Our kids had their spring break during the last week of February. So Matt planned out a fun 3-day itinerary and we invited some friends to join us. We were only a few hours out of Manila, but it was nice to get-away from the city and create memories as a family.
Over five years ago while living in the Philippines, we really wanted one more baby. But, we needed help to get pregnant. Matt did some research and found KatoReproBiotech in Makati. We saw them and soon we were pregnant with Blake. We told some other friends who also had some problems getting pregnant about Kato and they went to see them and were able to get pregnant. While at lunch with this mom who was expecting her first child after seeing Kato, I told her I would throw her a small baby shower for the people in our church congregation to be able to celebrate this miracle with her. Well, things changed and we ended up combining our small “church friends” shower, with her main shower — which included several famous people/couples from the entertainment business in which she and her husband work. Thankfully, this mother-to-be was able to help with getting food and party favors donated (“sponsored”). I did the decorations, games and some other food. Overall it was a really fun baby shower and we heard everyone had a great time.
At the end of November we had plane tickets to fly to Cebu for the long weekend. But Blake started to seem sick and after taking him to the doctors we found out that he had the “mouth” part of Hand-Foot-Mouth virus. So, Matt & the oldest two went to Plantation Bay resort in Cebu, while Blake and Tia stayed in our empty condo resting.
During the three years that we lived in the Philippines the first time (2013-2015) we traveled to a lot of foreign countries. Now that we are back and planning on living here for a couple of decades, we want to explore more of the Philippines! Many people travel to Subic Bay as a get-away from Manila and we finally went to see what it’s all about. November 1 & 2 are holidays here, so we drove up to Subic for a long weekend.
Since our driver had the day off, Matt and I drove our huge 11 passenger Super Grandia up to Subic Bay. Our first stop was at Zoobic Safari.
In the morning we spent time at Ocean Adventure. The best dolphin and sea lion shows we have every experienced were here. They were educational and very funny. Then in the late afternoon we went to the nearby Adventure Beach Water Park. (no photos since we were busy swimming and having fun)
We had a great time being together as a family and exploring more of the Philippines.
In 2014 Matt started to look into what kind of career opportunities were offered by Asian Development Bank (ADB), since many of our children’s classmates had parents working for them on permanent expat assignments. One of Mason’s classmate’s father worked in their I.T. department, so we had them over for dinner and Matt asked him about working there. Matt then subscribed to the job postings and was curious to see how well their compensation competed with what we currently had. We have always been very happy with Chevron and how well they have treated us for 12 years. After spending 3 weeks in the Philippines for our 2017 Christmas vacation, Matt felt a strong pull to live in the Philippines once again. In the spring of 2018, Matt told me he was going to clean-up his resume and really put forth some effort in getting an interview with ADB. He told me not to worry about it, that we have a beautiful home that we had just built and moved into the previous year and that he had applied before to ADB, but never heard from them. I knew that if Matt really was going to put forth the effort to apply, then I needed to get myself ready mentally for the possibility of a move. I tried not to think about it since I had a fun road trip coming up with my sister for the summer. Well, that is when things started to really move quickly, while we were apart for 3 weeks. Matt was given a job offer on August 1. By August 8 we told them that we would accept the offer. Our “dream home” was put on the market on August 25 and we accepted an offer about 2-3 weeks later. Our house was all packed up on September 21 and we were on a flight to Manila on September 23. In less than 2 months we sold everything that we didn’t want/need in the Philippines and started a new career and school in another country.
When we knew that we were returning to the Philippines I quickly emailed the International School of Manila (ISM) to get our kids into school. Luckily there was space available for Kalani and Mason to start school on October 1. It was helpful that they are former students and that we were coming back with ADB. Blake was put on the waiting list for Pre-school 4 since there was no space available at that time. Kalani and Mason were able to jump right into school. Some of their former friends/classmates were still at the school and they knew where things were located so they had a pretty easy transition back to ISM. Many teachers told me that they are the most well-adjusted “new students” they had ever met!
Although we miss our friends and family in the US, we feel like this is the place that we are suppose to be at right now in our lives. Everything fell into place perfectly. And now our friends and family can come visit us in the Philippines!
