Happy Birthday, Papa and Bel!

Happy Birthday to my Dad who is having a great ol' time in Manila...

.. and to my niece, Bel who turns 8 today! We love you guys!

Since my parents are not in town for the double-birthday celebration, we all got together yesterday to take Bel to Build-A-Bear, as she wished for her birthday. Jake is not so much into Build-A-Bear although he has a few in his collection so we talked him into bringing George (the monkey) and that we won't be buying a new toy, but he can pick an outfit for George to wear. The day was for Bel, after all. Jake was fine with that, thank goodness. Turned out that Nanu (my brother - that's the kids way of calling him) offered to pay for all of the loot that the kids accumulated! What a great treat and you can just imagine how the kisses and hugs that came my brother's way. Jake of course dressed George as a pirate - although I'm not sure who had more fun dressing George up, me or him :). Lunch was at CPK afterwards, with a pit stop at Banana for some quick retail therapy. Not a bad way to spend Sunday afternoon with family. Couldn't get any better :)

On the way home, the husband thought it would be great to drive around downtown San Jose and drive by the old stomping grounds aka the Alma Mater. We would've gone down and let Jake run around the school grounds but because it was drizzling early on in the day, the grass would've been wet and gross and well, forget it! We drove around - named each building as we pointed it out to Jake (like he really cared), and oohed and aahed at the new dorms. Ahh...to be in school again. One of these days, we plan to take Jake to the campus and let him walk around and see where Mama and Daddy went to school. For posterity's sake - I just had to take some shots:

All in all, alls well in our neck of the woods.

... I've been seriously contemplating hiring a cleaning lady, which means I have to let go of my obsessive-compulsiveness and let someone actually do the cleaning in my house.

The husband wants to hire someone to just iron our mounds and mounds of clothes!

I think that's just it - we have way too many clothes! We've been purging for the past couple of days..but we clearly need to do more!

... Double-Date night for February is set - I'm so excited! :)

... Need to book Jake's birthday party. I can't believe he's almost 4!

Have a great week, everyone!