This past week/end I celebrated my 29th birthday. This was my first birthday away from home. It's hard to explain the emotions I was feeling but the dominant feeling was blessed. I made a point to record everything surrounding my birthday festivities. From the point of waking up and the FaceTime with my abuelita and mama. In which you can't hear anything but they still played the mananitas for me and of course my mama made me cry. Nothing could spoil my day and the whole day my phone was just blowing up with the birthday love.

Being away from home, family and friends is really hard but my birthday made me realize how luck I am to have the people I consider family in my life. I'm lucky to have a roommate who is also a very good friend be here to celebrate this new journey. It was bittersweet to get all the love but it was SO greatly heart-warming!

I won't give you all the details as to what happened on my birthday or the birthday weekend because I am planning on incorporating it all into a video for my YouTube channel. If you are not following yet, or want to keep an eye out for that upcoming video and take a look at others, please do so here: Natalie Letona.

Another first for me was not being able to celebrate Mother's Day with my Mama and my family. Seeing the pictures and receiving the text messages from everyone made me feel even farther away. I would have loved to share those moments with them.

As I've gotten older I have so much more appreciation for family. There are moments that we can't recreate, and I wish I was present for all those moments. But that is life, and all we can do is take advantage of those occasions as much as possible.

That being said, it was an overall first for me this week and weekend. It's all part of growing up and we all have to do it. But I am forever blessed to have such amazing people in my life!