Best part of it all: Anastacio was able to fly down to SA for the weekend!!! I was beyond excited! It felt like so long since I had seen him. He flew down late Friday night and his parents, brothers and I went to the airport to pick him up. I seriously had butterflies in my stomach as we waited. :)
After a little while we finally saw him come down the stairs... neither of us could stop smiling and it was so unreal that we were together again. The distance has been a real difficult thing for us but it has brought us so much closer together as well and really help to push us more towards prayer which is always a good thing. :)
Saturday was the day of our birthday and we kicked it off with some pro-life work with SACFL. (Very fitting for our birthday I think.) We did door to door outreach telling the local area about 40 Days For Life. After that we drove downtown to St. Joseph's (were Anastacio used to work and where we will be getting married) and went to mass. We got to visit with Fr. Mario for a little while which was really nice as always. :)
Afterward Anastacio took me out for lunch and we finally got some time to catch up and relax a little. It was so good to be able to talk and be in the same room with him. There are so many things that we take for granted and the distance has really made us more thankful for all the time we have together.
Once done with lunch we went to pick out our wedding bands! It started to make the wedding seem so soon. about 3 months people... 3 months! Eee! :)
From there we went to Anastacio's family's house and had a nice BBQ dinner to celebrate. It was delish and I ate too much as always. jaja. Both of us received great books on the faith that I am sure we will be starting soon. (I need a bigger bookcase....)
After dinner we went to my parents house and had dessert. It was hilarious... we put 98 candles on the cake for the total amount of years between my mom, Anastacio and I. Lighting it was so funny! I'm glad we didn't burn the house down. It seriously was so hot that the candles where melting extremely fast and some of them where almost completely melted by the time that we got to the last few candles. When we blew them all out we had a cake completely covered in wax. lol. It made an awesome tie-dye look on the cake. jaja. We got mom her first 1962 Missal that she had been wanting for Mass and Anastacio and I got our own kayak for Denver! We were both really excited. We are so excited to move to Denver and has the ability to go on hikes and kayak on our weekends. :)
After cake and presents we played shuffleboard all night. It was a blast! It was a couples tournament and Anastacio and I didn't do half bad. Especially since it was his first time playing. My mom and dad dominated when we played them though. It was the game they played when they were dating so they had the upper hand for the night. jaja.
Sunday was wonderful as well. In the morning we went to the Little Flower Basilica and got to see the relics of St. Therese (her bone, her book, and her writing instruments). She is a saint that has had a real presence in my life so I was really excited that we got to see the relics. We were also able to write and put our prayer intentions in the drawer of her writing desk which will later be taken to her tomb! Super cool! :)
From there we went to mass at St. Pius for the traditional form. Both sides of the family came to mass with us which was really nice. Anastacio got to see some of our friends that attend that mass with us and we also got to go over some things regarding the mass for our wedding as well. It was a bitter sweet time. We were both so very happy to be able to attend Sunday mass together but it also meant that his time in SA was coming to an end. Before taking him to the airport both sides of the family and some of our friends that attended mass all went out to eat.
We got to spend some time at the airport together with is family as we waited for his flight to come in. While we both hate saying good bye to each other we were so happy to have spent our birthday weekend together. We are so blessed to share such a wonderful day together. :)
Side note: I have to document this.... I did NOT cry this time. jaja. I was fighting the tears but I won. weelllll at least until I got home. But hey, I'm getting better. :P
