Being a small business owner has been hard in this economy, that’s for sure. I know it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but for me, being part of a team is more fulfilling than earning a lot of money and sitting in a cubicle all day which is why I sprung off and started my own business last year. I’ve loved every minute of it and I’ve learned so much about things like smallbusiness.xo.com and dealing with customers and all of it comes together to make me a pretty effective boss, if you ask me. I guess I just didn’t have any idea before now how hard it actually was to get stuff done in a work environment but I’m learning and that’s the best I can do. I just don’t know why anyone in their right mind would want to stay at a menial job answering to some big boss their whole life – that just wasn’t for me and as hard as this is, I’m much happier being a part of a team here.

These are my girls highlights from last month but before anything else, their costume first. I know all of you mostly like handmade costumes but unfortunately, my girls were wearing costumes bought at the store. I’m practical, I don’t want to stress out myself about what costume would be impressive. This year my girls were Pink Princess and Princess Belle. I got Yuna’s costume at Party City for only 5 bucks. I’m lucky that she picked that costume. It saved me a lot of money. And Freya was wearing a hand-me-down costume from her big sister. But before that, when we were at Party City, Freya changed her mind when she found out that her big sister was going to buy a new costume. She wanted me to buy her a Fairy costume too but good thing we couldn’t find one so I ended up telling her to wear the Princess Belle and that I’ll just buy her a princess crown to go with it. She was reluctant and thought deeply while I crossed my fingers. At last, I found a Princess Belle wig and that made her say, “OK! I like that wig”.  She was so happy and had a big smile on her way out of the store. At that time, I was like “Goshh, thank you Lord!”. I thought I couldn’t get out from that store until we can find a costume similar to a Fairy. Freya is so hard to please, I’m telling you but at least we have an understanding eldest. When I say understanding, I mean she never feels compromised. Whatever you give her she will accept it happily. Well, that shows that siblings are totally different.

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The photo above was taken at Franken Plaza in downtown Chicago. It took me forever to get a decent photo because everyone in there was trying to take photos of them. My girls didn’t know where to look. Anyway, let’s go through their Halloween Highlights.

October 15: During Girl Scout meeting, my girls made pumpkin faces from paper cutouts. Picture below.

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October 21: At least once or twice a month my girls have a Youth Fellowship at the church. During that day, they were making edible Jack-o-Lanterns using Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. It was a big project for all the kids at the church. I saw their excited faces while working on their Rice Kripies. I guess they were excited to eat their Jack-o-Lanterns. Look at their cute finished products below.

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October 30:  We went to Franken (Daley) Plaza in downtown. I saw in their website that they’re having so many fun family Halloween activities for this month. Unfortunately, we have to go home early because it was raining last Sunday. I just took the opportunity to take good photos of my girls at their well decorated tent for photo ops.  After taking photos, we went to their Arts and Crafts tent where my girls made drawings about Halloween. They submitted their drawings for a raffle contest which I’m not looking forward to. I think the place was nice if it wasn’t raining. I like what they did to the water fountain. They turned it into a bloody fountain. It’s looks really nice. Since that was their last day, they gave away all the big pumpkin that was displayed all over the place and we grabbed one for us.

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Also, that night we carved our very first pumpkin. We were all excited. ^__^x

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October 31 – Morning: I went to Freya’s class cos they had a Pumpkin Party. Freya didn’t dress up for Halloween in school cos they were not allowed to due to different cultures in their class. I’m so glad they allowed parents to stay during the class the whole time. I got the chance to see what my Pre-K  has been doing the whole class. She’s quite behaved and always listens to her teacher. Once in a while I spotted her talking to her seatmate. She also had a very small puppet play of her cute pumpkins that they made earlier that day. It’s about the Five Little Pumpkins. She was so cute that day. She was shy a little bit maybe because she knew I was there. As for Yuna, she also didn’t wear costume instead she was wearing a Hello Kitty jammies cos they had a Pajama Party.  They both brought lotsa goodies, though.

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October 31 – Afternoon: We visited a haunted house near our neighborhood. One of the nursing home here hosted a Haunted House for kids to have a safe trick-o-treat. It was well decorated. At the entrance, Red Riding Hood was there to greet us. I’m not sure if they hired people to wear those really convincing costumes and makeups. My girls was so scared especially Freya. The actors were nice, though. When they saw little kids were scared they became friendly and nice. We also got a chance to take photos with them. It was a lot of fun.  Good thing I like to read flyers and any small ads printed on paper. I spotted the ads at my girls’ school admin office.

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October 31 – Evening:

“Treat or Treat
Smell my feet
Give me something good to eat
If you don’t, of course I care
I’m a monster so beware”

Trick-o-treating around the neighborhood. I wore my modified costume. We are all wearing costume.

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BTW, this is not a travel entry. If you wanna know more about the place that we’ve been to just head on to Mt. Olympus’s website. Loads of photos below and please hover images for caption

August 23rd: 4 hours drive to Wisconsin Dells. After setting up everything, we headed straight to the theme park where hubby and I rode the Hades roller coaster. The scariest ride in that place. And take note, it was night time already around 8ish. I hurt my neck and until now it’s still hurting when I look down for long durations. Hubby hurt his back as well. We weren’t expecting that the ride would be that strong and aggressive and very steep :dizzy:

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August 24th: It’s Yuna’s 8th Birthday and this trip was a present for her. It was really intended for her. My friend helped me prepare and arrange the food. We bought a very small cake at the park. It was very expensive for being so small. It was not even a real cake cos it tasted like donut with chocolate syrup on top. But Yuna didn’t care cos she was very excited to check out all the rides in the park. Her most fave at that place was the water theme park. She didn’t care how tan she got as long as she was having fun. Our 2nd day was more on different kinds of water activities. We were in the water all day. Don’t forget to hover images for caption

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 August 25th: Our 3rd Day. Since the kids love the water so much, they requested the adults to go to the water park again. Mt. Olympus water park is very huge and has lots of rides. So basically, you can’t ride all of them in just one day. They have an outdoor water park and indoor. The Outdoor water park is larger than the indoor. We haven’t tried the other outdoor slides from the previous day. This time Hubby and I tried the tallest and steepest water slide. They call it “Demon’s Drop Water Slide”. It was an insanely fun experience. The same day in the afternoon, we went back to theme park again to ride the other roller coasters that we haven’t tried yet.  Also, we tried all their Go-karts. My favorite was the “Turbo Track”. That’s their fastest Go-karts. We spent our 3rd day by splitting the day in the water and theme park. Again, hover images for caption

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August 26th: This is the 4th day and last day at Mt. Olympus. We woke up early to pack our things up and to get ready to go home. Our check-out time was 10:30 in the morning so we need everything to be ready. Although we checked out early, we can still play at their park until night time.  We went go-karting again for the last time. Hubby and Yuna tried the underground go-kart. After that we rode 2 more roller coasters that were closed from the previous days because all their rides have day-offs too. We grabbed some items from the souvenir shop and after lunch we hit the road going back to Chicago. We arrived early than our expected time. I wish to go back their during the Fall season at Wisconsin Dells. I want to try their hiking resorts. I’ll upload more photos in my FB account cos I have MORE. :bleh:

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And here’s a video of our first night at Mt. Olympus and more HERE.

Photo Credit

Anyway, back to my daily schedule. Almost everyday I’m always not home. So at the end of the day I get tired and get lazy. I’m not a morning person too. I always have a problem getting up early in the morning. I think the main reason for that is maybe because my husband always gets home late from work. He usually comes home from work around 12 midnight. It is also our habit to watch TV series before going to sleep. We go to bed around 2:30 in the morning and already up by 7:30 to help our kids get ready for school and by 8:30 we walk them to school. When I’m back from taking the kids to school, I feel so tired and sleepy so instead of going out to run or go to the gym, I end up crawling back to bed and sleep until 11am. That being said, I wasted almost 1 hour of my precious time. I could have use it to workout.

My husband and I have been trying to change this kind of routine. We want to sleep early and wake up feeling fresh and good. Every time  I encounter a website about determination and motivation like Tim Feriss‘ website, it wakes me up to realize that if I really want to lose weight I should work it out. I mean you know not just for a week or a month but for the rest of my life. I want to be physically/spiritually strong. Perhaps I can successfully do it if I have proper guidelines. When I heard about Tim Feriss’ book and read the people’s good comment about it, boom! This is what I need, I said to myself. I’m curious, though, if 4 hour body work out is about getting 4 hours exercise everyday. I know, I’m taking it literally. Well, it’s for me to find out what the book really is all bout.

I guess if you’re goal is to be financially successful then you have to start in little ways like saving extra money when ever you can. Ohh I know, it is really hard to do. Every time I have extra money I tend to think that I’m a millionaire and I can spend my extra $65 on anything I want. Very wrong! That is not the way to go. So, little things like saving little by little will make a difference in the long run. I guess that’s also why some companies decided to side with automation rather than manual labor to save labor cost. So again that’s the little things we can do to save money.

Just think about it. There are so many things in life that we purchase everyday that we don’t really need. It might be worth a dollar or two but they all add up in the end.  One day just sit down and think hard. Think if you really need to get that Starbucks coffee and shell out the last $3 in your wallet.

It was held summer of this year from June 13 – August 6 at Bezazian Library. Every year the Chicago Public Library has a different theme for their summer reading program and this year it’s called Book Beats — Picture book readers and pre-readers who complete 25 pictures books will earn a Very Important Reader’s T-shirt. Children who read chapter books will earn a T-shirt when they complete 10 chapter books. Weekly book raffles, author visits, performers and presenters are just some of the activities that are featured throughout the summer in this drop-in program that helps motivate kids to read for fun.

My girls got two t-shirts from them now and they’re planning to collect them. In fact, they’re kind of excited of what would be the t-shirt design for next year. It’s becoming a part of our tradition every summer now.

Making their own bookmark

Picking their free books

Mr. Harry Osterman from 48thward was one of the visitor that day.

Freya with her crazy mom!

I’ve found that shops like that are really great for more exciting pieces, so I used my wireless internet Chicago to find some new thrift shops that I’ve never visited before.

It was kind of an adventure going to these shops that I’d never been to before and I found some really great things. I found this cute floral dress that can go to fall if I put on some tights and boots. I also found a few pieces that are more stylish, but still will be okay to wear at the office so I’m going to try those out too. Sometimes it just takes a bright color to get you going on a work day.

Guest post written by Michelle Wallace

Well, I know I haven’t mentioned it here in my blog that our little Freya has started school already as Pre-K. Today is her 2nd week of school.  This morning, the moment we entered her classroom, she suddenly cried and she wants me to stay and if I cant stay she wants to go home with me. I stayed in their room for about 20mins and after they had breakfast the teacher told me that I have to go. She cried so hard while I’m heading out the door. It melts my heart to hear her cry from outside of the room that I wanna go back and take her home instead. I couldn’t give in to my motherly emotions cos she’ll have to learn that the world includes hellos and goodbyes!

When it was time to pick her up, I was at the waiting area 10 mins early. I want to assure her that I’m really coming back for her. When she came out, she went straight to the parents’ waiting area and tried to find me. She spotted me with a big smile on her face. Oh, how I love that smile!

This is our little conversation while walking home…

Me: How’s your day at school Freya?
Freya: I stopped crying.
Me: You did? That’s good. So are you still going back to school tomorrow?
Freya: again? Why do I have to go to school everyday? I don’t like school. I don’t like it there.
Me: Why? I thought you already have 4 friends and you said you like boys now.
Freya: I dont like Ms Lopez. I want a different teacher.
Me: Why you dont like her? She seems to be really nice. Is she mean? Did she get mad at you?
Freya: No, she didn’t get mad. But she has very dark skin.
Me: Baffled and thinking what to say @_@

I told her though that it’s not nice to think like that. If her teacher finds out about it, it will hurt her feelings. Good thing she never says anything offensive to Ms. Lopez. She still keep asking for the teacher she met when we enrolled her last April. The one that first interviewed her. Unfortunately, that teacher is no longer working there.

Anyway, back to the topic about Yuna’s summer piano lessons and her recital. This year she did a great job by completing the book 3 lesson. Her piano teacher made sure that before the recital she’s comfortable reading some piano notes and be able to know it by heart. My hubby told me that learning all the notes are not easy. He knows cos he plays the guitar. I’m so thankful for this great program offered free by our neighborhood community. We all want the best activity for our kids and if you pay every kiddie program, you’ll most likely end up being poor. I’m just being thankful here ^_^

The piano class lasted about a month. Last August 2, they had their piano recital. It was successful and Freya was able to participate by singing a song while Yuna played the piano. Yuna did a couple of mistakes cos according to her she got confused with all the people singing. Her piano teacher made a bouncy rythm version of the song “If you’re happy and you know it”. It’s the teacher’s idea of the song so Freya could join. Pretty neat idea. Yuna is going to have a one-on-one session with her piano teacher beginning next week. So instead of taking it during the summer she will have piano lessons all year round. But this time it’s not free. It has an hour rate of $15, still not bad. The piano teacher is planning to use the Zuzuki method. It’s kind of advance than the usual lesson. That’s what the teacher said. I wish Yuna will like the method without any problems. And by problems I mean fussing.

Enjoy the video 

Just sharing the good news cos most of you know I only share positive thoughts. Photo is blurred not only to hide my unflattering face but for security purposes. Hope all of you have something to be happy too.

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