Happy Early Birthday Caseo!!! (Part 1: Friday night)

One of the worst parts of being in a long-distance-relationship is we have missed many important dates and holidays in the past 7.5 years. I think we both missed each others 21st birthdays, we've spent I think one or two actual Valentine's Days together, as well as one or two anniversaries... On September 23rd, my bud is turning the big 2-5. Casey's birthday is almost always right around when school starts (and going into my seventh year of post-high school education, that's been a problem for us for quite awhile), and this year, it is of course on the first day of school. While I don't have classes on Thursday, I do have to be at the elementary school, and Friday I have a full-fun day of classes and meetings starting at 8am, so I couldn't even sneak out to LA for a day.

So ANYWAYS, this weekend we decided to celebrate Casey's special birthday a little bit early, by going to Paso Robles for a wine tour on Saturday, spending the night in Atascadero, and then stopping at Solvang for lunch on Sunday. Here's a picture summary of our fun-filled weekend... hope you had fun, sweetheart.

I actually started planning for the weekend about a week ago, wanting to make Casey a homemade Vietnamese/Thai dinner, and presenting him with one of his gifts (he'll get the next one next weekend).

Casey and I have been to a handful of places around the world in the past 7.5 years. But there is definitely a long list of places we want to go, once the bank account will allow (let's not think about how long that may be). So a couple weeks ago I made my friend Meagan a picture collage of Santa Barbara photos since she was moving away to her internship. I picked up two of the same frames to make Casey's present.





I decided to do a "Places we've been" collage in one frame, and a "places to go" collage in the other. Here is my prep for places we've been... I printed a bunch so I could choose the ones that looked the nicest to each other. Some of the places I printed out included Hawaii, Vietnam, Catalina Island, Disneyland/CA Adventures (I think we've been there once or twice...), UCLA, Santa Barbara, the Bay Area/Bridge, etc., etc...





For the "places to go," I found a handful of images from the Internet that represent places we've always dreamed about going. I wanted to make the selection of places somewhat realistic, so I choose some "more attainable" places, like Napa Valley, LA Dodger's Stadium, and Ike's :-) (Caseo loves him his sandwiches). I also choose some "stretches" that we'll be grateful to get a chance to actually go to just one of these places, such as Paris, Disneyworld, and Fiji. And some places that were a little more "in between" such as Hawaii and the Grand Canyon. You'll also see a cloud shot from the plane on the bottom right, which is a ??? up-for-grabs destination. (Keep reading to see the final product!)





For Friday night dinner, I decided to make spring rolls with peanut sauce....










...Green Thai Coconut Curry (with poached chicken, bell peppers, onion, eggplant, bamboo shoots, lemongrass, ginger, coconut milk, green curry, lime, basil, cilantro, and a bunch of other yummy stuff!)

..this picture doesn't look so delicious... but I think it kinda was! Haha.






The dinner set-up ready for Casey when he arrived from LA!














He arrived after a (super) long drive (sorry!), ready to eat! And drink!
















And I was ready to eat too!




















Gift opening time!




















He likes it! I think!











And that was our Friday night, the beginning of birthday weekend... Part 2 (Saturday & Sunday) to come soon! Love you sweetie. And I miss you already.