Noche Buena Feast

Tweet

Noche Buena is one of the many Christmas traditions that our family practices every year. Not a single Christmas eve passes by without doing this yearly tradition. At the strike of midnight on Christmas, the kids are woken up to check their Christmas socks for gifts from Santa. More gifts are also under the Christmas tree for the kids and adults to unwrap. The adults take turn in singing their favorite songs on the Karaoke machine or play Bingo. More family games are done while feasting on the sumptuous meal laid out on the dining table, right after saying grace.

our Christmas dinner
forgot to take out cake and salad from the ref
siomai - gone in 50 seconds

But before the Noche Buena feast, preparing for it is very tiring and stressful. The gifts are bought two months before the celebration. It’s purposely done that way, bought way ahead of the December month, to save on the high prices that shots up during the holiday season and to avoid the Christmas rush. 

Next on the to-do list are the clothes. We have a theme-color every year for Noche Buena and the Media Noche, New Year family dinner, as well. For the Christmas dinner, most of the time, we usually wear red, green or red and green - the Christmas colors. The next year’s “color of the year” is usually the theme-color for the New Year dinner.

A small family meeting is done for the planning of what to prepare for Christmas dinner. Usually with a bottle of wine, and sometimes non-alcoholic “wine”, and chips. A list of the menu is then done, as well as the list of the ingredients that needs to be bought a day before the Christmas dinner.

The day before Christmas. The morning of December 24 is done visiting the grocery store to buy the ingredients needed for Christmas dinner. Last minute buying of gifts is also squeezed in on the schedule. After the usual dinner, kids then prepare Santas cookie and milk, put it under the tree then they got tucked in bed at around 8 pm. Excited kids, read: my son, begin snoring at 10 pm or 11 pm already.

Before midnight, someone has to take a big bite on the cookie and drink some of the milk. When midnight strikes, the happy chaos begins.

bonding time with my sisters

Tweet

I have 4 siblings, I'm the eldest and we're all girls. We pretty much try to squeeze in a weekend get-together. Although we seldom do it because we all have busy schedules. My youngest sister usually has a movie date with her boyfriend, the third sibling has graduate school every Saturday and the second girl in the family now live in the province. 

Whenever I have this gut feel, eldest sibling antenna perhaps, that everyone is free for the weekend I usually text my sisters, or send a personal message on FB, right away. My gut feel hasn't failed me yet.

My weekend dates with my sisters usually falls on a Sunday. The day usually starts with hearing mass and from there we usually watch a movie, shopping (most of the time window shopping) and have lunch or dinner (depends on what time we heard mass).

Do you have dates with your siblings? What do you usually do?

trick art museum at seriland

Tweet

I got curious with this Korean "edutainment" theme park when I first saw it featured on a morning show. So off we go to Seriland The Land of Happy Thoughts last Sunday afternoon.

There are four activities, with an entrance fee of Php150 each, to choose from. The Mirror Maze, 3D Trick Art Musem, 3D Cinema Plus and Kids’ Paradise. There's an on-going promo of buy 3 get 1 ticket for free until the end of May 2011. Kids and adults have the same entrance fee.

We had the most fun at the trick art museum.

Both kids and adults will enjoy visiting Seriland, located at the 2nd floor of Manila Ocean Park, especially the Trick Art Museum. But there's no point in coming back. Not unless there are new activities and new trick arts in the future.

Red Box Greenbelt 3

Tweet

Me and my sisters invited our cousin to Red Box, a KTV in Greenbelt 3, a few hours before his flight back to the US. He is a member of a band so I was pretty sure he will enjoy it.

The Php299 + taxes per person already include buffet lunch and 12-3 pm ktv room use. My cousin enjoyed it since they don't have that in the states. I didn't.

I reserved a room the day before we went there. They assigned the room nearest the reception area. Noise from outside can be heard inside the room. What's really horrible is they were playing songs in the reception area and most probably set the volume to its maximum level. The sound system is thumbs down for me. It creates a very annoying sound whenever the two microphones are near each other! The room is not that big so here's how two people look like when singing together...

The did fix it, when I complained, but they should have fixed everything before letting people go inside the room. It was a waste of time waiting for them to fix it. Forget about the lunch buffet because it's not something to rave about. And no score at the end of each song! How will we know if we did good right?

There were a lot of bad reviews on Red Box Trinoma. The Greenbelt branch is better, they say. But based on our experience, this KTV gets a thumbs down!

To make up for the hazzardous lunch-slash-ktv date we had with our cousin, although he does like the KTV experience, we decided to give him a shirt that will make him remember his 2011 visit to the Philippines.

what's for your noche buena?

Tweet

We already planned what to prepare for Noche Buena later. A Noche Buena is a traditional Christmas dinner with the whole family.

In the Philippines, this usually comes after the entire family has attended the late evening Christmas Eve mass or Misa de Gallo. Often on the table are: lechón, pancit, fried chicken, hamon, quezo de bola, arroz caldo, lumpia, rice, and adobo among others for the main course. Desserts include ube halaya, bibingka, rice cakes, puto bumbong, ice cream, pastries and cakes; drinks include hot chocolate, coffee, soda, wine, beer, and different kind fruit juices. wikipedia.org

Have you planned your Noche Buena menu? Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

RJ's one week vacation

Tweet

My son's semestral break officially started last October 29. School will open again on November 9. But all we did, for the past few days, is go shopping and watch a movie. Although shopping is fun for me, I am pretty sure it's not fun for my son.

I was late in booking a ticket for Hongkong Disneyland's Halloween special. It's also expensive to book for the Christmas special as well. Me and my sisters are planning to go this February. Hopefully we'll get a good price on next years travel expo.

So for the remaining 5 days of RJ's semestral break, I have to find a fun activity that will make his vacation meaningful. Although I want to buy lady gaga concert tickets, I think my son will enjoy a trip to a museum more.

I would love to see Lady Gaga in action!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Hopefully my son will say "Yes!!!" and get excited instead of just saying "Ah, ok" with the activities that I have planned for the next few days.