This Rugged JoyFull Home

Welcome to our humble farmhouse-ish home. What is a farmhouse-ish home? Let me just borrow this quirky definition I found on a sign that I bought from Amazon.  Farmhouse-ish - a rustic dwelling located on a farm (minus the animals, barn, and actual farm).   But to be really honest with you, this is my most justifiable excuse to camouflage all of the mistakes which we have done in constructing our first-ever home some 17 years ago. What could go wrong with a farmhouse-themed home?  When we first moved in to our 2 - storey home, it was just 40% completed with its  building foundations laid and concretes poured and cured, the roofing newly installed.  The walls were unpainted, roughly finished, the CHBs (concrete hollow blocks) were exposed on the exteriors, the ribbed metal roofing emitted too much heat at day-time and sent cold chills at night-time for lack of a proper ceiling and insulation. The exposed beams made of timbers from our ceiling were a sight to see ...

Beyond the physical and the online books that we provide our kids to learn, they watch our every step every day, they look for sincerity and authenticity as we model character to them as it happens organically at home since we’re always with them. As parents we become the curriculum for teaching character building to our kids. And this is what will stick with them for life. And since none of us is perfect, always allow room for mistakes and erasures. These too are integral part of their learning and once they’re older and wiser by God’s grace, they get to appreciate the entire journey with lots of sweet and precious memories to look back to. So, hold lightly. Have the grace to laugh at our own mistakes. I’d like to paraphrase Proverbs 31:25 which assures us that the woman who is clothed with strength and dignity can LAUGH without fear of the future. Through 17 years of homeschooling, one more valuable lesson I’ve learned with my kids is the joy of homeschooling like no other. While we ...

Domodedovo Airport, Moscow, The Russian Federation— I got off my seat and dragged my weary body outside of the plane where I sat for almost five hours of peaceful flight from Dubai. I paced myself and walked straight to the long tube that led to the long queues that led to the immigration officers that will stamp my PILIPINAS passport that will give me access to enter this  bolshoi nation, sometimes I fondly call this, Mother Russia. Moscow that evening had a welcoming temperature of -3 centigrade and I thought that it was not so bad coming from a +27 centigrade back home in Manila. As I stood there acclimatizing myself with the weather, I realized that the temperature inside the airport was actually rather toasty, as always. I stared at the people's expressionless, perfectly contoured faces and I tried to mentally rehearse what to do next when my turn comes. First, I will remove my eyeglasses; second, I will approach the immigration officer forward and then give her a polite but...