Home Sweet Home

Where has the time gone? It is now December and I cannot believe it has been 2 months since I made my move from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. It has been difficult to balance everything going on in my personal and professional life, but it all takes time and practice. And most importantly, patience. But I am honestly enjoying every second of it! It helps to have the support of my friends, family, and Alex. 

On another note, here is the recap of my SHORT yet SWEET weekend back to the BAY!

The future papa and mama to be! I love these two and I wish them all the best with bringing my niece into the world. She will be loved by many. Baby girl we cannot wait for you!

This past Sunday, I flew back home to the Bay Area for my brother Kris's and his girlfriend, Sekela's baby shower. They are expecting a baby girl, Ai'ko Joy, due January 2017. (Oh and by the way, because I love to mention this to everyone, I am really happy that my niece will be getting my middle name Joy because I LOVE MY MIDDLE NAME lol. And it just flows.. Ai'ko Joy!)

I can honestly say it was so much fun being able to have Sunday off (Thank you to my assistant manager who made sure I was taken off the schedule) and fly home to be able to see my family and friends to help celebrate a new baby coming into the growing Obligacion family. The best part of any party my family has is obviously spending time with them because there are so many of us, but a new "tradition" I love seeing is the decorations that my cousin Michelle comes up with for the party. For this special occasion, she helped Kris and Sekela with a "Kate Spade" themed baby shower for my future. My brother Kris and Sekela have a lot of support from their friends and our family, so it was amazing to witness!

The table was perfection! Very simply and classy. And can we take a moment for the flowers my cousin Michelle made because they were sooooo adorable and paid attention to detail. She is so talented and needs to showcase her work at more parties in the future because it's just natural for her. 

I loved the cake. It definitely went along with the theme. The "cake lady" my family uses was found by my cousin Jonelle. She is bomb and has great pricing for cakes! She is the family's GO TO for cakes. 

Isn't Sekela just gorgeous? She is really ALL belly and man oh man I pray that I can be the same way once I decide to have babies (I know this will not be the case though, thanks Obligacion genes), BUT until then, I will just admire how amazing she looks and carries that belly! hehe These boxes were everything to me! I loved it. My cousins did an amazing job with helping plan and execute on this baby shower for my brother and Sekela. It sucked that I could not help with planning it because I live in LA, but they definitely did not even need me.

In addition to the baby shower, I was also able to visit my cousin Kaycee and meet the new addition to the family, Baby Sebastian Grayson. And oh man he is such a cutie! The family is definitely growing and I am loving it. It does suck that I am far away from my family, but I like to say "I am far, but not too far because I am just an hour flight away or 5 hour drive away." I am looking forward to what the future holds and I cannot wait to meet my niece. My baby brother is really going to be a father! So crazy, but I am so excited for him and Sekela. I cannot wait to spoil her even more!

Good-bye Bay Area.. Hello LA!

The move finally happened last Sunday! I am official a resident of the Los Angeles area. I can honestly say that I am blessed and lucky enough to have the support of my family and friends, but especially my family. The night before Alex and I drove down to LA, I had a family dinner at my favorite sushi spot called, "Sushi House" in Alameda. It was so much fun just being able to spend time with my crazy family that I absolutely cannot live without. 

This move is going to be difficult in the sense that I will not see my family as much; but I know this move is exactly what I have been wanting for a long time and am excited that it happened. Getting back to being so blessed with my crazy family... lol my cousin Michelle, better known as Chellz, helped with the move by being my copilot, even though she did fall asleep for a good 2 hours or so. The drive was not bad at all. We left around 4:30am and made it to our apartment a little after 10am. We followed Alex, who was driving the U-Haul, full of our things, which was a bit of a sight for sore eyes because I like to see what is ahead of me. I did move back and forth between lanes and let's just say Alex was not a huge fan of that. LOL 

We were also blessed to have Alex's friend Devon help us with getting moved into our apartment. Right when we pulled into the apartment, there Devon was on his motorcycle! Chellz and Devon were really amazing help because they helped us with ideas and just having two extra bodies to help lift, move, unpack, throw out, build, etc. doubled the amount of stuff we got done all in one day. 

It also helps to have the opinions and input from both a male and a female that is not Alex or me. This helped when Alex and I did not agree on some things or when I wanted something one way and Alex did not seem to see it my way, and vice versa. This will be something I will blog about later on. Learning how to compromise! 

Alex and Devon were able to stay at the apartment to build our dresser and entertainment stand, while Chellz and I ran around Costco on a Sunday (never again will I go to the Costco in Burbank on a Sunday, well Costcos in general are crazy on a Sunday, but that Burbank location is definitely something else!) and then hit up one of my favorite stores, Home Goods. I can literally walk around Home Goods for a good amount of time, just imagining and putting ideas together in my head. Chellz was there of course to help me keep track of my time and keep it moving. She does not play with time and being patient is not one of her finest skills. 

We did not go to sleep until past 2am, but we got a whole lot done. My cousin Chellz kept telling me how good we were with putting everything in its right place and buying a lot of the stuff on that same day of moving in. I told her that it wouldn't have gone that way if Devon and her were not there to help us out. To say the very least, we were exhausted the next day, but maybe not as bad as Alex, because he had to go to work on Monday morning. Monday was still filled with running to stores to exchange or return some stuff, then hitting up Costco once again. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday still involved running to Target or Home Goods. Sheesh! But hey it is now Saturday and it finally feels like we are settled into our apartment. 

I'm still tired, but I can only imagine how Alex feels because he worked everyday this week. I am very proud of him for all of his hard work thus far and I hope I can continue to show him that his hard work does not go unnoticed. He came home last Monday night and unpacked the rest of his belongings, leaving the apartment box free! Oh yes, people think that the women have more clothes and shoes, but in this case, Alex is giving me a run for my money. lol I did not realize how much stuff we both had moving out to LA, but also how much stuff we DID NOT have, which left us needing to make our apartment feel like HOME. 

Well... Hello weekend! I can't wait to see what new adventures we get into this weekend... 

Our first weekend living in LA!

This Move is Really Happening!

I am currently in the process of moving to the Los Angeles area! Literally finalizing a few things and then of course once I get to LA, I'll need to go to different stores in order to really feel like I'm settled. But there is so much more that goes into moving to a new city, especially when it is about 5 hours away from where I currently live. So what's involved with making a move like this? Pretty much... I'll say it takes a lot of persistence and patience, but most of all, it takes courage. I am still shocked myself that I am really making this move to LA.

I can honestly say that I am feeling different emotions, but right now, the excitement overwhelms everything else that I am feeling. I have never moved outside of the Bay Area.... other than when I moved to Vacaville, California of February of this year. Even with this move, I was still just an hour away from where my family lives, which is in Hayward, California. So this move will definitely be different from what I am used to.

I come from a large family who all for the most part, lives in the Bay Area. The closer it comes to the day I drive down to LA, the more it starts to hit me that I am really going to be moving and I can't just drive an hour to see my family. So it does make me sad to think that I will not able to attend all the family parties, go to church on Sundays with my cousin Michelle, or visit my cousins's sons in Hayward; but I have always wanted to move to LA since I was in college. I never moved for a number of reasons, but most of all, being afraid was the number one reason. I finally decided that this is what I really want to do because the timing was just right. I will discuss later the process and how everything literally just fell into place for me. I choose to believe it is because "everything happens for a reason" and it is truly in God's plan for me to do this, or else it wouldn't have worked so well in my favor to make this move.

More to come!