Iligan: Part 2 - Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

A day before Christmas while everybody was busy preparing for the Noche Buena and while lechon makers are flooded with lechon orders,

we went to Pryce Memorial Gardens together with Lilia's father, brothers and sisters, to visit mama Vic. This has been a regular weekly event of Lilia's family since mama Vic passed away.

Pryce turns to a cheerful playground as the grandchildren run and play in the slopes of the hilltop where Pryce Memorial Gardens is located. Nana, Dongdee, Hannah, Marielle, Ella are among the youngest batch of the 19 grandchildren of papa Nick and mama Vic.

The windy location gives you the feeling of being closer to heaven because of the area's high altitude where you can see the beautiful sunset beyond the sea in one side, mountains in another side and a portion of Iligan's coastline with one or two ships docked in another side. We stayed until it was dark and said our prayer before going home.

In front of the house that night, Hannah, Marielle and Ella joined the children's Christmas eve children's party hosted by Albeth. It was Hannah's the first party outside school. The kids danced the popular Boom-tarat-tarat song from Willie Revillame's noon-time show Wow-Wow-Wee.

Lilia, Mardi, Cel and Nhards together with the party kids Hannah, Ella and Marielle

On Christmas day we shared lunch and the whole afternoon with Lilia's brothers and sisters together with their family. After saying grace before lunch, members of the nearby parish visited the house. They brought a small baby Jesus and made a short Christmas prayer for everybody - a good start for that afternoon and was good timing just before we start our lunch.

We had lechon de leche

Yummy dinuguan and spaghetti prepared by Gen-gen

Kinilaw na isda (raw fish in vinegar) prepared by Shee - she really makes the best kinilaw

Fruit salad

Moist chocolate cake from Celia's own recipe

Ice cream prepared by Nick... este... by Selecta pala.


For dinner we had daing na escabeche as a sort of diet balancer for the heavy lunch we had. But I can't stop myself from having two full plates of rice with my first taste of daing na escabeche. The sweet and salty taste mixed well to give you a really good reason to eat more rice - bye bye diet, hello carbo. Yummy kasi talaga!