The past month has been one of the busiest months we've had this year. My cousin, Barbara, left for San Francisco on Aug. 10. I'm glad that she stayed our condo for two weeks. We were able to reconnect and it was nice. She always been like a big sister, like her sis Julie, to me. So, when she left, I was really sad because I knew we wouldn't be able to see each other again for a while and even when I did go back to the Philippines, we might not get the chance to spend the same quality of time together.
The Tuesday after that, Francis and I went back to Immigration in downtown LA to follow-up our request for him to leave the US while his petition is pending, in order to attend Vanessa's (his sister) wedding. We were berated by the first officer who attended to us, stating that a wedding is not considered an emergency. Francis and I were a bit ashamed that we were begging to leave for a wedding while the people around us in the same office were struggling to see their ill relatives. After three hours of waiting in agony, Francis was finally granted the visa, which was a miracle. Thank God!
We went home to buy our tickets, God put Priceline on this earth for situations such as this. Then, we went to Ontario Mills to get my bridesmaid's dress. This was the only place that carried the same color and style that my cousin in-law bought in New York. It was the last dress, it was my size, and it was on sale. (I'm glad I went on that diet for a month and lost 10 lbs.!) God was really making everything work out and fall into place. We arrived in Montreal on Friday midnight, after missing our 6 am flight and enduring a five hour layover in Chicago. Thanks to United for letting us purchase a confirmed ticket after missing the flight or else we would have flown stand-by to Montreal.
The wedding was beautiful and my family there was family. We had dinner with Elisa and Paolo (who just got engaged) at Janno. We were glad to be back. I just wish that we could go as often as we used to. We weren't able to leave on Monday, Aug. 20, because all the flight schedules were screwed up due to the weather in the East Coast. Because we opted to fly the next day, United gave us a confirmed DIRECT flight from Montreal to LA and even comped us for our meal. We flew Air Canada. This is always an enjoyable experience because we had our own TVs with a good number of choices of movies, shows, and XM Radio and the seems were comfortable.
When his parents were driving us to the airport, I noticed we were talking about regular mundane things, to kill time, I suppose or fill in the increasing void. The good-bye at the airport was hard, but inevitable (only to be taken back after we found out we couldn't leave that night). We ate at La Belle Provence because Francis was craving poutine (fries with cheese and gravy). We spent a couple of hours at the Montreal Casino with Mom and Dad and left on Tuesday.
Three days later, Randy and Simon arrived with Bun and Carey. They came to spend the weekend in LA. We had a great time, though, the throng of people cut our site seeing short. We went site seeing and found a great Thai resto in our neighborhood. Yum. Our guests left on Monday, Aug. 27.
I've been trying to recuperate from the past three weeks. I need to detoxify because of all the food we ate. I went to work after 7 am every day week. Overall, we're happy and grateful. We really thank God. We put everything in His hands and everything turned out better than we expected.
I also got a great mid-year review today, which was a good way to start Labor Day weekend!
