holiday stories...

DECEMBER 2009

Carl never ran out of interviews. He took the job search seriously – like an 8-5 job. He wakes up and opens the computer, takes a break at noon for lunch, then resumes his search. He was anxious because we only had enough funds to cover a few weeks and he only had a couple of months to find a new job or he will be out of legal status. We frequently talked about our options, sometimes we ended up arguing about them. Each day became very stressful. Carl tried to reach some of his contacts in San Francisco.

We took a trip there a week before Christmas with Liezel and her friend ate Thelma.

We attended Serramonte Ward's Christmas party. Carl served most of his mission in Serramonte back in 2003.

We met up with ate Ann and kuya Philip Sagum. They are Carl's dear friends from Daly City. Carl was one of their witnesses when they got sealed in the Oakland Temple in 2005, and kuya Philip was one of ours when we got married in Hawaii in 2008.

They took us to BJs for dinner to celebrate ate Ann's birthday and their long awaited pregnancy. They've been trying to conceive for the past 8 years...and now she's finally expecting. Their story inspired us, since Carl and I are not having success reproductively. We were comforted because, indeed, in the Lord's time and through the Lord's will, we will be blessed with the opportunity to bear and raise a child.

Back in Southern California, I sent out our Holiday greeting cards just in time. We received some ourselves and we displayed them on our wall. Christmas time was getting closer as advanced notices from friends who were visiting for the Holidays came one by one.

Julie, Carl's ex-workmate from MySpace, treated us with free park-hopper tickets to Disneyland. It was like a return favor for everytime that Carl agreed to switch days off with her when they were still working together. We took that opportunity to unwind and de-stress ourselves.

Carl had a lot of interviews but no job offer came. It was frustrating...but we kept our hopes, Carl actually did this more than I did. I was getting more pessimistic everyday I was pathetic. Somedays, I thought our California-adventure was a big joke when no one was trying to be funny. Christmas came and we called home...I was sobbing like a severely wounded child as I talked to my mom. Carl kept his calm and comforted his family, telling them we were gonna be ok. We had Christmas dinner with Joyce's family. I made stuffed pork loin and guinataan and brought those to ate Lei and Ricky's apartment in Downey. Ate Lei made spaghetti. We ate and played Uno until probably 11pm. I prepared buko pandan salad for Carl and mine's own little feast in our room. Carl got me Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga (all four of them) and I got him photobook of our wedding pictures. Carl bought alcohol free White Zinfandel from Albertson's and we made a toast for a beautiful Christmas.

Our first visitor for the holidays was Zingeber, visiting from Canada. We met him at Universal City with Keith and Emerson. We later had dinner at kuya George's place in Carson.

A couple of days later, Joaquin and Hannah Gellor paid us a visit before Hannah and their daughters head back to the Philippines. Andrew arrived with Mhar and Becky a couple of days before New Year. Yes... 2009 was almost over. Liezel told me 2010 should be a good year, that we've all had a rough year and we all deserved a break. I wouldn't disgree on that... in fact, I am looking forward to a better year...