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Hello, November! :) Thoughts on Blessings, Blogging and Smart Parenting: Are You Raising a Spoiled Child?

November 4, 2012 by Tina Leave a Comment

October has come and gone so quickly and it’s already the FIFTH day of November! 🙂 Oh my gosh! So much has happened and I haven’t even had the time to catch my breath, nor catch up on pending blog posts and articles (both for work AND for my sideline writing projects! LOL!). Oh, the life of a multi-tasking, homeschooling (or at least trying hard to), semi-work-at-home preggy mom! 🙂 *sighs* You know, if I really, really could, I would be over-the-moon-happy with being a fulltime stay-at-home, homeschooling preggy mom who writes on the side (and gets paid for it!) just for fun! 🙂

With kids like these, who wouldn’t want to stay home fulltime ? 🙂 Tim is a little over three years old and Rysse around seven months in this photo — how fast time flies!

But anyway… I shouldn’t complain, right? Our family has been very blessed, despite the “lean” moments at times… And even if hubby and I “sacrificed” 10+ years of “the best years of our lives” for fulltime ministry work for our Catholic community, God still blessed us all those years! He allowed us to grow as people and learn new skills, brought us to different places locally and internationally for the missions, taught us to trust in Him more, led us to meet people from all walks of life and allowed us to be a blessing (at least, I hope so!) to others through giving talks, leading teams, organizing events, writing manuals and so on…

Me waaaay back in 2005 with some of the youth of Timor Leste 🙂

Later on, He helped us have a beautiful wedding despite a tight budget, blessed us with two-now-three wonderful children, allowed us to reach out to so many other people, inspired us to learn different languages and enabled us to connect with people of different cultures! 🙂

Being “sent off” for mission as newlyweds 🙂

With one of the Timorese sisters. 🙂 We are blessed to have worked together with so many inspiring priests, nuns and other lay missionaries. 🙂

On one of the mountains of Baucau, during a mission trip. 🙂 Baucau is a district of Timor Leste. (This was taken on a different day — but notice my usual “mission trip attire”? LOL!)

With one of our Timorese host families. 🙂

At our farewell party organized by CFC Timor Leste in 2010 🙂
I cried buckets of tears!

Now, God has brought us to where we are at this particular stage of our lives where we can spend most of our time with our children, even homeschool them… and we can only look back and be amazed at His goodness! 🙂

Which leads me to realize again why I continue to write and blog. I was reading Frances Sales’s blog, Topaz Horizon, earlier and what she said in this post reminded me of something I had earlier realized during Martine’s WAHMderful Life Workshop: That whatever you do with your life, you need to be INTENTIONAL.

Frances wrote about being true to one’s self when it comes to blogging, and I hope she doesn’t mind if I quote her verbatim here: “Blog for yourself, not for the money… Blog about what makes you happy… This will give your blog its own voice, its own personality—yours—and make it unique. After all, there is no one quite like you in the entire world.”

As a relatively “newbie” blogger, reading Frances’s words above just affirmed me that I must be doing something right with my blog somehow. I used to compare myself with other mom bloggers and I wrote a bit about how to deal with “comparisonitis” in this post. But then, I thought, “I should just be ‘me’! I should just write with my ‘higher purpose’ in mind and not be afraid to share my thoughts and feelings!” Reading my very first post (imported from WordPress, where I first started blogging on www.missionarymom.wordpress.com) also helped me go back to the “roots” of my blog.

So, starting this November, you all might be a bit surprised with some of my posts — where I will be sharing about my “past,” in the hope that you will be inspired and encouraged. I will be more open with how my pregnancy is really going, in the hope that I will be able to touch at least one other mom’s life. I will be real. Well, more real than I have ever been on this blog, I guess. 🙂 And I hope that you AND I will be more blessed because of it! 🙂

Here’s to a wonderful month ahead for all of us! 🙂

P.S.
As you may already know, I contribute regularly to Smart Parenting’s website and, occasionally, to Smart Parenting in print. 🙂 For the November issue, I wrote an article on raising spoiled kids (it’s on page 50). 🙂 Please do grab a copy and let me know what you think about it! 🙂 Thanks to all the people who helped me with the article! 🙂

Thankful Thursdays: Just When You Want to Give Up

October 17, 2012 by Tina Leave a Comment

I realize I haven’t been made a “gratitude” Thankful Thursdays post in ages! There are actually SO many things to blog about… but I always feel like there’s so little time! *sighs* So, if you’ve contacted me before about blogging about this or that, or I haven’t even replied to you, please forgive me.

Anyway, this Thankful Thursday post is inspired by an online chat I had with a good friend and fellow homeschool mom blogger, Mariel of The Learning Basket (oh, please do check out her blog here for oodles of fun literature-inspired learning activities for your kid, and so much more!). We were chatting yesterday about a couple of things, one of which was the messages we’ve been getting from people because of our blogs.

Like I said in and on this blog post, I love blogging, but I haven’t been blogging as often as I’d like to. However, there are many, many times when I feel like stopping.

Photo by Stuart Miles from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yes, you read that right. Sometimes, I just want to give up on blogging altogether. I want to stop having to deal with thoughts of how to make time for writing regular posts, of the “hassle” of updating and , of replying to emails and messages from businesses and PR agencies and readers (oh, please forgive me!).

I actually chatted with another friend and fellow mom blogger (and “mentor-of-sorts”), Martine of Dainty Mom, about this same topic just last week… I told her what I said above and she encouraged me to keep at it and to just do my best (thanks, Marts, for always being so supportive! So excited to see you and the other ladies at the WAHMderful Life Workshop on October 27!).

Then, there are messages and comments like these, that truly warm my heart, uplift my spirits and encourage me… They also humble me and remind me why I started this blog in the first place — because I want to reach out to other people, especially to other moms… and to share what is good. I hope that, by blogging, I am able to inspire others to live their best lives… to live out God’s mission for their lives… even as I am still striving (and sometimes, failing) to do the same…

(This was sent to me through my Contact Me page. I didn’t include the mom’s name in case she wants to remain anonymous. Thanks just the same, Mommy A.!)

(This was a comment left on one of my earlier blog posts, about the Blissful Babes Warehouse Sale.)

I know to some people/bloggers, messages such as those above may be very common and admittedly, there are more “famous,” more inspiring bloggers out there. But to li’l ol’ me… they mean a lot. In this case, they are quite encouraging and provide me the motivation to keep on writing/blogging.

Thank you, dear readers. Thank you to everyone who’s dropped by and visited this blog at one point or another. Thank you for your messages, emails, comments, Tweets, Facebook posts, and more!

This Thursday, I thank the Lord especially for each and every one of you. 🙂 May God bless you and yours abundantly! 🙂

Photo by Stuart Miles from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Family Time Is the Best! :)

October 14, 2012 by Tina Leave a Comment

Hi, everyone! 🙂

Hope you’re all having a blessed, happy Sunday so far! 🙂

I haven’t been blogging as much as I want to… Mostly because most nights, I’m already too tired (I forgot how draining being pregnant can be sometimes!) to do anything else but snuggle up with the kids, read to them and say their prayers with them. Also, our little girl has been waking up in the middle of the night A LOT lately (crying and shouting to boot!) and it’s been VERY stressful for hubby and me. Thank God though, she settles down quickly now, and we think she’s been waking up usually because she needs to go to the bathroom. It’s a good thing too, that hubby is more patient with her than I’d like to be… 🙂

Anyway, I have a confession to make… I haven’t been blogging so much, too, because… Well, I’d rather be spending time with the kids or hubby. (Of course, there’s work, too!) I know that it sounds so cliche… but being preggy and all is making me so sentimental lately. My latest post on Philstar.com’s unBLOGGED section is a bit telling… that I’m getting so senti and emotional lately. And that I’ve realized the need to focus more on my family.

So… If you are wondering where I am, don’t worry… I’m still here! 🙂 I’ll still be posting regularly (I MUST do more scheduled posts, even on !) There are still a couple of giveaways coming up, too (some that are LONG overdue, haha, sorry!), so please do watch out for those! (Indigo Baby’s Amazing Grace giveaway is still ongoing, pls. do join it if you haven’t! Just click here!)

However… please bear with me, too, if I won’t be posting as often as before (at least for now!). I’ll do my best-est to be regular though! 🙂

Well, that’s it for now, friends! 🙂 Time to play outside with the kiddos! 🙂 Family time IS the BEST! (At least for us!) God bless, everyone!

Thank You, Unilever (and all the other companies/individuals/businesses that recognize my blog)!

November 13, 2011 by Tina Leave a Comment

I have a confession to make: my blogs are not super sikat (famous). So I am always PSYCHED whenever I receive certain e-mails in my inbox because of my blogs, like invitations to media launches for certain products (like Aprica’s earlier this year):

or invites to blogger events (like the one about Play Pilipinas, which I sadly wasn’t able to attend):

Or invites like this (usually from my wonderful mompreneur friend Janice of Mommy Mundo – sadly I wasn’t able to attend this either):

or invites to cool events like the formal unveiling of Lego Pilipinas (again from Janice – and yes, I wasn’t able to go AGAIN, because of work):
cid:

I have even been asked to write about certain events like Philippine Spring Cleaning Day, which I mentioned in my weekly blog post on Philstar.com here, and was able to watch Kung Fu Panda 2 for free with hubby and Tim at an exclusive screening c/o ! (Yes, I AM happy with stuff like this, hehe, I live simply that way!) Incidentally, I missed this event by Intel Philippines too (haaay!) because I was busy with our community’s 30th Anniversary preparations:

So, I was SUPER happy when I got this a few days ago:

My first ever “loot bag” due to blogging! Thank you Lady’s Choice and Unilever!

I’m not the only one who was happy! hehe!

Yipee! (I told you I am happy with little things right?!)

Now I have what I need to try out some of the recipes on Lady Choice Mayonnaise’s YouTube channel, just in time for Advent, and in preparation for CHRISTmas! 😉 Yey!

Thank you Unilever! And thanks too to everyone – businesses / companies / mompreneurs / individuals / PR people / fellow bloggers, etc etc – who believe in my blogs (this one and my homeschooling one) and support them! 😉 Be blessed always!

Thankful Thursdays: Just When You Want to Give Up

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