bluebacon

Bell and I attended our good friends' miracle daughter's first birthday. When I say miracle, it's true. The powers of the universe that brought that child into this world is a testament to having strong faith and letting love take charge. This won't be a long entry, I just wanted to share how happy I was to be able to share this moment with our friends and their family. I am looking forward to seeing this child grow up raised by such wonderful parents. So much love for them :)

I watched the kids take their Brown Belt test in karate tonight. I do have a disconnect when it comes to their martial arts education because I understand nothing of it. Super supportive of it and grateful that my mother-in-law introduced it to my kids, but it's one of the things that I was happy to delegate to others. Today though, I picked up the kids from school, met up with grandma at the food court and I was just going to hand them over and find something else to do with my free time. But I didn't really have anything pressing that I needed to do and I never get an opportunity to be with the kids when they have karate so I thought, what the heck I'd come watch. Of course I didn't realize that belt testing was a rigorous two-hour thing, but regardless I was thankful for the free time that I had to just dedicate to cheering my kids on. They were awesome and Bell was awarded the Elite Warrior Brown Belt, which I of course knew nothing about. It meant that she ...

Today was the first meeting of the Student Registration Priorities Committee since we proposed the priorities to the School Board and it was approved. Today's complicated topic of discussion was how to create the infrastructure to support the whole school district in fairly implementing the new student enrollment priorities. This included conversations about developing an app that can automate as much of the work as possible, developing a criteria for the documents that will be required for parents to present in order to prove their residence, etc. More logistical stuff. I love being in the company of really smart people but I admit, I'm still not as outspoken as I should be and sometimes I wonder if I should be. On the other hand, I really hate outspoken people who take up time when all they're doing is thinking out loud but isn't necessarily contributing to the discussion. I hate wasting time caused by emotional outbursts. I'm just not like that. I think logical...

I was at a community outreach event today at one of the provincial ministries. It was one of those straight forward events where we set up a table and entertain questions from the public about what the agency does and how they can be a part of it. Then my Toastmasters Division Director showed up because that was office building, and he talked to me for AN HOUR. Luckily, my other colleague was there so she could entertain other conversations other wanted to have. I, on the other hand, carried on with my "private" conversation politely, while maintaining keen interest and engagement. If there's anything I learned over the years, well actually more so the last couple of years, it's not to judge people (unless they're related to me by blood). So although this person could looks and sounds like a nerd, he later did admit that he didn't really have that many friends and that Toastmasters was his social and professional development outlet, he still lived at home ...

SO I finally decided to show up for choir today. I'd be lying if I said I was super keen to be there especially after the first twenty minutes of the rehearsal where I quickly got reacquainted with Beethoven. I just had to show up on the day that we were rehearsing the movement with the million b-flats in it. Why, why... WHY!?!! I'd also be lying if I said I didn't complicate running out the door with the thought, "I can still leave... I haven't invested more than an hour on this music yet. I can still go!" But oh well, the thrill of the challenge got the better of me once again. Oh gawd, it's going to be a miserable five months... On the up side though, I think after learning Missa Solemnis this year, the fear and reluctance of singing b-flats will be a thing of the past.

Speech Contest Day has arrived! I gotta say, I was excited for this day to come. When I accepted the task of putting this contest on, I had no idea how the heck a speech contest looked like. I was given a guide which listed what needed to happen, I used my common sense and I put my event planner hat on and went to work. I whipped out a poster, I promoted and built excitement around the event, I reached out and connected with people. I motivated my club members to join the contest, I showed both professionalism and humility as I went to our Area, Division and District officers and asked them to volunteer their expertise. I developed a new system to sign up for volunteer roles which was immediately embraced and adapted by our Area Director. Already I felt like I made a difference, made an impact, set the bar higher and elevated the organization I represented, which ultimately is all the reward I care for myself. I like doing a good job and I enjoy doing a good job. But this day still...

Raine has been wanting to attend the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's Annual House Tour since he was six years old. This is a fundraiser where the AGGV organized a self-guided tour of five private homes with some stellar architectural feature.  Of course if you were a homeowner of some fancy house who agreed to show off your home to hundreds of people on this one day, as part of a fundraiser, it's quite understandable why you wouldn't want to have young kids running around your property. So when I checked the policy, it said that kids under 10 are not allowed to attend. Completely understandable.  After four years of patiently waiting to be 10 years old, Raine finally turned 10 this year. I almost forgot that I promised to take him on this tour. Luckily I didn't or else I'll never hear the end of it. I was thrilled that he was still interested though even though it has been four years since we last talked about it! It was really cool and enjoyed the tour w...

So... today I got trained to be an official speech contest judge in the area, division, district and international level. Did I mention that I got trained by accident? It's contest season in the Toastmasters world right now and as VP of Education there has been a ton of emails going my way the last few weeks that admittedly I didn't really track very well. But I did remember seeing something about a judges training which I understood was an info session for new people who has never judged a speech contest before. Fair enough. It's a complicated process, so why not? So naturally I thought I qualified to attend. Yes, I thought it couldn't hurt to learn the ins and outs of judging for educational purposes, but I attended mostly because I had spent the last few weeks recruiting judges for our club's speech contest. As the chair and lead organizer of this contest I thought I should at least understand what it is that I have asked my volunteers to commit to. I a...

Today was an eventful Friday. Literally. I had two third party fundraisers that I had to attend where I supposedly did not know anyone and assumed that I had to turn on my networking button on for. You know, networking events have been getting easier lately. It has been noticeable that I in the recent past, I been able to carry on longer and longer conversations with random people and not feel like I want to die after the first five minutes. One of the events was a lunch hour fashion show, that came with lunch - YAY. But even when I ended up at a table with a couple of people I didn't know, it wasn't that bad. I mean, yes having food to eat was a definite helpful distraction and time killer and I could have easily just ignored the two people at my table, but it seemed more awkward to be shy than it was to be friendly, so I went with friendly. The evening event I went to was held at an art museum that I had never been to, so I was excited to finally get a chance to see what ...

Today I was on 'Mommy Duty." As per mine and Eduardo's arrangement from over a year ago, Thursdays and Fridays are the days that I am in charge of the kids from school pick-up until the evening because these are the two days that he is working late. Doesn't always happen that way given my ridiculously crazy schedule and even when I do pick up the kids on Thursdays, I pass them on to grandma so I can go back to work. Today on the other hand is an anomaly, obviously, but nevertheless an anomaly I would like to continue. I had the entire afternoon and evening free enough that I could just go home with the kids after I picked them up from school. Well not exactly, piano lessons got moved to Thursdays now followed by swimming lessons. You know the saying that 'life happens?' Well clearly a lot of life happened because today was the first time in five years that I had taken the kids to their swimming lessons! In those five years, I had been oblivious of their pro...

It's been non-stop for me ever since September hit. One event after another. Today, I had a grants management meeting with the leadership team at work where I led the meeting and talked for two hours. It was our first chance to regroups since the Summer and after everyone's back from holidays so it's quite understandable why it ended up being that long. Afterwards though, I just suddenly realized that I was feeling that I was borderline exhausted. As if the universe heard my issues, one of my co-workers popped by my office and said a few of them were going out to lunch and if I wanted to come. Normally I wouldn't because well first of all, Eduardo makes my lunch every day so I always have something to eat. And secondly, I find that getting up from my desk to take any rest of some sort is really distracting. I didn't say healthy, just distracting. But this time around I really felt like I needed a treat and Thai food sounded like the way to go. So that was my rew...

Call me delinquent but I skipped choir again tonight -- for the second week in a row! It's so unlike me to do this but last week we had that golf tournament fundraiser and then tonight, I could have made it to rehearsal late, but after the first Viva board meeting of the season, I was just wiped out. We're back to drawing board I think. Low membership, how do we get more parents and children engaged, how do we increase attendance, how do we attract interest? All the age-long questions of any arts organization but it keeps coming back time and time again. Although I did bring up a really good suggestion which I am now tasked to initiate, sometimes I feel like maybe I should just shut up. But I can't really shut up. Once and arts administrator always an arts administrator. It's like taking an oath to always advocate for arts education, appreciation, awareness of different genres and supporting new artists. In this case fighting to save choral singing for children and ...

Yes indeed, I was mixing it up by mingling with other local professional fundraisers by attending the annual season kick-off event of the CAGP (Canadian Association of Gift Planners). I went because first of all I'm on the CAGP Board so of course to appear united and welcoming to other members, I gotta show up and network. I'm sure this isn't the first time I've mentioned it, but networking event have always been awkward for me. Although I have admittedly improved over the years. This time I said I was only going to stay for an hour. Mostly because it's the most that I can put on my street parking and I had another meeting in the Westshore right after the Mixer. But what do you know, I ended up staying over my allotted time because believe it or not, I can now successfully carry a conversation with multiple people and last more than hour doing this. Shocker.

Every third Sunday of the month, anyone who has a calling as a teacher at church gets a teacher "workshop" as part of our professional development. So today was a teacher workshop day. I wouldn't say that it's a necessary thing to do but I certainly appreciate it. I appreciate that the church leadership cares enough that everyone does well that they would provide this kind of support to the members whose calling is to teach. It's an opportunity to gather with other teachers, compare notes and best practices, gain and share new ideas, in short it's beneficial to everyone. I don't really have that much to say about it yet as it has only been my second time to attend, but any professional development is welcome in my book.

Today was Bell's birthday celebration. It was our time to make it up to her after two years of neglecting her birthday. Two years ago we just came back from Hawaii and well, kinda broke, so we kinda convinced her not to have a party and to just go over to Vancouver. Then last year, not only did we just come back from the Philippines, we were also busy preparing for my sister-in-law's wedding so again, we talked her into celebrating in December by going to Portland. I know it's not like we neglected her completely but we sure haven't put in so much attention to celebrating on her actual birthday. So here we are, I was so together, I planned everything six weeks in advance :) As a side note, this is also the first birthday where we didn't have to do anything. It was surreal in an anti-climactic way, but hey Bell had a great time, all her guests had a great time, all was well!

As I said on my Facebook post, "And this is how its' done -- stress-free auction setup!" I have whined and groaned about auctions and galas over the years, and I just want to make myself clear that my sarcasm towards events like these have nothing to do with my reluctance to support any cause or charity. In fact, that reason alone is probably the only thing that drives my motivation and every last bit of adrenaline during the most stressful time of special event planning -- the big picture that at the end of the day, the charity and cause that this event supported is the winner of it all. So you might ask, where does my sarcasm and annoyance come from? Well it's mostly the difficult personalities that I've had to manage and work with over the years -- the people who put themselves "in charge" but are not necessarily in the front line of putting the whole event together. Again, at the end of the day, despite clashes in personalities and opinions, th...

The annual South Park family potluck was tonight. It's the first PAC event of the year and for the second year in a row, I was family-less. Raine had piano lessons, then the kids had swimming, Eduardo had to work, and of course since I can't watch the kids, grandma had to watch the kids, so that left me as the only Hermosa family representative present at the Potluck. Of course I came, because, well, I'm the PAC Chair. I organized it and it's the first opportunity to meet the school's new families in a social setting. Plus we initiated a new icebreaker initiative so of course I had to be there to make sure it turns out okay. It was a tougher than normal day because we have a fundraiser tomorrow at work and all the auction prep work had to be done today in order for us to be able to set up first thing in the morning. But I had never been more grateful to have an amazing team of people on the PAC this year that had their own initiative and common sense to set up...

It's Bellie's birthday!!! Seriously, how is she 9 YEARS OLD???!!!!! We celebrated by having dinner at Red Robin because of her free birthday meal. Then we gave her present which she was in complete shock of getting. She was so happy she actually cried.

It's the first day of choir rehearsal tonight but it was the first time that I wasn't there because I had to attend a third party golf charity event for the women's shelters in the community. The beauty of third party events is that, in theory, these are fundraisers that are organized to raise money for charities without using any of their administrative resources. This was why I had no qualms about showing up for this event, even if it meant missing choir on our first day back for the season. To be able to say thank you in person to the group of people who who have worked so hard to give back to their community, is such a special thing to do. I got to connect with other staff from other shelters and got to socialize with a lot of the attendees and staff of Royal LePage. I even got to bid on an auction item even though somebody kept outbidding me time and time again. Although admittedly, I'm slowly having relearn attending events where I'm don't have to work...

Competent Communication Manual Speech 3: Get to the Point Speech Objectives: • Select a speech topic and determine its general and specific purposes. • Organize the speech in a manner that best achieves those purposes. • Ensure the beginning, body and conclusion reinforces the purposes. • Strive not to use notes. TIME: 5 to 7 minutes. The objectives in “Get to the Point” teach the speaker how to clearly state your speech goal, and make sure that every element of your speech focuses on that goal. Third time's a charm, but only accidentally. So remember I wasn't feeling well last night? In fact I almost bailed on my speech today because I couldn't figure out what to talk about that would meet the above objectives effectively. No that's not true, I had an idea but it was on the complicated side and required more finessing had I decided to go on with it. But because I wasn't feeling well and I really didn't want to start a precedence of bailing on my spe...

I feel like I had just been run over by a truck. No, no, no... I can't be getting sick. There's still so much I have to do, including writing the damn speech I said I was going to do tomorrow! Breathe... It also doesn't help that Eduardo's upset with me right now. He said he's not but I know he is because he's been ignoring me. Part of me feels terrible because I had been SO crazy busy that I ignored him first. On the other hand, part of me feels like I should take advantage that he's currently ignoring me and blitz through all the things I have to do, AND THEN I can apologize and make it up to him after I'm done with all my projects that happen to be all due one after the other this week. On the flip side, part of the reason that my to do list piled up was because I decided to take it easy over the summer and hang out with Eduardo every single night when I could've easily been diligently going through my to do list leisurely. Oh well, doesn'...

It's Raine's first day in dance class! We signed him up for this amazing program with the  Victoria Academy of Ballet. They have a tuition-free beginners dance program for one year, specifically just for boys. Brilliant! They're facing their recruitment issues head on. Calling it is what it is -- the dance industry needs male dancers and the best way to do it is to get young male children interested at a young age, or at the very least, provide them with the access and opportunity to decide for themselves if it's something they would like to go into in the future. Because let's face it, this stupid world of ours is full of stupid discriminating people with antiquated points of view and we need to do something about it. I'm all riled up in particular because I finally decided to call my mother back earlier this week. She left me a message at 7am on a Sunday on how she doesn't understand why Raine and Bell are in the same class. Yes it's a valid questi...

Yes. Drilling. Not me though. The dentist did. The dentist gave Bell an emergency root canal -- on a baby tooth! I didn't even know that was possible! Wouldn't you just pull it out and get it over with? No, apparently not. I'm guessing dentists must've taken an oath to save every tooth they can to the best of their abilities. Bell was complaining of a toothache for a couple of days but we thought that one of her baby teeth was just coming lose and the reason it was hurting was because it was one of those smaller molars. We do this all the time with her. We think that whatever is bothering her is not a big deal and then it ends becoming a big deal and then we feel bad because we didn't believe her right away. Just like all those times... when her eyes got swollen and we didn't think it had anything to do with peanut allergy. Or that time when her gum swelled up and we didn't think to think much of it until it got to be the size of a golf ball. Or that other...

Second day back to work after Labour Day and I am out late again, this time with the mentorship program folks with AFP. I have to say, for once I can finally say that I can survive networking events and also, I'm also getting to know a lot more people than I thought that attending such events is never awkward anymore because there's always someone to chat with. And by chat, I mean more than just a so-how's-work kind of conversation. It's actually nice. Maybe it's just here in Victoria but in other cities, I feel like every fundraiser is competing against each other as opposed to supporting each other in the same crazy field that we're in! In a nutshell, I had a great time. I thought I would only stay for an hour, instead I ended up staying for 2.5 hours with a lot of new friendly and professional connections. Not bad for another night of staying out late.

A rather fiery first PAC meeting of the year if I may say so! Too many details to mention so I won't go into it but let's just say that my original plan for this meeting was to just talk logistics for our two upcoming events and go through the bylaw review. But so many parents showed up for this meeting, which is great, don't get me wrong, and really a lot of great discussion took place as well. I'm not sorry about any of it, but it was a lot heavier in content that I had hoped for and well, it was... heavy! It's my last year as PAC Chair and all I want to accomplish this year is to make sure everyone I leave behind to continue on the work is set up for success. I am confident that I will be leaving behind a competent and passionate team of people and I no longer feel worried or apprehensive. I'm really looking forward to this year.

First day of school! My Grade 5 and 4 babies... how did this all happen?? They were just babies! I thought that first day of school was going to be the highlight of this day but instead, the highlight was me and Eduardo going for a run along Dallas Road while waiting for the kids to get out of school. I ran for a solid one hour! ONE HOUR! I can actually keep up with Eduardo now without stopping, it was a fantastic feeling to be able to do that. It used to be that the longest interval I could run was 5 minutes and that was me already wanting to die. I absolutely LOVE that I have so much more energy and endurance now. It does pay off to exercise regularly! Woohoo! :)

The day started out with me wanting to do something to take advantage of the last holiday before the summer ends. But I often forget that the person I want to hang out with the most is Mr. Practical and Mr. Anti-Adventure when uncoerced. So right away when we woke up this morning, he declared that he would love to hang out and do something together, but he was tired and whatever activity I come up with, it would be preferable if we didn't go very far. Total buzz killer since what I wanted to do was hike. So in my misery, I started cleaning instead. I started organizing my closet, which at first I thought was the dullest way to spend a holiday but, oh well, I needed to clean up my closet anyway. Later I discovered that it was a good thing that I did that because I finally found the formal purses that I had been blaming Eduardo for losing. Yay! Okay, admittedly I was embarrassed to realize that it was me who had kept the purses away. I hardly ever clean around the house that it...

Today was Fast Sunday. Every first Sunday of each month, members of the church fast for two meals. It's amazing to me that on any other day, I would most definitely feel the hunger, but for some reason when it's Fast Sunday, and when it's purposely done right, I feel that I'm rewarded by not feeling any hunger at all. But only when I sincerely and prayerfully do it. It doesn't work when it's just an afterthought and I do it just because. Isn't that interesting? I had never figured out the whole matrix behind this fasting mystery. I didn't have anything deep to pray about today, except for the general well-being of everyone who is dear to me. Wishing the kids all the best in school this year. Being thankful for my family and the amazing people that surround me at home, at work, and everywhere I go, who I credit all the positive influence in my life to. There are some days when I really do mean business and really bring forward something I need help wi...

You know what's too much volunteering? It's when you're forced to spend the Saturday of a beautiful sunny long weekend cooped up inside the house to blitz through a bunch of volunteer work you committed yourself to for various organizations not related to each other! That's what today was. My tasks: CAGP - social media content calendar for the rest of the year and a board report South Park PAC - shopped for supplies for the first week of school's welcome back coffee/tea event every morning; proofed the PAC Events brochure; finalized the PAC's Facebook Group guidelines; created PAC Meeting Agenda Toastmasters Club - Speech contest promotion and volunteer recruitment; member survey (which actually meant I had to do a crash course on every educational program that Toastmasters International has in order to create this survey from scratch!) Church - had to prepare my lesson for primary In addition to that, I went shopping as quickly as I could to buy f...

Visiting was definitely the theme of the day. We visited a a bunch of libraries, community centres and different neighbourhoods, so I could put up posters for a work event we're having next week. We visited South Park so we could check the class list posted. And true enough, what we heard was correct -- Raine and Bell are in the same class this year! Hilarious. I knew they requested each other at the end of last school year but I didn't think the teachers would take it seriously! It was also very flattering but at the same time humbling how a lot of the teachers find both my kids a gem to teach. So much that they find no issue in putting them together in one class! We went home and visited a new provincial park that's about 15 minutes away from the house. We were shocked at how beautiful and peaceful it was there and couldn't believe how remote it felt and yet we're really not. It was so amazingly beautiful. And a really good hike! Distance and challenge-wise, i...

I took the day off so I could stay home with the kids. A little scheduling glitch that led us two days of childcare coverage this week. It should've actually been three days, but with everything going on on at work, yesterday just had to be a work-from-home day. And boy did I ever work from home! I sat on my ass for seven straight hours as if I had been in the office. In fact I think it was much worse than being in the office. I got up once to eat lunch for about ten minutes and then I was back at it again. And in order to guarantee that today was going to be 100% spent with the kids, I promised them I will stay up all night if I had to to finish everything I had to do. I stayed up until 2 am. Just saying. The kids were amazing to me. They let me work and didn't bother me at all. They even fed and entertained themselves on their own! I knew they were bored and were really looking forward to spending time with me, but they also understood that I was on a deadline. SO today w...