Easter egg hunt at Tita Babie's house

-
Tita Babie loves to prepare for her annual Easter egg hunt where her guests (but mainly the children) could run around her backyard and find plastic eggs containing chocolate or money. We were excited because it's Gabriel's first Easter... even though he wouldn't understand what was going on. Biboy and Barbara were even more excited: they even got Gabriel his own basket!


Biboy did most of the hunting, of course, while carrying Gabriel. He was more interested in looking at the trees and smiling at people.


After a few minutes of hunting, Biboy's stash filled Gabriel's basket and called it a day. 


But the egg hunt was not finished. Rowan and Aleia proved to be the expert egg hunters, collecting more than 50 eggs apiece! They were able to fill shopping bags with their hauls. 


And then it was time to open the eggs. The mothers and grandmothers were busy counting the children's loot. The titas were all on the side taking photos. And Gabriel? Still more interested with the garden than his Easter egg loot. 


This Easter egg hunt reminded me of my own egg hunting days. Tita Mely used to hide salted eggs all over the house and the backyard. There were so many kids running and screaming excitedly around the house! We didn't win chocolates or money. After finding the eggs, we'd eat them, if I remember correctly. But still, it was something we used to look forward to after waking up so early in the morning to join the Easter procession.

I look forward to seeing Gabriel hunt his own Easter eggs and make happy memories of this holiday. He'll probably be into it by next year... if he's not more interested in just running around by then.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more