Allen Update: Happy (Early) Anniversary!

On November 16th, Wade and I flew to Manila for the weekend. We were celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary. Since our actual anniversary is on December 17th, we were a bit early for a couple of reasons. #1 - We were the big dummies who got married the week before Christmas and many times our anniversary gets lost in the shuffle. So we purposely planned to take a weekend off. Just for us. And #2 - a very dear friend of ours would briefly be travelling through Manila that weekend and we really wanted to spend a few hours with her.

Basically our "get away" week-end consisted of staying in a nice hotel, eating some good food, doing a little shopping and a lot of relaxing!

Priority #1 was purchasing some good "snackage" (as our kids call it). Look what we found!! Amazing to find Dr. Pepper in the Philippines. Needless to say, we were excited already!

The first mall we hit was the EDSA Shang-ri La Mall. We went here first mainly because it was within walking distance from our hotel. Plus, several years ago we found a nice steak restaurant there and wanted to see if it was still around. It was and so we enjoyed a nice steak lunch.

Seeing as how the Christmas season in the Philippines officially starts on September 1st, the malls were in full Christmas mode. Here's a huge banner advertising the mall's "Christmas in November" schedule.

The decorations in the Shang-ri La Mall were a bit odd. They had an ocean theme. It kinda looked like the Little Mermaid met Santa! Even though it was a bit strange, they were still very beautiful.

The "Under the Sea" Tree?

View of Manila from our room

The hotel's tree

Another Manila Christmas tree

Have you ever had your pizza delivered like this?!

The decorations inside the Podium Mall....hanging trees!

A picture with my dear friend
(It was SO nice to see each other again, even for a brief visit!)

The Mall of Asia Tree

(FYI - those wrapped gifts under the tree are taller than me!)

We actually hadn't planned on going to the Mall of Asia, but let me tell you about our adventures in trying to get back to Legazpi. We were scheduled to fly out around 1:00 pm on Monday afternoon. We got to the airport on time, checked in, got something to eat, etc and waited. And waited. Our flight was delayed. We were told that the visibility in Legazpi was zero! (FYI - we were flying in a "window" between two typhoons that were crossing the country.) We finally boarded the plane and started down the tarmac, only to have the plane come to a full stop and turn around. Still no visibility they said. So we waited again. This time on the plane. For two hours!! After two (very long) hours - thank goodness we had good books to read! - we were told the flight had been cancelled. As we were beginning to de-board, they announced that the flight would be rescheduled for 5 am the following morning. UGH! We made a very quick phone call and found a place to stay, got off the plane, got our bags and stood in a long line to sign up on some list for the 5 am flight. After we got out of the airport, we got taxi to the place we were staying, unloaded and made arrangements for a car to take us to the airport at 3:30 am! Double yuck! So then we basically had an extra evening to spend together and we headed to the Mall of Asia, which was very close to where we were staying. That part of the story was very nice.

Knowing we would have to get up at 3 am, we came home and went to bed early. When the alarm went off at 3, we started getting ready and Wade noticed he'd gotten a text message on his phone about 11:30 pm from the airline saying the 5 am flight was canceled and we needed to call them to re-book! So Wade immediately calls the airline and re-books for that afternoon flight. Meanwhile, we have a car showing up at 3:30 am to take us to the airport and we have to ask him to come back later that day and we'll pay him extra. When all was said and done, we went back to sleep for a while.

So we show up at the airport - again - hoping that the flight wouldn't be canceled again. (Meanwhile, our kids are back home getting a little nervous because they know that a typhoon is moving in and Mom and Dad aren't here.) There are many more details that I won't go into - including how my husband calmed a group of irate Filipinos at the airline counter- but after several hours of delay, we finally made it home that Tuesday afternoon!! In fact, when they called for the flight to Legazpi to board, the entire waiting area in the airport burst into applause! I don't know when I've been so glad to be home! We had already decided that if the flight didn't go that day, we were headed to the bus station to take an overnight bus in order to beat the storm. Praise the Lord, we didn't have to do that! And praise the Lord we were safe flying in the bad weather.

These last few pics are from our "unexpected" time we spent at the Mall of Asia.