Monday, September 28, 2015

Gratitude Journal: Children N Beauty Ritual

This month, I'm so thankful...

That I live in such a nice, tranquil, sustainable, stress-free neighbordhood.


We live in an old, upper middle class neighborhood with good facilities: parks, malls, hospitals, schools, grocery stores, traditional markets, lots of nice stores and restaurants, and of course Churches! Though considered to ba an affluent neighborhood in Jakarta, people here are mostly businessowners who live simple, unpretentious, unglamorous, frugal lifestyle. They might live in large and opulent homes, but they drive old model cars. The women might carry a nice, branded purse, but they don't show off and dress simply and comfortably. (The house price, though, is astronomical!)

A huge plus point of living in a relatively well-off neighborhood with such frugal lifestyle? The prices of daily neccessities like food and clothes are pretty affordable. My neighbors are the kind who will spend a lot on education and travel, but they chose to eat good, simple food and purchase the whole family wardrobe from outlet stores. They don't dress to impress, but to look good AND feel good. That translates to our daily expenses to be quite low, we can save a lot, and we don't feel like we have to "keep up with the Joneses".

Also, in a city with traffic jam as bad as Jakarta, it's such a luxury to live where everything is only a 5-minute drive away. Grocery shopping? Want to watch movie? Want to eat out? Hospital? Michael's kindergarten? They are all only require five minutes drive, and in Jakarta, where spending four hours a day commuting to work is considered as normal, it IS really something.

Another very important thing: Church is only a short distance away, like five-minutes drive. So there's no excuse not going to Church!

And I'm very very very grateful to live in such neighborhood, with work only 15-minutes away.

Thank you, Lord.

***

Sweet-scented shower gel.

Need I say more? Shower time is my me time. Husband nor son is not allowed in the bathroom when Mommy is taking shower. Of course.

Usually I just use simple bar soap and try to shower as fast as I could so I can get to be doing the next thing on my to-do list, but when I want to feel special, or on two days of the month when I have my period migraine, taking a showering with a loofah and with the luxurious felling, bubbly, lovely-scented shower gel is a soothing ritual that I enjoy and appreciate. Besides, how can it NOT be a luxurious privilege? Our mothers and grandmothers didn't have stores like Bath & Body Works or more affordable brands like Suave or Olay or Queen Helene or Palmolive with an array of delicious and exotic scents and pretty packaging, that we can so easily get. A lot of people talk about the good ol' days, but I sure love the conveniences of modern life, despite everything! ^__^

Let me tell you a secret: shower gel is a luxury buy for me. I never buy shower gel. Yes. I'm so cheap, I would buy them for my husband and son, but I refuse to buy them for myself, choosing cheaper bar soaps instead. Yep, I know. Mommy self-sacrificing syndrome. However, for my last birthday, I receive TONS of scented shower gel! Well, not tons, but about eight bottles of them. They smelled sooooooo good, and eight bottle will last me a looooong time. Especially since I don't use it everyday. Perhaps about twice a week.

And when I do, o la la! I'm so thankful and grateful to be living in this modern era where such luxury is widely available and pretty much affordable for about every woman.

Thank you, Lord.

So, what are you thankful for today?

I'm linking up to these wonderful Ladies:

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Monday, September 21, 2015

Week in Recap: Gift from the Heart

Hello, Friends!

Last week was yet another happy humble good-ol-times in our home. On Friday Hubby came home late because he was going to meet an old friend who lives out of our state and who happened to be having business trip to Jakarta. Actually, I only met Youdi and his wife, Adys, once during our honeymoon. We went to a popular vacation spot for our honeymoon, Bali, and at that time, Youdi was being stationed there for work. The beauty of social media is, we were able to connect throughout the years via Path, a Facebook-like social media which is quite popular in Indonesia. Though I had not yet to meet them ever again since then, we were pretty much updated on each other's life, and we have a common hobby: traveling! Last year when we vacationed to Italy, they were backpacking around China. Last summer, when we went to another Eurotrip, Youdi and Adys were traveling to Japan.

Adys is pregnant with their second child, so I picked a sweet-smelling soap from Hallstat, Austria for her, hoping that she would enjoy taking some luxury bath time in the convenience of her own bathroom. Huby picked something for Youdi, also. Unbeknownst to us, Adys also picked some things for us - or for me, actually - from Kyoto!

The funny thing is, Youdi came to Jakarta for business about once a month, and he did remember to bring Adys' gifts for us, but he always left them at his hotel room, and failed to give the gift to Hubby! So, Adys said, that this gifts had been flying back and forth from Jakarta to their city for about three times before I finally got them!

This is what Adys picked for us... Or for me, actually.... I cannot imagine these are gifts for a man! A Hello Kitty T-shirt, in a very soft pink color that it looks like strawberry slush ice cream. A cell phone charm with a tiny, kimono-wearing Hello Kitty doll.  A cute maiko (apprentice geisha) fridge magnet that I absolutely adore, because I collect fridge magnets.

Seeing all these cutesy-cutesy things, I asked Hubby, "How come does Adys know that I love Hello Kitty and the color pink?" And Hubby looked at me with amused expression and said matter-of-factly, "Honey, how come that she does NOT know? EVERYBODY who knows you personally or through social media must know that you love pink and Hello Kitty!"

Oh, OK. I guess I posted a lot of pictures of me wearing pinks, my pink stuffs, and Hello Kitty. Mind that I am a 37-year-old mom, not a seven year-old little girl!

Thank you, Adys and Youdi! I love them all! They are all so cute!!!


Weekend is noodle time for our family, so we went to try out yet another noodle shop called A Bun. Actually, I had been there once, but Michael had not. It's not my favorite noodle shop, though Hubby really likes it. Here's another common episode of our family while going out, practically anywhere.

Mommy: "Michael, let Mommy take a picture of you, OK? Smileeee...."


Mommy: "Michael, smile at your reflection while Mommy is taking picture. OK.. One.. two.. three!"


Mommy: "OK, now the three of us as a faaaaamily... Smillleeee..."
(Look at Hubby's and Michael's expression, LOL.)


Michael and Hubby, " ......"


And finally, Michael: "Mommy, can we order food now and stop taking pictures, please? Daddy looks hungry..."

Saturday is worship time at the Church, and Michael was wearing a brand new shirt with "woof-woof" prints all over it. My Mom sewed the shirt for him last year, from a piece of fabric she bought from the US, but it had been too big for Michael until now. Michael loves dogs, thus naturally he loves his new shirt!
  

After Church we went to eat dinner at a soto shop. Soto is a kind of Indonesian chicken soup, eaten with rice, cracker that we call "kerupuk", and "chicken satay" or kebab with peanut sauce. I wish I had taken a picture of the dish to show you, but we were so hungry we forgot! Michael had already had dinner before Mass, but we always try to introduce him to a new dish each time we eat out, so this time he got to try the soto soup and peanut sauce. He liked it!


Before heading for dinner, we visisted a little bazaar held at the Church back yard. People had set up some tents there with several vendors selling religious goods: crucifixes, books, rosaries, posters, etc. We have several crucifixes hanging on our walls at home, but we had been looking for table crucifix for our praying corner stand for a long time now, yet we had not found any that we liked. We even looked for it during our trip to Vatican and Assisi, and still we could not find a suitable crucifix for our praying corner. By the grace of God, that evening, we stumbled accross this one! 


The size was correct, not too small, not too big. The silver color was just perfect to match our praying corner. There were other, grander, more beautiful table crucifixes in wood and gold, but we knew right away that this is the one! The price was just right, too! We brought it home with us, and now it stands on our praying corner.


"That's Our Lord Jesus!" Michael exclaimed each time he saw a crucifix. I also dusted and cleaned everything on our praying corner, and washed the table cloth on Sunday, while Michael and Hubby played together.

 

I'm not a morning person. It's getting better now, especially since I incorporated one habit per month challenge into my life. Yet, I'm not one who will wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning everyday. I wake up earlier than my old habit, yes, but not before sunshine comes pouring into the bedroom windows! There are times when I feel like crawling back to bed after hitting the off button of my alarm, yet the Lord has many ways to wake me up. One of the habit I have developed over the past several months is reaching out for my cell phone, still in plane mode, and read my daily portion of Bible verses. Last week, I stumbled upon this verses of Matthew.


Whoa! Jesus' words were really tough, aren't they! Yet, they still ring true even to this day. So I'd better wake up and do my part being the salt of the world as well as I can if I don't want to get thrown out. Haha! That's a great motivation to get up and go and glorify the Lord in whatever tasks He has assigned to us in our everyday life.
 
On a lighter note, Hubby got this cute Winnie the Pooh torchlight for Michael, and he was ecstatic. One evening we turned off the living room lights, and showed our son how to make "moon" on the wall with the torch, as well as making funny shadows with our hands, which made Michael laughed hysterically. He thought it was hillarious!


 
Michael also loves using the Pooh as "model" or passenger for his building blocks. Here he was building a "car" for Pooh and put a block behind him to "support his back so Pooh won't slouch". Hahaha!
 
 

Michael also "made" this colorful house with construction paper at school. He made three, the next one is better than the last one. He gave one for me, one for his father, and kept one for himself. They were really gifts from the heart! At first Hubby thought he would bring it to work, but then he changed his mind since he was afraid the "house" will get torn apart with time. So what I did was laminating the "house" with clear plastic, glued an old, unused fridge magnet behind it, and put it on our fridge. Now we can see it everyday and because it's covered in plastic, we'll get a higher mileage of it! I never thought I'd be one of those mothers who proudly display their crooked child's art on the fridge for all the world to see, but now I'm becoming one, and having a blast! ^__^
 

I'm linking up to these wonderful Ladies:

Monday


Tuesday

Wednesday


Thursday


Friday

Saturday

Sunday
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