easily. They are even so aggressive that they want pre-test and post quizzes every day! Oh so confident!

To sum it all, I am having a blast! I was away from the field long enough and it is just about time to start creeping back. I met new young friends, or should I say colleagues. Their enthusiasm and hunger for learning is contagious and I am looking at it as a good sign. My loving husband is very supportive to which it is inspiring me more. I am hopeful to succeed with this challenge. Paired with my faith, I am positive that nothing can go wrong.

1. I’m thankful to the Lord God for a bountiful, healthy and blessed year.

2. I am praying for another good year once again.

3. I see life as a journey that is becoming more meaningful each day.

4. I feel loved more than ever and it is such an honor to love you back my dear WCW.

5. I adore my children and they always bring happiness.

6. I will always love and care for them even though they will at times annoy me just as much.

7. I am thankful for my mom everyday.

8. I grew wiser and more mature in a good sense for each and every year that I age.

9. I still keep gaining weight and like the previous year, I will strive to shed off the fats.

10. I have read more and more books and I don’t have plans to stop. Once and for all, reading is a good vice.

11. I was able to travel to three South East Asian Countries within a year and for me that is an accomplishment to be  able to tick off a few on the bucket list.

12. I find Singapore as the most beautiful among the three destinations that I have visited this year.

13.  I will not turn down opportunities to visit all those places once again if given a chance. I had good memories and I had lots of fun!

14. I am proud of my children’s achievements in swimming. Mother as I am, I will always be supportive.

15. I believe that education is wealth, Therefore, I should be as motivating and inspiring to my children so they will value education and learning as much as I do.

16. I financially earned a lot but I spent a lot more.

17. I have long realized that stuff can be enjoyed even if they don’t come in expensive branded names. This principle will still remain.

18.  I will try to entertain more ideas on saving and investing. Who knows, accompanied with my faith and hardwork, I might get lucky and become rich.

19. I don’t believe in unemployment. I guess, it is just an excuse used by those lazy bums who are healthy and able.

20. I gained more friends and I hope I didn’t lose some.

21. I am thankful for the internet and the new technology of this generation. It plays a  huge part on how the wheels of our lives are turning.

22. I love my family and everybody in the clan who surrounds me. When all else fails, family is everything I will have left.  It was such a rough year for us but so far…….. so good.

23. I miss my Grandmother so, so much. I thought I was all prepared for her leaving us but I was wrong. May you rest in peace Mama Natz. Till then……

24. I still cry and sob with thoughts of her. Life indeed is short and uncertain. I promise to do my best to live and appreciate the gift of people around me.

25. I have hurt anyone, someone. For that, I am deeply sorry and I apologize.

26. I have been hurt and feel betrayed. I forgive. It always feels better in the end.

27. I am contented with what life has to offer me. Still, I am human…. I am seeking for greener pastures. Perhaps, a more comfortable and convenient set up than the present.

28. I plan to face another challenge, or should I say, I slowly inched my steps towards it. I pray to be successful in this battle.

29. I believe everything happens for a reason. I won’t exchange for anything all that I have been through.

30. I want an iPhone. Well, that is the “material-girl-me” speaking. Of course, a lot more of “something else”.

31. I am happy. I truly am.

32. I am blessed. I am forever thankful.

33. I am turning 33 today. 8th of October is my birthday!