What I love about my day of birth is the fact that it’s right on the very 1st day of April, yay! the official beginning of Summer, and when it’s summer, all we can think of is fun in the beach, and that’s exactly what my hubby and I decided.  We tagged along the whole family (his side and mine) as what good of a birthday it is if your family is not around (except for when you’re far away far away though).  I’ve been away from my family quite a few times and celebrating birthdays without them is such a miss, especially that we have a tight family bond (a customary for most Filipino families).

When I celebrated my birthday in Australia, with a lot of our aussie friends and acquiantances, it is quite different as April Fools is much celebrated in their country.  It is unlikely here in the Philippines as I don’t often quite fooled during that day hahaha.  It is still fun though being the laugh of the town, on your special day, I got a lot of tummy cramps from excessive laughing as I just laughed all their fooling around and made me skip feeling that I am far away from home.

This year I had a lot of fun.  Celebrating it with my hubby and our families away from our usual celebration at home or dining out, we all had a blast, we had a pretty long ride to get here, but boy oh boy, it was all worth it.  The beach was perfect, the water was crystal clear, the blazing heat of the sun was amaze balls and seeing all the people enjoying the sun’s full blown heat got us all excited.

Of course, part of the fun was to have henna tattoos done, I got mine freely drawn by this amazing tattoo artist.  Hubby, I and his sister Jannah got to convince mom-in-law to join the fun too.

Pardon my snakeskin legs… whooopsie!

Us with our wacky faces, a sole proof that we enjoyed our short summer escapade slash a pre-birthday celebration by the beach.  It was one of those family bonding I won’t forget.  We got a little bit adventurous over where we slept but amidst that we still had big smiling faces :) Yes to celebrations like this.

Hubby surprised me with this huge boquet of flowers, well he really tried to surprise me but I kind of saw the flowers peeking on the back of his car seat, lol! What a spoiler but still I was surprised.. ;)

The banana boat ride with hubby, sisters, and in-laws was truly the highlight of it all.  I had a lot of fun especially when we were tripped off the boat 3 times, whew I want another round lol!  I am not a swimmer at all but having the life jacket on felt a bit like a life guard on patrol lol! Yeah yeah it’s my first time, i know… Hence the excitement! :)

Outfit shots that time was not really my priority since I got all too excited with family bonding, chitchats and group fun that I opted not to have loads of photos taken by my hubby or sister.  I save them the drama of having to take solo shots of me so I only have shots with the same back drop.  Also, having the camera on manual mode and against the ravishing light, I kind of lost control on the getting the setting right, that’s why I have no good shots with the beach as the background, sad..

Overall, though we celebrated my birthday 3 days earlier (April 1 falls on a Tuesday and it a working day), I still had one of the best birthdays in my 20 + something of existence :)  The day of my birthday, I simply spent it with my hubby and my sister plus some friends during the night.

Thank you dear Lord for adding another year in my life.  I wished to be a better version of myself and to outdo what amazing things I’ve done during my yester years.  Cheers! and Belated Happy birthday to Me! :)

 What I Wore: Shorts from Shorts station | WAGW top and cover-up | Havainas flip flops from Spruce

Shot on location at Duka Bay Resort, Butuan-Cagayan de Oro-Iligan Rd, Medina 9013