Tessa has a winsome year!

“Fame! I’m gonna live forever!” As the song goes, it was a fun, fabulous, famous and fantastic year! Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be either traveling all over the world or performing on national television or walking a Red Carpet in Hollywood! My not-so-simple life has been elevated to official celebrity status.

With multiple colorful parties, glitzy affairs and spectacular launches, I had to check my iPhoto library in my Apple Mac to remember and list the highlights since there have just been so many! My photos begin after the first quarter though since my laptop was stolen in Barcelona during my Flamenco trip to Spain with teacher Ginajane Grey. Good ol’ reliable Dennis had backed up most [but not all] of my files and gifted me with a fully loaded unit when I got home.

Having learned more intensive Flamenco, drank sherry and gotten to know my classmates more closely, the Spanish trip together with a side visit to Lourdes, Portugal was wonderful. I think I prayed so hard to Our Lady of Lourdes that my 2007 was truly blessed and magical. Of course, the trip was even more complete with endless Mango and Zara shopping in every town.

Our annual trip to the States was more outstanding because Bryan graduated college!!! As parents, we feel so overwhelmingly proud and fulfilled. It’s almost as gratifying as childbirth minus all that pain! I was even doubly proud when he handed me his first paycheck as a gift when I visited him later that year on my way to Hollywood.

As a Little Gym (Athena’s play school) mom, I was invited to the world premiere of Enchanted, a Disney movie, at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. I was able to arrange a visit to pick up Bryan in SFO and we flew together to L.A. for the weekend.

Being a Princess of Make- Believe and Costumes, I was in my element and got to meet Hollywood’s A-listers and all the Disney Princesses! Thanks to Ruben Nepales, Inquirer’s Man in Hollywood, I was captured with Patrick Dempsey, Dr. McDreamy himself, and we even had a nice chat! He really is oozing with appeal.

I really enjoyed parading my awesome, voluminous gown by Rajo Laurel complete with wings and crown. Even the costume designer of the movie approached me and complimented my outfit.

After last year’s Velada, my Batch 81 classmates have remained close, so close that a group of us headed to Italy for the canonization of the Assumption founder St. Marie Eugenie. From dollar to euro to dollar, it was quite a year for traveling and shopping and eating!

On the local front, it has been an incredible year, especially when I won Celebrity Duets on GMA. Not for my singing prowess, mind you, but for everything else entertainment can buy! It’s amazing that “Tessa” has become a household name and somehow I have reached all corners of the country and the world thanks to YouTube!

This year is all about living and giving! I feel I have done both as much as is humanly possible. I have added so much colorful excitement and infectious laughter and heartfelt love in the process. As we end the year and celebrate a new one in Discovery Shores in Bora (my third trip to the beautiful island this year), we wish all that we have touched and continue to love more bountiful blessings for an awesome 2008!

Dennis gets to do the finale

Like most years, 2007 can be characterized by the ups and downs that every family goes through.

For this blog, I choose to focus only on the positives - this year, I give thanks that everyone in our family (as can be seen from their narratives above) can count on so many good things in their lives.

For me, it seems to have been a year of settling down into routines - Pilates on T-Th-S, underwater hockey T-Th evenings, swimming, etc. PhilWeb has had a good year and our stock price reflects the market's acknowledgment of that. The team I am building is slowly ratcheting up to full speed, with our internet casinos delivering fantastic returns.

None of which really matters though.

What is essential is how happy and healthy the five people closest to me are. I've tried hard to allocate time to each one. I've probably had the most luck with Tyrone, as we've gone on three scuba diving trips this year - in Anilao, Dumaguete and Malapasqua.

Annika has been a tougher call. I started my new blog, Annika's Birthday, with a post about her birthday, but other than the odd movie or two we've watched together, we haven't really been able to spend a lot of time together. Luckily a big chance came up in early December, when Tita Mary invited Tessa and I to Palau and we took Annika with us. She had a fantastic time, as can be seen from her entry above. I'm looking forward to next year, when she'll be taking scuba lessons as she turns ten, and we can do more diving trips.

I was able to visit Bryan in the U.S. three times this year, which is a record for me. The best trip was probably the shortest, when I flew in for a weekend just to attend his college graduation in May. We also had a fun weekend in Yosemite when I swung by SFO on the way to an internet gambling seminar in Montreal in June and earlier in the year, we spent a weekend in Napa Valley touring the wineries. Bryan is now working for an internet company in SFO, so I'm not looking forward to 2008, when it'll be tougher and tougher to find time for him.

In contrast, Athena and I have had many opportunities to bond. She brings me to work every morning and just watching her grow up has been a highlight of the year for me, even if it's a simple thing like videoing her first sentence: "I know." We also had many fun moments watching Tessa during her Celebrity Duets weekends.

As usual, Tessa seems to have had the best year of all. Even for someone who leads an enchanted life, her 2007 was particularly perfect, what with winning GMA 7's inaugural edition of Celebrity Duets. Perhaps there's something to be said for her selflessness, because it's that charitableness to her spirit that gets her such good karma. And despite the busy year she's had, we still found some time to spend together, with bonding trips to Boracay for our anniversary and our scuba diving trip to Palau.

With all that, it's pretty clear that 2007 has been nothing short of fantastic for us. We hope your year has been marked by mostly positive things too, and if not, that there are still many things to look forward to in 2008 and beyond!

Happy Holidays!