As many of you remember, last year was a VERY tough Christmas for me. After those challenging few days, Nick and I made a pact that we would change things up for Christmas 2010 to ensure we...
Foreign Service Life
Until I have a kid of my own, I’ve officially adopted baby Leni as my surrogate daughter. In real life, she belongs to our good friends Andrea and Brian, who are also in the Foreign Service...
WE DID IT! Presents for Pinoys is fully funded with over $1000 being generously given by this blogging community! All I can say is WOW – I am humbled and totally in awe of how you stepped up to...
Hi All- One of my favorite annual traditions is to reflect on the year I’m finishing and set some intentions for the year ahead. This year I happened to stumble across a really great tool that...
Well, it was a big day here in Manila… my elves and I wrapped nearly 100 presents in 4 hours time! If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you know that these presents are for the Presents...
Today was our annual Holiday party with the kids from Friendship Home. Each year we take them out to do something ‘special’ during the holidays. In December of ’09, if you remember...
It seems fitting that a monstrous snowstorm took out the Metrodome’s roof. I wonder if that’ll be the end of the Vikings playing there?? Seriously, watch this clip, it is mind-blowing to...
I am well aware of the fact that I talk about my undergrad Alma Maters frequently. And some of you may even be thinking, jeez, why doesn’t she just move on from college and embrace her adult...
Hi All- One of my favorite annual traditions is to reflect on the year I’m finishing and set some intentions for the year ahead. This year I happened to stumble across a really great tool that...
My expat friend Naomi over at DelhiBound wrote a fantastic post that caught my eye this week. It captured the Expat experience so brilliantly that I thought I’d share an excerpt from it. A...
WAHOOOOOO! Presents for Pinoys was a SMASHING SUCCESS! I will have lots and lots more photos for you tomorrow morning, but bed is calling my name right now. More later… In the meantime, check...
The night I had been waiting for months to arrive was finally upon us! After all the fundraising, all the wrapping and all the transporting, it was finally time to give out the gifts… and what...
Hi All- One of my favorite annual traditions is to reflect on the year I’m finishing and set some intentions for the year ahead. This year I happened to stumble across a really great tool that...
On Monday we had the pleasure of taking Nick’s parents to Ocean Adventure in Subic Bay for an up-close-and-personal encounter with the dolphins. Nick and I did this back in May of 2010 and...
I know we’re new to this Foreign Service thing, but I have a hard time imagining that we’re going to find household staff in other countries that love and care for us as warmly as Norma...
I jumped out of bed this morning, eager to get online and see what replies had come in response to my first foray at putting myself out there as a cancer coach on some public forums. I had spent a...
Hi All- One of my favorite annual traditions is to reflect on the year I’m finishing and set some intentions for the year ahead. This year I happened to stumble across a really great tool that...
In accepting this cancer work, I knew that facing loss was part of the deal . . . although part of me was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with it so soon. Sadly, I lost my first cancer client...
I think one of the coolest ‘take aways’ from our time in Manila is an honest-to-goodness appreciation of the concept LESS IS MORE. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve known that...
No, this post is not about the weather! :) What this post IS about is this strange pattern I see show up year after year in January! Here’s what it looks like. January (and the lead up to it...
So when we last connected Nick and I were en route to beautiful Boracay for a weekend of kiteboarding. While we did indeed make it to Boracay, we failed to get the kiteboarding experience that we...
Two weeks ago my dear client (and friend) Magne died of cancer. She was only in her early 50’s, so her death left many young children and grand-children behind. I knew it was important for me...
I was first introduced to the concept of FLOW during my Master’s program while taking a class on Creativity. We were asked to read Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s book Creativity: Flow and the...
On Sunday our good friends Mark and Kristen invited us to join them for Dim Sum at Golden Seafood near Mall of Asia. Nick had been there once before with them when I was home in Minnesota, but this...
Got really nostalgic watching this love fest about my beloved Minneapolis/St. Paul (although may I just say that it doesn’t look like any of it was filmed in St. Paul). Makes me excited to get...
Lately Facebook has been abuzz with talk about an exercise class called Nia. Whenever I hear something come up again and again, I just trust it’s a sign that I’m supposed to explore it...
If you’ve been reading for awhile, you’ll recall that on Day five of being in Manila I started a Basic Photography Class in Fort Santiago. Just five weeks later I was a Proud Graduate of...
It is decided. We’re going ALL-OUT for our final trip in Southeast Asia. I can’t even begin to explain the ginormous amount of pressure we had placed on planning this trip… You see...
Hi all- please forgive the lack of posts this week. I have felt like absolute crap and needed to use all my available energy to drag my butt to a 10 hour Photoshop class on Friday and an 8 hour...
I was at Fort Santiago last Saturday enjoying lunch with my friend Christine while on break from our Advanced Photography course. We started wandering around the park after finishing up and stumbled...
If you’ve been following me on the blog or Facebook lately, you’ll know that I’ve been very vocal about my top goal for 2011 which is (Drumroll, please….) TO HAVE A BABY...
Last Saturday I had the privilege of having an impromptu photo shoot with these lovely little girls who were playing in Fort Santiago. The photos were simply stunning and as I was uploading them to...
Can I just say that I am thoroughly enjoying my Photoshop Class and all the cool new tricks I can apply to my photos. And no, I do not consider that ‘cheating’, it is merely ENHANCING the...
There’s nothing like a little end-of-the-week baby scare to get a soon-to-be-parent’s heart beating faster… Earlier in the week on Tuesday morning I had a bit of dark spotting (for...
I feel misled. I was told that pregnancy was magical. And I believed it – hook, line and sinker. I was ready to GLOW from within and feel an INSTANT BOND with my unborn fetus. Instead, I am...
Nick here. I very rarely post on ‘our’ blog as it’s Sarah’s pet project and I want to keep it that way. As always, my views are my own and don’t necessarily reflect...
Hilarious, helpful tutorial on the “Filipino Accent.” No lie, I run into comprehension problems on a daily basis … now I can decode better!
So here’s how we’re divvying up the overwhelming amount of baby-related information to learn in Novak land. It’s really quite simple, I take care of anything that has to do with my...
If you remember back just three short weeks ago, Baby Novak was a 1/4 inch, lentil-sized blob with a little flicker of a heartbeat in the middle. Fast forward three weeks and we’ve got a one...
After MANY, MANY weeks of being cooped up in the house, my dear friends Andrea and Brian took pity on me and invited me on an overnight with their family down to San Pablo (Nick was busy working all...
I’m all about trying new alternative therapies (especially after having such amazing results with Network Spinal Analysis a few years back), so when my friend Selina suggested I check out an...
So last week I had the chance to go on my first-ever Medevac for the Foreign Service. The term sounds a little scary and that’s because usually it is just that – A Medical Evacuation...
On Tuesday at 12 noon Nick and I watched as a massive black cloud began to rise from an area called Guadalupe, which is part of Makati City (where we live) and blocks from where many of our Rockwell...
How freakin’ cool is this that I can share our photobook online?!? Nick made this one, but I’m on Year 2 (which will be released sometime in the next month). Hope you enjoy it! PS –...
Baby Novak’s Brain! (a top view) As you all know, I’m quite impatient in general, so this whole baby gender thing has been on my mind since we found out we were pregnant 11 weeks ago...
A Joint Labor of Love One of Nick’s many roles in Manila is President of the US Embassy Club (USEC). USEC is the charitable arm of US Embassy – Manila that supports 13 local charities...
Our Tentative Travel Schedule I’ve been getting lots of questions about our schedule for the next year from friends and family. Although we do not have our official orders yet (which means...
I used to think of moving as a simple (but annoying) process where you threw everything you had into boxes, stuffed them into a Uhaul, drove across town and then unloaded those same boxes into your...
I’m less than three weeks from returning to my beloved homeland and man oh man is . . . MINNESOTA ON MY MIND! Bring on the cabin and Caribou and changing temps and State Fair and lawn games and...
24 years my senior, I never expected for Marisa and I to become so close. I originally met Marisa during my volunteer work at Carewell. She was a frequent attendee and ended up participating in...