It Had to be You

One of the things that Celia convinced me to do for our wedding is to take dance lessons. I wasn't sure I wanted to but she really really wanted to so I said "fine, we'll do it." Anyway, it turned out to be a tonne of fun. We found this dance school called Dancing for Dessert and our instructor, Magda, was awesome. She choreographed a whole routine for us (not too difficult seeing as we had to learn it without knowing how to foxtrot) and taught us the whole thing in 7 lessons. When it came to performing at the wedding, it wasn't perfect and some may say it wasn't even well done, but who cares. We had a blast doing it and for me, it was one of the most memorable parts of the night.

All Done

The day was a big success for us. The ceremony started a bit late but other than that, it went off without a hitch. The kids were so cute. Amelia walked down the aisle (with help) and Lucas was super cute in his little tuxedo. Celia looked incredible. We took some pictures after downtown and hopefully they turned out good too. It was freezing cold but we're all stars so we toughed it out and finished the shoot. The reception went well too. It's funny, I was nervous about the ceremony but I held it together and after that I was feeling a lot better but still a little stressed about our first dance. Our DJ started the song in the wrong spot but that's kinda our fault for not telling him about it in advance. We messed up a few parts of the dance but we were able to improvise a bit and finish it with a little style. Very fun stuff - we plan on taking more dance lessons. Anyone want to join us? I had a few drinks so I was a bit tipsy but not drunk. Well, I had enough to drink that I was giving away drink tickets like they were free but now that I'm sober and looking at our bar bill, I'm regretting it a bit. Just a bit though because I had a really good time and I hope everyone else did too.

The Big Day

We've waited a long time for this. It was supposed to happen last year but the twins were born a bit early and changed our plans. In 2 days I'm finally getting married. It went from a very very small ceremony with next to no reception to a very big reception and back to a decent sized one. The past couple days have been stressful for me because I'm a real last minute kind of guy and there's a lot of work to do. It's pretty much finished now (it better be if I'm blogging) and tomorrow I just have to print and fold but I think we'll have some help with that... We'll see though. Anyway, the next time I post I'll be a married man. All you ladies that are now thinking you've missed out on a good thing, well don't you worry. It's not that good and you're not missing anything. Ask around, I'm not lying.

Anyway, thanks to anyone and everyone that helped out and special thanks to anyone that has helped look after my children while I've had to work on wedding plans.

What Did You Expect?

"Medical marijuana users are on the hook for more than $500,000 in unpaid bills for government-certified weed... Newly disclosed statistics show that Health Canada has sent final notices - and sometimes dispatched a collection agency as well - to 462 registered users since government marijuana first became available in 2003." - Dan Beeby, THE CANADIAN PRESS

I'm all for alternative drug therapies and this is no exception. If it works, it works, right? But seriously, what did you expect from a bunch of pot-smokers? I remember commercials a few years back about a couple of dead-end guys that lived at their parents' house and didn't have jobs because they just sat around and smoked dope all day. And now you "sell" legalized marijuana and expect them to pay for it? This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Bow Your Head

Last Tuesday, April 8, 2008 my tita Nene passed away. She's not my real aunt by blood or anything but she might as well have been. She struggled with cancer for a long time and now she is finally free. Some people ask me if I was close to her and although I didn't see her a lot, I still think I saw her a lot. She was a one of those cool aunts that you liked to run into at the mall or enjoyed talking to at family parties. She was important enough to me that she would have been one of the principal sponsors for my wedding. I grew up with her around (I have a picture of her at my 3rd or 4th bday party - I'm sure she was at the earlier ones too) and last fall she was still able to come over to my house and help Celia with the twins when I had to go back to work, and I'm so glad that she was able to make to my twins' first birthday. It was hard to see her at the end because she was always so strong and independent and at the hospital she was so weak and thin. I'm sure she was suffering towards the end so I'm happy that she doesn't have to suffer any more. People always ask what her daughter is going to do now. I don't really know, but I'm pretty sure that tita Nene taught her to be strong and smart so I'm sure she'll be okay.

In honour of my tita Rose/Nene, let us all bow our heads and say a prayer. She'll be missed by many. I'll make sure my kids know who she was.

So... Tired...

I always knew I wouldn't post as much once the kids were born, but now I'm just being negligent. Sometimes, I won't post for almost a month! Anyway,

Complete:
I just finished a major major project at work that I've been working on for the past year and a bit,
Celia's mom arrived (yay!),
started my marriage leave/vacation (double yay!),
kitchen renovation has begun,
new bed is bought and being delivered this afternoon,
3rd bedroom set up and ready for guests,
watched the 2nd half of Knocked Up (Review: funny shit, man. funny shit.),
got my new blackberry at work so now I don't look like a grandpa trying to look hip with a 1992 model blackberry, and
we finally got carpet on the stairs and closet so at least all the carpeting is finished.


Pending:
finalize the guest list,
finish the giveaways,
make the placecards,
learn our first dance,
pick up tuxes,
arrange rehearsal dinner,
figure out seating arrangements, and
come up with $2,341,532,786,456.56.

I think the worst part of all this is that my XBox360 got the Ring of Death hardware failure so I had to ship it back to Micro$oft for them to repair. Okay, they paid for the shipping, but now I don't have an xbox for, like, 4 weeks.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Let's see what's happened in the past 2 weeks:

After the kids' birthday, packed up the house like madmen (and madwomen - mostly madwomen), met with the lawyers, realtors, etc etc

Took possession of the new home on Saturday, March 15. On Monday and Tuesday we tore up the old carpets, ripped out some tile, removed all the baseboards, and basically stripped it down to the walls and floorboards.

New floor was being installed Thursday and Friday, carpet guys came on Friday, movers came Friday afternoon. We had to wait until at least part of the floor was done before we could move anything in. The flooring guy worked until 10pm, the movers worked until 11pm, we were up until 2am. Slept at my parents' house because new house was a wreck.

Saturday, March 22 I gave away the keys to my first home. It was a little sad to see it empty again. Kinda like when I first moved in except I felt like I broke up with it and was walking away.

Easter Monday (today): we've been living upstairs for the past 2 days because it is the only part of the house that is clean and livable. Downstairs still needs some of the floor finished, it needs to be cleaned and organized, and we still have to unpack all our kitchen stuff. I can't find anything right now.

How the hell did we accumulate so much stuff in such a short period of time? When I first moved out of my parents' house, I had maybe 3 carloads (small car too) of stuff. Now I have 2 large moving trucks worth of stuff. Oh well. So far, I'm liking the new home.

Happy Birthday!

Today is the twins' birthday. I can't believe it's been a year already. Last year at this time I was standing over their isolettes staring down at the smallest babies I've ever seen, amazed that I was a dad. The days leading up to that were crazy and scary but after it all I ended up with two beautiful babies. I remembering worrying about if they were going to survive. I remember seeing Lucas cry when he was first born and I remember the nurses whisking Amelia away to the NICU before we could even see her. I remember Celia telling me, "go check on Amelia" because she still had to go to the recovery room after surgery. I remember driving back and forth to the hospital every day for 2 months, I remember getting a phone call at 2am telling us that Lucas had an infection and was getting intubated, I remember Celia calling me at work crying that Amelia had to be transferred to the children's hospital because she might need surgery, and I especially remember getting the phone call telling us that the twins would be coming home the next day. The past year has been a blur but it was the most exciting blur of my life. Today I came home from work and Amelia had just woken up from a nap and I got to say Happy Birthday to my daughter and see her flash me that great big 2-tooth smile. Happy Birthday to Lucas and Amelia.

In honour of this special occassion, I have a limerick:

There once were two babies born early,
One was boyish, the other girly.
The grew up and laughed,
And learned by their own craft.
And taught me to never worry prematurely.

Moving

So we finally sold our home and found another one. It's a bigger townhouse just down the street from where we are now. There's some work we need to do to it like change the carpet, paint the walls, etc but it's quite nice. We got it cheap too. Well, not cheap cheap, but cheap. I'll do some before and after pictures someday.

You Can't Handle The Truth Part 7

I purposely leave things out so I can fix it in front of people and be the hero. 

Immortality

I read an article in a magazine about how being a mother changes a woman forever. Let me tell you about what happens to you when you're a father. You can't go snowboarding anymore, you can't play on your Xbox whenever you want, you can't go out drinking with your buddies, you can't buy new electronics for yourself, and you can't go out and watch movies whenever you want. However, you can look at your son and imagine all the fun things you'll be able to do as he grows up, you can smile as your beautiful daughter looks up at you and flashes that one-tooth smile, you can watch your kids crawl around and show you how curious they are and how fascinating the world is, and you hold your kids knowing that a little bit of you just became immortal. So, although I really, really want to play Halo3 online, my son's smile is enough to pull me away and play peek-a-boo instead.

Use the Right Tool for The Job

I decided that i wouldn't post videos here and i'm not going to post on my facebook profile anymore. I'm going to use my youtube account instead. See the twins in action there.

YouTube

Sit Back and Relax

So anyway, back to my vacation. After being in the city for a few days, we headed to Plantation Bay in Cebu. It's resort that is just incredible. If you're ever in the Phils and you need a nice, relaxing place to go, check it out. It was so nice but unfortunately, the kids liked to go to bed at 7-ish so our evenings were spent in the room. Not so bad because the room was really nice and room service wasn't too shabby. One of the things I really liked about this place was the phone had a button on it labelled "Butler". When you pressed this, someone would answer and you could get them to do anything for you. Sterilize the baby bottles, pick up our laundry, shoot the neighbours, ... anything.

The wedding was in Cebu as well and it was really nice. Because it was officiated by the archbishop and it was on a sunday, everyone from the mass just before stayed to see if the wedding was a celebrity. So my soon-to-be-sister-in-law was a Celebrity for the day.

Busy

We're busy. I don't mean the-house-is-a-mess-and-the-kids-are-fussy-and-won't-sleep-and-we-don't-have-time-to-cook kind of busy, I mean in the next 4 months we're putting our house back on the market and we have to find a new home, we're planning our kids' first birthday in March, and our wedding is in April. Just to give you a little perspective of the stress I'm currently experiencing: we just got back from the most expensive vacation of my life, Celia is still not back to work, we bought a new van last summer, I took 2 months of parental leave at half my usual income, and we all know how much baby supplies cost. And damnit, have you seen Celia's ring? I seem to think I'm rich. My secret is that I sell my body fluids to various banks around the Lower Mainland. I use different names so I can donate twice without anyone knowing.

Back in the PI

When we finally arrived in the Philippines, I was quickly reminded of the extreme poverty there. As we drove from the airport to the house where we were staying, I pointed out to Celia all the homes that looked like they were made with scrap pieces of wood and metal sheets, the garbage on the the streets and the pollution in the air. I guess I've been there a few times now so I've gotten used to seeing it and I know what to expect when we drive through the city but pointing it out to Celia made me notice how bad it is. It almost made me feel guilty for living in a clean city with clean water and for having money to go on vacation and staying at 5-star resorts. Almost. I'm glad my parents decided to take the chance and move to Canada 30+ years ago.

Anyway, the city was... the city. We visited with some family and went shopping for fabric for the bridesmaids dresses. The fabric was ridiculously cheap - like less than half of what we would pay here. Then we bought fresh popped chicharon and now Celia is addicted to it and wants someone to import it so she can get it fresh again. I can feel my arteries hardening already.

Depart Vancouver, Arrive Taipei

I'm not entirely sure how we even managed to organize this trip. We were packing right up until the last minute and we somehow did it while trying to watch out for the twins. Amelia was crawling around and climbing into the suitcases and Lucas was just crying because he was bored. We left the house at around 9pm and when we got to the airport to check in, Celia realized that we had forgotten the kids' passports in the filing cabinet. My dad and I drove home to pick up the passports and then back to the airport. Finally, at about 0030hrs, our plane took off and we were headed for Taipei.

If you've never been there, Taipei is a lot like Vancouver except with more chinese people. Seriously, even more. It's very nice and very clean. When I saw the tower, Taipei 101, the first thing I thought was "I thought it would be taller." It's kind of a cool looking building though - like a bunch of take out boxes all stacked together. While we were in Taipei, we met up with a few of Celia's old friends. The funny thing is that when I met some of her old friends in Vancouver, they didn't speak english, but the friends that I met in Taipei all spoke english. Anyway, we just hung out and shopped a bit (didn't buy anything), visited relatives, etc etc.

Home At Last!

There's so much I could say about our trip. So many stories, so many people, so much fun. I have to say though, that this trip was the most tiring and the busiest trip I've ever had. We had 3 times the usual amount of luggage and the twins have gotten quite heavy to carry around.

I don't know where to start. This will definitely come up as several different posts but here was our itinerary so you get an idea of my "vacation".

Dec 24 - depart Vancouver
Dec 25 - arrive Taipei
Dec 26 - high-speed train to Pingtung (about an hour on this train. Did I tell you this is the fastest fucking train I've ever seen?)
Dec 29 - 2 hour car ride to Taichung
Dec 30 - 2 hour car ride to Taipei
Jan 1 - depart Taipei, arrive Manila/Marikina
Jan 4 - Cebu
Jan 6 - Eva's Wedding @ Shangri-La Mactan
Jan 7 - Boracay (we took a little turboprop plane to Caticlan - the smallest plane I've ever been in. scary if you don't like to fly. I don't like to fly)
Jan 10 - back to Marikina
Jan 11 - 2 hours Manila-Taipei, 4hr layover, 10 hours Taipei-Vancouver

Whew! For almost the entire trip, we carried the twins (no carseats, no strollers) and we had a lot of luggage for their stuff.

Details to come...

Spoiled

Well, the flight wasn't so bad. Flying business class is fucking awesome. I never really thought economy was that bad but now that I've gone business, economy is so... for the masses. They had a little bassinet for each of the kids, they gave us tonnes of toys, and they even asked other passengers to switch seats so that we could all be together (that's another story). When your meal comes, they give you a tablecloth and they bring out your tray individually instead of on a cart, and when you recline your seat, it really reclines - I'm not talking just a couple of inches, I mean you go down to at least 45 degrees and the footrest comes up and the pillows are even bigger. Since Celia has decided to fly home with me instead of staying longer, we'll be upgrading to business class for our flight home. Sweet.

Leaving

We leave tonight for Taiwan. 13 hours on a plane with the babies. Wish us luck...