A holiday, a house, a toy, a birthday, etc...

Just found out that there will be no classes for Ben tomorrow. The Philippines celebrates National Heroes Day today, and tomorrow has been declared a non-working holiday for government employees while classes in both public and private schools will be suspended. Strange actually, since by law (if I'm not mistaken), National Heroes Day is supposed to be celebrated on the third Sunday of August. And so it doesn't make sense to call off the Monday following in celebration of the said holiday. There's just no getting away from politics.
Oh well, enough of that. This morning, we also went and visited the house that Kuya Toti and Jojo are having built at the Ateneo faculty housing project in Marikina (pictures below):
Ben outside the house
Another shot (from the front)
I think they are hoping to move in at the earliest in October. Definitely, they'll be moved in by Christmastime.
Meanwhile, Ben finally got a chance to play with the LeapPad that his Ninong Mark sent him. Need I say it...of course, he loved it. Pictures below prove that:
Hard at work tracing letters
Thanks, Ninong Mark :-D
He's still having some difficulty tracing the letters, but he's working on it. I'll help him out with that too. Update on how he's doing in school: Still a bit of a bully, but his teachers said he's improving. He's been coming home more frequently with a star stamped on his hand, but sometimes, he still goes back to the old ways. Oh well, by end of this month, I should have another progress report. He already knows colors, shapes, numbers (count up to 20 most of the time, although he tends to skip the number 16) and the alphabet. I've got to teach him the lower case letters though. While he enjoys most of his toys, it's still Thomas the Tank Engine and the other trains in that set that he is most happy with. [By the way, Mark, that train set you gave him before you left, he could spend hours just watching the train go round and round the tracks.] On the whole, he is doing well, and I'm proud of him.
Today is also the birthday of our househelp, Flor. And to celebrate, we got her a small cake, with a candle to blow. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ben got there ahead of her, so he blew the candle instead. A couple of pictures from that below:
Singing happy birthday...
...and blowing the candle.
All in all, it was a fun, but tiring day. Oh well, it's back to work tomorrow. Hay, buhay!!!