#PopeInPH: Farewell Pope Francis! Arrivederci!

The lucky boy He blessed on his last motorcade in his 5-day Philippine visit.

Pope Francis arrives in Villamor Air Base for his flight back to Rome.

I am typing this post as I'm watching the Philippine Airlines plane (carrying Pope Francis back to Rome) getting ready to fly. It has such been an honor to have this very loving man visit our country for 5 days. And more than that, I am so awed by the discipline that the Filipino people have shown while waiting / watching the Pope in the places he visited. Good leaders do awesome things, great leaders inspire others. Pope Francis definitely is in the latter category! Thank you for inspiring the Filipino people Lolo Kiko. The lessons you have imparted will always be in my heart.

Pope Francis going to the PAL airplane that will carry him back to Vatican.

Goodbye Pope Francis! My words aren't enough to express the gratitude and admiration I have for you. I have dreamt of you mid-October 2014 and through you, the Lord has calmed my worrying heart about our family problems. Through you, the Lord let me feel his wonderful love. In that dream I have never felt so much peace and love. Thank you Pope Francis for being God's instrument in this cruel world. Mercy and compassion. Nurture and protect the family. To think, to feel, to do. Words I will try to live by this year, and the rest of my life. Viva il Papa!

#PopeInPH ~ Pope Francis arrives in the Philippines!

Touchdown! The Papal plane has just landed in the Philippines, and Pope Francis is preparing to walk down from the plane in Villamor Airbase. Of course, the crowd couldn't help but cheer loudly "We love you!" :) President Aquino and 12 members of his cabinet are expected to greet him before his motorcade towards Taft Avenue. The official Papal residence is the Apostolic Nunciature in Taft. Here's the motorcade itinerary:

Source: http://www.gov.ph/2015/01/14/presentation-press-briefing-of-the-interior-secretary-on-the-papal-visit

You can view Pope Francis' entire 5-day itinerary here:

http://pacifictimes.org/papalvisit/the-papal-visit-itinerary/

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/papal-itinerary--where-you-can-see-pope-francis-034226609.html

http://www.rappler.com/specials/pope-francis-ph/75019-pope-francis-philippines-schedule-itinerary

My screengrab of Pope Francis' arrival in the Philippines :) That's the President of the Philippines next to him.

-------------------------------

If you have access to television, you can tune in to any local channel and you'll see the live coverage of Pope Francis' first visit to the Philippines. No TV? The Philippine government has a live feed in YouTube, yay! You can view it below:

And if you love social media, you use the following hashtags to express support of the Pope's much-awaited visit:

#PopeFrancisPH

#PopeInPH

#ShowThePope

#DearPopeFrancis

#PapalVisitPH

#PopeFrancis

That's it pansit! Enough blogging and more Pope Francis-watching, haha!

I don't have New Year resolutions..

..because I'm a rebel at heart! LOL, kidding! :p Actually, it's because I suck at keeping / doing my resolutions. So what's the point of making it when I can't follow through right? Thankfully, I found an easier "system" to make myself better at each new year. A system that has been very effective for me for the past two years. The system is called One Word. Or if you follow Ali Edwards, One Little Word. And yes, you literally only need one word to make it work. Sounds very simple right? Because it is! :) So what's my one word for 2015? It is cherish.

You can go over our Davao homeschooling blog for the full detail on why I chose this lovely word for 2015. I also discussed there my 2013 and 2014 one-words, which were simplify and commitment, respectively. The post is around 1,050 words (OA much, lol) but it's worth the read if you need a bit of inspiration on making 2015 the best year ever for you :) And before I end this post, which is my 299th by the way, I wanna greet all of you a happy and prosperous new year! Cheers everyone! Let's make 2015 awesome!

Happy Holidays!!

How are you guys coping up with Christmas 2014? It seems that this holiday season has been steadily becoming a stressful event as the years go by. Too much traffic, too much commercialism, too much everything. Do you feel that way too?! Thankfully Labsie and I have kids so there's still that bit Christmas magic in the air :) This year, we started the Advent calendar with simple Bible readings to explain the real meaning of Christmas to them. Hopefully, when they are all grown up, they wouldn't buy into all that holiday commercialism crap. And before I even go more Scrooge-y, here's our lovely holiday greetings! Haha! Pic taken from our wedding anniversary this year. I love it so much!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone! :)

Where's our kids you ask? They're on another holiday card, the one with our entire family of four in a reasonably nice pose. Haha! You know how it is when you take family pictures, one kid (or two) is bound to ruin the entire photo ;-) I will update this post when our family Christmas card is up on our new blog. Yes, I still have not introduced our new blog here but I already did in our Davao wedding blog so go over there and find out about it! :)

UPDATE: Here's our family Christmas card. Check out the kids, haha!

hello, world! (a long overdue update)

Long time no see old dear blog. My last post was January 2013; how did that happen?! And it wasn't a happy post at that! Well, I won't let 2014 pass without an update. And THIS will be a happy update! :) To get you up to speed with my life, you can follow me over at Google+ and Instagram. I may have stopped blogging, but I never stopped writing or preserving memories via photos.

When I started this blog in 2007, it was a purely mobile blog. That is, I posted a daily photo with a brief caption through my super trusty Sony Ericsson k800 phone. It took great photos at 5mp and is able to connect to the internet that's why I'm able to blog. What I did back in 2007 is what I'm doing now in Instagram~ posting a daily photo to preserve our memories.

With that, this blog has become redundant. Also, I'm not just "Melissa Solito" anymore. Time for a new blog persona I guess. So, I'm closing this blog full of memories with a heavy heart. I won't take it offline though as I have good stuff posted here (mostly travel) that will be helpful to Google searchers :) I will probably do one or two updates before closing this completely.

So where's the "happy" part of this update? Here it is: I'm actually blogging again!! No, I don't mean this post, haha! I have made a new blog, a more appropriate one for the stage of my life that I'm in right now. Yes, motherhood. And being a wife. And finding myself amidst all of the responsibilities that those two "labels" entail. Where's the new blog? I'll update you when it's ready! ;-)

the scariest moment of my life! :(

And it happened two hours ago (7:40pm GMT+8). Our family of 4 had just finished dinner in the basement area of SM Megamall and was waiting for our bill. I was facing the entrance of Mannang / Mann Hann restaurant when I noticed that a lot of people were running toward the stores. I thought there was a celebrity but the running was frantic, and the security guards were also running (to the direction of the incident). I told hubby to look; the restaurant staff and the other customers noticed the commotion too. We got up to get our credit card from the counter so we can go out of the mall before something bad happens.

But then suddenly a waiter pulled down the metal door of the restaurant and we were in lockdown (pic at right). The diners were in panic mode, and we moved to the back of the resto, near the kitchen and waited for some news of what's happening. That moment I hated Globe / Blackberry coz I had no internet connection (on top of my postpaid plan, I had to subscribe to a BB internet plan which will raise my phone bill 100% and I couldn't afford it). I felt so helpless coz I cannot get any info! What if the people were running because there's a fire and we were trapped inside the restaurant?! You can't make the right survival choices without information :(

Happy Lemon in Davao!!

-mobile blog post-

After 48 years, I'm finally here in the newly opened (just 2weeks+ old) Happy Lemon in The Peak - Gaisano Mall of Davao. I've been craving for their Rock Salt & Cheese green tea since I heard of it last December 2010 as I'm sucker for sweet-salty foods ;-) Yeah, 2 years have passed before I finally had a chance to taste their signature drink. No, I'm not a loser, just a patient fan from faraway Davao :p

So how was their Green Tea with Rock Salt and Cheese? IT WAS freakin' WORTH THE WAIT!! The (not so) sweet-salty combo was a riot in my mouth, and I was in gustatory heaven! The foam (see the drink on right in the pic above) was to die for, hehe! ^__^ Anyway, the drink on the left was hubby's order- Deluxe Milk Tea with Grass Jelly. It's also good, comparable to the yummiest milk tea we had in Taipei, just a tad heavy on the green tea taste.Ü

www.happy-lemon.com

hubby's crab omelette is LOVE!

He may not cook a lot, but when he does, Labsie's dishes are often uber scrumptious! ^_^ For our breakfast this morning, hubby cooked the crab omelette pictured above. It was bursting with crabmeat (painstakingly picked from 2 steamed crabs), buttery, a lil bit cheesy (mozarella) and oh-so fluffy! Just how a perfect omelette should be.. :-) Thank you Labsie / hubby / Daddy for the awesome breakfast! Tomorrow again? Heehee!Ü