Merry Christmas! (Back Online. Sorry for the Downtime.)

You may be getting “bandwidth exceeded” errors my blog and others on the racoma.com.ph domain. Sorry for that. Our sites seem to be more popular this December than they were in the past. Perhaps it’s because of the recent inclusion of my mom’s blog (aptly named The D Spot) on the server. Or perhaps it’s due to my starting with my newest assignment on the Blog Herald (hey, I’m now on the “friends” blogroll).

So how did your Christmas celebrations go? We spent the past two weeks attending _simbang gabi_ or dawn masses. We couldn’t get up at dawn, though, so we made sure to attend the anticipated masses in the preceding evening. The kids started to get sick a couple of weeks ago, though, so we weren’t able to go out much. We actually only got to go out buy presents on the 24th, so everything was a rush.

The holidays are a bad time to get sick!

Anyway, we spent the evening attending Christmas eve mass and had _noche buena_ (Christmas eve dinner) with the family.

Speaking of getting sick during the holidays, my family was supposed to go out of town this week, and my parents have been planning the trip since the start of the month. My wife and I were having second thoughts, though, because of the distance (a six to eight hour drive). And with the kids catching the bug, we decided against joining. Midnight of the 25th (after the Christmas celebrations), my sister was admitted to the hospital for abdominal pains. And guess what — she had to undergo surgery this Christmas morning for appendicitis. Now the entire trip had been cancelled.

Everyone’s still happy, though, especially the kids. Now if I can only say the same for my wallet and bank account.

Merry Christmas everyone!