MY sEcoND BLog AWarDs

Thank you Fe, for these wonderful blog awards.

I want to share these awards to my commenters:

Jenny, Shirly
Roy, Marianne, Jacky
Nanay, Kim, MM, Cindy
Malou, Laureen, Lina, Rj's Mama
Bogie, Maricel, Angela, Emie, Cacai M
Frebby, Anygen, Reyane, Anne
ShatterShards

and to my other blog (Me in the Dutch Society).

To these bloggers this is my way of thanking you for giving time to read my stories.

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I miSS OuR HoME TowN FiEstA

This is the church where I was baptized and had my baccalaureate mass in high school.
I miss my home town especially this time of the year where parties are everywhere.
Every July 26 is our town fiesta in celebration of our Patron Saint Anne, the mother of Virgin Mary, so the grandmother of Jesus Christ.
During the occupancy of the Spaniards in the Philippines one of their goals was to spread christianity. About 81% of the 90 million people (2009 estimate) are Catholic (approximately 72.9 million), the Philippines holds the distinction of being the third largest Catholic nation in the world after Brazil and Mexico, as well as the only other predominantly Catholic nation in Asia aside from East Timor.
The novena (a Roman Catholic devotion consisting of prayers on nine consecutive days. The novena started last July 17 and ends this coming July 26. On this day the high mass is celebrated at 10 a.m. and lasted for 2 hours. Many priests, monsignors, cardinals are coming who will officiate the high mass. The day is full of amusements like beauty pageant, drum parade, motor cross, sinulog dance contest, basketball tournament, disco and many more.
On this day almost everybody is having a party. Food and drinks are ready on the table.
My sister txted me this morning and invited me.lol. My sister lives in the city, about 61 kms. from our home town. She will be visiting our parents in Barili. Barili lies 61 kms. southwest of Cebu, Philippines. She will go there together with my other sister, nieces and cousins. It's a kind of family reunion. This kind of event I really miss my family and home town.

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I PASSED THE NETHERLANDS BASIC ACCOUNTING EXAMS

Few months ago I did home study, the Netherlands Basic Accounting. Last month June 3, I took the exams. I can register for the exams anytime I want since the exams is computerized. I have waited for 6 weeks before I received the result. I was already hopeless why did it take too long to have the result. I told my husban, maybe I failed since I didn't receive the result yet and he said "just wait". Yesterday evening we had bbq. My husband opened a bottle of red wine. During dinner we drink red wine. I sometimes drink red wine. Red wine is good for the heart. After eating he checke his email. There he saw the result of my exams. He went outside since we had our dinner in the garden, waving his hands and he kissed me and said: "congratulations". I asked why? You passed the exams. With tears in my eyes I shouted I did it. Usually 1 glass of wine is enough for me but because I passed the exams I drank more than one to celebrate. We have drunk the whole bottle. I was drunk. I never thought I could pass the exams since the dutch language is difficult. I felt uncomfortable during the exams coz I was facing two things, the computer where I gave my answers and the booklet where some infos were given. But anyway, I survived. I PASSED THE EXAMS. I have to continue my study, I will be studying the basic business calculation. I plan to take the exams in September. Hope also to pass. I am very proud of myself.
What have you done that makes you proud of?
What are your achievements that make you very happy and satisfied?
THIS IS THE REWARD OF MY HARD WORK!

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WHAT IS PAGE RANK?

First, thank you so much guys for your comments! My page rank is back. What I did was I downloaded again the page rank and that was back. I have noticed since the day I made my second blog "ME in the DUTCH SOCIETY" my page rank turned into a question mark. Maybe it has something to do with my second blog. But now it is back, I don't have to worry about it.
When I visit blogs I always see page rank, so I try to have it too, maybe that is the trend. I try to find out the answer why should I have page rank, maybe it is CoOL. I found some answers to my question:
PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.
PageRank evaluates two things:
1. how many links there are to a web page from other pages
2. the quality of the linking sites. With PageRank, five or six high-quality links from websites such as www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com would be valued much more highly than twice as many links from less reputable or established sites.” (Google Librarian Central).
You can read more about page rank if you are interested.

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WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PAGE RANK?

Does anybody know what happened to my page rank? Yesterday I was surprised when my page rank turned to a question mark. I have just started blogging exactly two months ago. Last two weeks ago I checked the page rank and I had PR 1. I was so happy knowing that my page rank was 1. But now it turns to a question mark. Very sad to know.
Anyone can explain to me? Any explanation is very welcome. Let me understand what happened to my page rank. I need a simple explanation.
Any comments are highly appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance!!!

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OUR GARDEN FLOWERS (hortensia and lavender)

LAVENDER
LAVENDER AND HORTENSIA are what we have in our garden this summer. Lavender belongs to the species of flowering plants in the mint family. Lavender can be pruned. In the winter they will be frozen and in the summer they will bear again beautiful flowers and give very nice smell.



HORTENSIA (Hydrangea macrophylla) are the most popular hydrangeas grown in home gardens, and landscapes. Most of them are blue and pink. A few varieties are white. Other colors can be red, light purple, or dark purple.
Removing old blooms on a plant is called "Deadheading". Fortunately, we can remove the old blooms at any time of the year without harming the bloom. When we cut the blooms after the first of August, it would be safest to remove them with very short stems so we won't disturb any developing bloom buds for next year. As long as we cut the above first set of large leaves, it will be fine. We can also cut the shrubs during winter. When summer comes the plant will give again flowers. We don't need to plant it again. That's why I like these kinds of plant bearing flowers. Less hassle of planting every year not the same as other flowers that we have plant every year, it cost a lot.
What kind of flowers do you have in your garden?
Do you like flowering plants?
Do you like gardening?
I am interested to know how your garden looks like and how you keep it clean?

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School Vacation, Time to have fun

School vacation, a time to play, a time to sleep longer, a time to go to bed late, a time to be with your children, a time of having fun.
At last school vacation of the kids has started. The kids have school vacation for 6 weeks. Some schools have their vacations started last week. The land is divided into three groups: northern, middle and southern part. North of the land they have their vacation started last week 4 July until 16 Aug. Schools lie in the middle of the Netherlands the vacation starts 11 July until 23 Aug. In the southern part, the school vacation will be next week 25 July until 6 Sept. These dates are for elementary schools. High schools have different schedules.
This vacation we will just stay at home. Many will go to France, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Italy etc. and some go outside Europe. Dutch people save money only for vacations. They don't have any problem when they get sick since they are insured. From the companies and institutions where they work, workers and employees can have max. 6 weeks per year vacation. Most of them will go on vacation when their children have school vacations. We can not just pull out the children from school to go on vacations during classes. If the children can not go to school then the parents must have valid reasons or else they pay a certain amount to the government when the kids are absent. This vacation we plan to go to childrens' park, shopping, picnic at the beach, riding trains, etc. These are our plans. My husband will take some days off. A day or two in a week just to be out.
What do you do when your kids have school vacation?
Do you know why the schools here have different vacation dates?

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MEGA MINDY Time

Nowadays, we can easily buy dvds or even download movies and watch it at home. It is much cheaper. But for a change sometimes we want to go out especially for the kids. Yesterday afternoon we watched a movie entitled "Mega Mindy" a superhero(ine) movie. Kevin and Annabel are fans of Mega Mindy. First time for them to watch a movie in a movie house. We have so many dvds about Mega Mindy but yesterday we decided to watch it in a big screen. We brought popcorns and drinks inside, so watching while eating.
The movie house where we went to was small. I think there are only 100 seats. The show is scheduled. Viewers watch only once. In the Philippines you can go inside the movie house anytime you want and stay as long as you want and leave your mess inside, but here not. We have to clean our mess like cans from cola or plastic from food we brought. We didn't leave it inside. The tickets are expensive, for adult costs 8.00 euros (540 pesos per person) and the kids 6.50 (438 pesos).
If I don't like them to bother me when I am doing something I can just turn on the dvd with Mega Mindy movies and they can watch it the whole morning or afternoon. But I don't do that since it wíll destroy their eyes and besides not good for the motor skills. Children should play to develop their motor skills.

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FIRST BLOG AWARDS

It feels great when someone shares her awards to you. I am very grateful to Marianne who gave me these awards. These are my first awards.



The rules for these awards are:

1) To accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his/her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve discovered and think are great! Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I've just started my blog last May 19 this year. Last week I downloaded the google page rank and very happy to know that I had PR 1.
Hope that very soon I will receive more awards and find more friends. I want to share this accolade to the following who often visit my blog, show interest in reading my stories. I am sure they deserve to have these too. This is one way of thanking you girls for accepting me in this blogging world.

Jean, Laureen
Kim , Cacai M
Nanay, Carms
RJ's mama, Fe
Anygen, Jenny
Cindy, Gigie
Nenette, Reyane
Reanaclaire

GO, GO GIRLS grab in noW!

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LEARNING WHILE DOING IS FUN

"LEARNING WHILE DOING"

My kids are 8 and 5 yrs. old. The other day my 5-yr. old son, Kevin asked me if he could wash the dishes, and I answered, yes. I took the apron and put it around his waist. Since my apron is big for him I folded at the middle to fit him. I put a step since he couldn't reach the sink. Under the step was a rag to prevent inside flood. It was Kevin who suggested that he wanted to wash the dishes but only few dishes, their plastic dishes and cups. For him doing this is playing water. Indeed, kids want to play water. He didn't know what he did was doing household chores. Yesterday my daughter Annabel washed the dishes just what her brother did. She put the step and then wore the apron. Kevin dried the dishes. I have now two helpers at home.
Letting kids experience/do things develop their motor skills, knowledge and techniques like what should I do to make the dishes clean? I saw Kevin washed the dish both side rubbing the sponge mabye six times in each side. The dishes were very clean.
Explaining him how to do it is very sensational in my part. My little boy is growing and trying to learn new things. I was there watching him washing the dishes. I gave some techniques how to do it. With my supervision he will learn the right way. He did it again last night. He is having fun. The more often he does the more likely he will do it right.
Water conservation. I asked him not to use to much water while washing to prevent flood inside the house and make him aware that is not good to waste water.
How do you teach your children the household chores and when you teach them?
Is it now the right time that they will know?
EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER
CONSTANT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

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