birthday – Page 2 – Chasing Dreams

His Birthday Always Feels Like It’s My Birthday Too

December 13, 2013December 29, 2013 Rhiza2 Comments

[Date backtracked: December 20, 2012]

David would often joke about the injustice with having a birthday that falls on a busy Christmas season. First, his birthday is always overshadowed by the Christmas festivities and people are often too busy to throw him a party (or to even remember that it’s his birthday). Second, and I think this is his major issue of all, his birthday gifts are also his Christmas gifts. Haha. Sorry, Daddy, that’s just the way it is.

But he’s just kidding, of course. Because we both love that his birthday falls on December. After all, Decembers and birthdays are the best times of the year to celebrate and reflect upon the year that has passed, and he gets to have them both in one go. Pretty much why his birthday always feels like it’s my birthday too.

Especially this year, when some freak predicted that the world was going to end the day after my husband’s birthday, and yet for us, it’s like it was just about to begin.

And especially now that our little family of two suddenly became four.

So he blew his birthday non-cakes: a Dark Cherry Sylvanna from Starbucks when midnight struck, and a stacked donut cake before we had dinner. Last year it was a pancake. David’s not a fan of cakes, and I always end up eating ALL the cake (literally!) when there’s one at home. I should probably learn to bake this year no, so I can make him a birthday cake and ~~eat it too~~ he won’t have a choice but to eat it too! Hmm. For his next birthday, maybe.

As the day ended, and plans for a dinner date was cancelled in favor of just staying at home with the babies, I whipped a quick dinner and the four of us camped out in front of the TV to watch a replay of the Miss Universe pageant. (There weren’t too many options that time.)

This is our life now, I couldn’t help but think.

Last year when we celebrated his birthday, we were clueless that he was going to be a Daddy this year. It’s been a momentous year with a lot of firsts and lasts, and a lot of surprises along the way. Here we are now with our two little girls, still marveling at God’s grand scheme of things.

As he unwrapped his birthday gift (which was also his Christmas gift, just as he expected), both of us were fully aware that his real gifts this year are ones which cannot be wrapped with paper and ribbons, and yet, they’re the best birthday/Christmas gifts ever.

What can I say? Happy birthday to us.

One year and one month

November 24, 2013May 13, 2019 Rhiza3 Comments

How do you blog about your baby’s first birthday? I totally missed doing that, and it’s weird because I was so sure that I was not going to miss out on blogging about that milestone.

I was going to write an open letter to Dawn and Rain. I’d tell them how much they’ve changed our lives and how thankful we are to God for this beautiful first year. I was going to post lots of photographs from their birthday party, which would be beautifully styled and DIY-ed like the ones you see on Pinterest.

But then their first birthday party happened, and all I could think about doing after weeks of preparations was to lie down in bed the whole day with the twins and their Daddy, and laugh at how silly these two are becoming. Which was pretty much what happened.

And then the following days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to a month,

and here we are.

The open love letter I imagined myself writing became a short cover photo caption posted on Facebook, which simply said

Dear Dawn & Rain,

You probably didn’t care so much, blowing your first birthday cake. But for me and your Daddy, it was a beautiful moment, a milestone, we’ll remember forever. Thank you for giving us reasons to celebrate life everyday.

Love, Mommy

I meant it with all my heart, no doubt about it, but it was about a thousand words short of how I imagined their first birthday love letter should be, and what I really wanted to say.

And these photographs, haha.

When we had Isaac‘s first birthday party, there was not a single photograph of him smiling. I thought to myself, when I have babies, I would make sure they were smiling on their first birthday photos.

I guess even that is beyond my control.

Life is just too big for words

The truth is, I stare at blank spaces a lot these days. Blank WordPress screen, blank Facebook status field, blank pages of my journal. All waiting for me to pour my heart out.

Time is flying swiftly and most of my reflections these days remain in my head (and my heart), unwritten. Dawn & Rain are growing too fast, and I’m sometimes scared of missing out on that. As much as I want to capture every moment so that someday I can relieve them, God is teaching me every day to live each moment as they come, and then let them go.

Lara Casey blogged about this so eloquently, and for lack of better words, I quote (emphases mine):

As a creative, I am compelled to create because I want to mirror back to the world God’s goodness. I want to create with every fiber of my being. I try so hard. I try to share and create what I think will help. I try to share what I hope will inspire Grace one day to know and love Him. I try, but sometimes I get really tired trying to pour the ocean of life into a little cup. Most of my favorite moments don’t get photographed because I’m completely immersed in them. And sometimes life is just too big for words.

Well there you go. I bold-faced phrases for emphasis, and then underlined some words in those phrases for even more emphasis. I laugh at myself for being such a weirdo sometimes. On a serious note, that’s how much her words resonate with how I feel and what I really want to do around here.

Go ahead, read the whole thing.

Today marks Dawn & Rain’s 13th month. Oh wow, I’ve been a Mommy for 13 months!

And like a broken record I would say it over again, it still often feels like I’m living in a dream.

Happy 13 months, my loves.

Hello, I Turned 30!

May 30, 2013January 19, 2020 Rhiza25 Comments

It’s been a week since I turned 30 years old, you want to know how it feels? I’m a mix of everything—happy, excited, grateful, in awe like I still can’t believe I’m now past my 20s, a little anxious about the future, driven to work harder and be better, blessed beyond words can say.

Turning 30, you find yourself pondering upon questions like, Am I living the life I’ve always wanted? Where have all the years gone? Have I invested in the right things? Am I happy? What’s next? True, you ask yourself these questions any given birthday anyway, but turning 30 kind of magnifies everything to a point where you end up feeling depressed (about what you didn’t have), or feeling like you’re on top of the clouds (for everything you have). Guess how I feel? :)

My birthday celebration has never been more quiet and more low profile than this. And it has never been more childlike and more adult at the same time too. Lately I’ve been having some form of identity crisis: Pressured to act like, think like, and actually be an adult, whilst spending a lot of time singing Barney songs, being surrounded with dolls and toys, and acting silly to entertain our 7-month old twins.

That’s the story of my 30th birthday celebration. The theme was slumber party, where I spent the majority of the day in my PJs, keeping my heart from bursting into tiny pieces while playing and rolling in bed with my cute little dolls:

Tell me you didn’t just rotate your computer screen sideways. :P

Mommy are you taking our pictures again?

#bestillmyheart

There’s more of these photographs where it came from, but.. you get the picture, right? That’s my 30th birthday party in a nutshell, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Later in the evening my family came to have dinner with us, and we hung out in our tiny living room, around our darling twins like it’s their birthday. (I don’t mind at all.)

The truth is, I don’t think I accomplished a lot in my first 30 years. I don’t have a lot of things—not a big house, or a car, or a fat savings account. I may have seen a few cities outside this country, but I haven’t really gone places. I could spend hours processing my life, thinking about the things I wasn’t able to do before I turned 30, places I still haven’t seen, dreams that have yet to come true.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what didn’t happen. What matters is how God turned all my plans around and gave me these instead:

And how can I not feel so blessed and happy and rich when I have them? A husband I’m still so smitten about, two little girls who drive us crazy and fill this home with so much joy, a roof above our heads, food on our table, a warm bed to sleep at night.

You realize, even more when you turn 30, that the measure of happiness and fulfillment is not based on the material and financial things you acquired in your life, sometimes not even in the number of friends you have, but in the handful of people you journey this life with.

Now that, is a milestone worth celebrating.

God be praised and glorified in this life, always.

Year 29, bring it on!

June 6, 2012June 13, 2012 Rhiza2 Comments

These photos have been up for a week now, just waiting for words to come with them. The truth is, I’ve ran out of ways to say what a riot this past year has been, so I’ve put this on hold for a while. Birthdays are the best times to count blessings and to look back at how far you’ve come. I’ve blogged about mine each and every year, and this year has so far been the biggest leap for me.

On the contrary.. after so many years of throwing parties/get-togethers on my birthday (and being surprised with one), my 29th birthday has got to be the simplest celebration I ever had—by choice. I didn’t think I needed a big celebration anyway; after all, this year has been full of BIG celebrations already, starting with our wedding. And then I’ve got myself the biggest gifts: Being married to the sweetest husband ever, these two babies growing inside of me, and having my two best friends both in one continent again.

And of course there’s my family, who’s always there to celebrate with me and support me in all of my joys and triumphs, including loving my husband and whole-heartedly accepting him as part of this new life that I have. I’m not sure how I’ll cope with all these changes without the support group that they are.

So that’s exactly what I did on my 29th birthday—spent the day with my greatest gifts.

Continue reading “Year 29, bring it on!” →

My Husband Turned 28

December 23, 2011December 29, 2011 Rhiza8 Comments

It’s not the first time we celebrated his birthday together. Last year we were in New York, but his birthday was also the last day of my trip and I was flying back to Manila the very next day. Our emotions were all over the place, I remember. We busied ourselves doing last minute Christmas shopping, and packing up my suitcases, and trying to ignore the fact that we were going to part ways again. As the night was ending, we did our best to stay up and keep our eyes open even if we were tired and spent, until it was time to drag my feet and my luggage to the airport.

That’s how we spent his 27th birthday.

This year was a perfect contrast. :)

This year, we were not in a rush. We waited for the clock to strike 12 (same timezone, yes!), spent the first minutes on Skype with my father-in-law, and he opened his gifts like he couldn’t wait. We had a long uninterrupted sleep, we woke up next to each other, and I cooked breakfast like I never did before. (Well, we never eat breakfast.) And then we spent the day doing whatever the birthday boy thought of doing.

We’ve had parties here and there the whole month of December, we even hosted some at home; so for his birthday, he specially requested to have the day just to ourselves. We played some sets of bowling, watched a movie, had a full-body massage and spa, and a late night Taco party with the Velardos.

It was a beautiful, serene, quality time together, accentuated by lots of laughter, hugs and kisses, tears of joy, and moments we would stop in our tracks and marvel at God’s grand scheme of things. Oh how things didn’t seem to make sense before! And oh how He unraveled His great master plan and brought us where we are in His own sweet time.

I’ve been blogging relentlessly about our story, mostly because the daily dose of inspiration is too overwhelming to contain and I need a place to share them all; partly because I have a feeling that someone somewhere is going through similar valleys and roads, and I thought, if only I could encourage at least one person to keep the faith and never tire on chasing his/her dreams, then this blog has served beyond its purpose. Although it’s not really a self-help blog with how-tos and 101s to long distance relationships and chasing dreams (well, not yet), I’m happy to be sharing my life here as a case study. Lest you need to pick up a lesson or two.

God has made many of my dreams come true, and replaced the good ones with the best; and while the journey is not a walk in the park and we have to hurdle through difficult situations along the way, God is faithful, and well, we’re living our lives together now aren’t we? :)

So to you who’s going through your own roller-coaster ride of a life and wondering when the chase will end, take it from us: God has your best interest in mind, always. He will see you through. Just as He did with us.

On God’s Grand Scheme of Things

December 21, 2011December 21, 2011 Rhiza5 Comments

It’s my husband’s birthday today/yesterday (today in New York, yesterday in Manila). I intend to post a longer blog with lots of photos as soon as I find time, but for now, a quick post before I retreat to bed.

As his birthday was about to end, my husband and I reflected upon the past year and how much has happened in such a short period of time. It wasn’t long ago when we would celebrate birthdays and monthsaries in front of Skype, opening our Fedex-ed gifts and finding creative ways to bridge the distance. Don’t get me wrong, we treasure those good ol’ days, we learned so much from them. But we cannot deny the fact that deep within our hearts we incessantly prayed for the day we would get to spend these special occasions together.

And now we’re here.

We had quite a lengthy prayer to cap the night, thanking God for blessing my husband 28 awesome years, most especially for the past year which was exceptionally beautiful. You bet there were tears of joy all over the place.

Chuck Swindoll wrote something that pretty much describes how it feels like, being in the center of God’s grand scheme of things:

Life is not based on blind fate or random chance. Everything that happens, including the things you cannot explain or justify, is being woven together like an enormous, beautiful piece of tapestry. From this earthly side it seems blurred and knotted, strange and twisted. But from heaven’s perspective it forms an incredible picture. Best of all, it is for His greater glory. Right now, it seems so confusing, but someday the details will come together and make good sense.

There it is—part of God’s perfect plan unfolding.

Those years spent apart were difficult, and there were a gazillion things we couldn’t understand (even until now). But as we witness God’s master plan unfold, it becomes clearer each day why God allows things to happen the way they do.

It’s not my birthday today, but it’s like I’m the one who was given such a beautiful gift.