valentines comes but once a year

valentines comes but once a year

once a year

once a year

bringing lots of joy and cheer

valentines is here!

haha! that is what mike greeted me with last night as i got into bed. i think that song is supposed to be about Christmas, but what a nice adaptation ;) mike had school and work yesterday and i had work so we did our big valentine's day celebration over the weekend! similar to last year we found a good deal at a marriott down at the south end of the cities and went and stayed the weekend there - it's amazing what just getting away, even if it's not that far away, can do for you! we had a blast eating crepes, shopping at the mall of america, reminiscing about our first date by going to eat at the cheesecake factory where we had enjoyed our first meal ever together! hehe, goofing around and making new inside jokes, watching netflix together and seeing a movie, and basically just leaving all our other cares behind :) for one weekend it was great to leave work and homework aside and just enjoy being together. so that was a wonderful valentine's celebration!

in addition to that, mike gave me an awesome present yesterday evening once he got home from work. i think he got home around 9 pm or so, and i convinced him that we should watch a show together on netflix. then i said we should watch another episode which we did. another please? i was waiting for him to say that he needed to get going on his homework, but he told me that he had done a bunch of homework after classes earlier that day and planned to do more at school the next day so that we could just spend time together that evening and not have to worry about anything else :) aww! he gave me time!!! that really is one of the absolute best gifts :) so we stayed up later than we should have watching a show and laughing and being happy together :) it was a wonderful valentine's day!!

thinking about what mike gave me and how much it meant to me made me think about how as society in general we might've lost focus on what valentine's day is supposed to be about. it's to celebrate love!!! and that is a cause worth celebrating!! :) people get so caught up in the stress of getting just the perfect gift or going out to purchase what may seem the obligatory flowers, card, and chocolates without really considering the meaning behind they are giving. (i am not saying that giving gifts is a bad thing at all! even the traditional valentine's gifts! mike and i plan to exchange late valentine's day gifts because i haven't finished making his yet...still a work in progress :) it's not about the money that is spent, but about the love that is given and the thought that is invested. my dad posted on his blog a link to some interesting statistics about valentine's day that furthered my thinking about this. take a minute to check it out!

the other thing that i was thinking about is that since valentine's day is about love, it should be about sharing love of whatever kind with everyone not necessarily just your significant other. if you click on the link above, one of the things that site does is give some info about valentine's day in other countries. i thought it was really cool that in finland valentine's day is actually friend's day! you can celebrate loving your friends too! in my mind, i think of valentine's day like that already. my youngest sister who is single mentioned that she was afraid she might feel lonely because she didn't have a "valentine". i told her that valentine's day is not just for boyfriends and girlfriends, or husbands and wives, or so-called "valentines". valentine's day is for love!!! and i reminded her that there are a lot of people who love her! i actually reminded my lone single co-worker about that too at work yesterday and it seemed to help :) plus i took in valentine's cards and treats i made for everyone there at work! maybe it's cheesy, but i missed giving valentines to everyone in class like back in elementary school days so this was a nice substitute :) it's easy to get caught up in all the busy-ness of life so it's nice to have a day to celebrate love and to be extra nice to others! :)

i hope you had a nice valentine's day!!! and i especially hope that you felt loved :)

also don't forget that even though valentines comes but once a year, that doesn't mean it's the only time to celebrate love and friendship ;)

paradise

i have really enjoyed the music of Coldplay for a long time, and they released a new album yesterday called Mylo Xyloto. i haven't had a chance to listen to the whole thing yet, but i am already really taken with their song Paradise. the music pulls me in and the video that goes with is it unique too! check it out!

for anyone who wants to listen without the video here is the link. i'd recommend listening to/watching both because the song without the video has more instrumental build at the beginning of the song vs. the video version. and it is amazing!!!

i have to admit that at first i wasn't totally sure i was "getting" the video, but as it went along and by the end i thought it was great because of the message it shared in conjunction with the lyrics. what i took from this song and the video is that paradise isn't about having fancy or expensive things (i.e. a bicycle instead of a unicycle haha), but rather it is about being with people you love and care about. it doesn't matter so much your surroundings or situation (could be in the middle of a field, for example), but when you are with those people whom you love and they love you the world continues to spin and the goings on in the world continue to go on yet what matters is being together and loving each other and the feeling of joy that comes from that. i think people in the world today spend lots of money and travel far and wide to try to find what they think will be "paradise" to them. sometimes i think they are missing the point. i know i could find paradise in my living room if i had Mike there with me :) and i'm really looking forward to finding a paradise in my parent's living room when Mike and i go out to VA for Christmas and EVERYONE will be there!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

"oh darling i wish you were here"

well, as i write this blog, mike is off at an elder's quorum activity. "an activity where the wives weren't invited??!" as my mom asked. nope. not invited. but not too horribly sad about  not being invited since it's a video game night ha :) my contributions to the evening consist of encouraging mike to go so he could get to know his quorum better and making chocolate chip cookies for him to take along.

anyhow, the title of this blog is a line from the Owl City song "Vanilla Twilight". i always liked that song and have thought of it at times when mike and i were apart. we both really love Owl City and listen to it together often :) we watched the video for it last night which is really neat and, unexpectedly, touched me. check it out:

click on this link in case the video doesn't work: Vanilla Twilight music video

i think this video is AWESOME. the idea that i get from the video is totally different from what i get from the song, but i love the creativity of the music video - it seems like we don't see that so often anymore. what i love about the video and what touched me is the way that this phenomenon that is occurring in the sky is something that connects all these random people. they all stop what they are doing (driving, walking, playing, sitting) and pause to watch what is going on...i noticed that even nature paused for a moment because it stops snowing briefly in the video! maybe it's weird, but i get this really cool feeling inside when i think of or see things that make people interconnected. i just love knowing that even though there are so many people and we are all so different, there are still things that make us all the same in some way. everyone feels sad whether they want to admit it or not, and everyone feels happiness too at some point. everyone desires to be loved. and like in the video, everyone who saw something like this going on in the heavens would stop and look up. it makes me think of the second coming and what it will be like at that day when everyone stops what they are doing in response to the Savior returning to the earth. which reminds me, everyone is a son or daughter of God and that is probably the strongest way we are interconnected. it will be awesome when everyone realizes that :)

i love being interconnected with other people. i wish that more people took the time to connect with others - even with people that they don't know that well. i see this all the time at the bank - some people are too busy and impatient to even have a conversation with the person who is depositing their checks or getting their rolls of quarters for them. or they go beyond being short and are rude and hurtful for who knows what reason. we're all the same in so many ways, i know they wouldn't want to be treated like that. all i want to do is make the people that come through my line smile or even just make their day a little better or easier. oh well. i just try to remember of how we're connected whether we're friends or not and move on to the next person who will let me help them to smile :)

well, all this deep thought just to say that i miss my husband. "i'll doze off safe and soundly, but i'll miss your arms around me." i'm excited for you to get home, mike!! :)

if it's important to me then it's important to Him

i was just thinking today how awesome it is that Heavenly Father cares about everything that is going on in our lives, and how strong the power of faith can be. i remember teaching people on my mission that they could pray about anything at all that they wanted to. "if it's important to you, then it's important to Heavenly Father because He loves you and you are important to Him" i would teach. i knew this before, but i love how certain experiences in life help me to re-teach different principles to myself.

over the last few weeks i've had some trouble sleeping through the night. i've never really had a problem with this in my life, so it was particularly difficult to experience now. it seemed that i would fall asleep just fine, but i would wake up repeatedly throughout the night resulting in a less than restful night's sleep. there was one night that it got really bad and i was awake for a couple hours each time i awoke in the night despite feeling exhausted. i had started taking some medicines to help me sleep, but i don't particularly like doing that and don't want to get in the habit of taking that kind of stuff. i asked mike if he would give me a blessing before bed the next night and he did (i love having the priesthood in my home!!!). Heavenly Father told me He would help me to sleep through the night and get back into a regular sleep cycle. that night i slept great and have every night since :) similarly, mike was having a hard time sleeping last night and he woke me up and i said a prayer asking specifically that mike would be able to get to sleep. before i knew it he was sound asleep :) i know that not being able to fall/stay asleep isn't a huge deal in the big scheme of things, but Heavenly Father knew that it was important enough to us to ask for His help, and that meant it was important to Him. i think it's cool how sometimes all it takes is our asking. certainly there are times when more is required, but simply exercising our faith by asking can do alot. i sure love Heavenly Father :)

a warm towel

one of the last apartments i stayed in on my mission had the washer and dryer in the bathroom closet. at first i found this pretty annoying until i realized that if i put my towel in the dryer as i was getting in the shower, then it would be all nice and warm for me to grab right when i got out! it was pretty tough moving to the next area after that where a warm towel was not even a possibility since the laundry area was outside and around the corner from our apartment. a plain old room-temperature towel has never seemed the same...

...but! having moved in with mike's dad, the laundry room is the next room over in our basement from the bathroom. not close enough to do the warm towel thing on my own, but when it so happens that mike and i are home and up and around at the same time that the other is taking a shower, we often carry on the warm towel tradition :) it's a fun, nice thing to be able to do for each other. guess who just got a warm towel a few minutes ago?! i love having a loving husband who also loves warm towels!!! and who loves me enough to give me a warm towel :)

my first valentine!!

somehow through all my dating life, it always worked out that either i wasn't dating anyone over valentine's day, or we'd only just started dating or were in some kind of semi-dating stage (blah...the dating game is poopy - glad i won that game already!). so valentine's day was just kind of lame and awkward and we maybe went out for ice cream and that was it - i do love ice cream, don't get me wrong. just that valentine's day generally seems to warrant a bit more than that. whatever, my heart was not broken by never having had a real valentine. my heart is pretty happy now, though, that i have a forever valentine who i love like whoa!! and i have to say, it's kind of fun to have your first real valentine be your husband :)

for our first valentine's day together we decided to take advantage of my still being on the marriott payroll and use the discount to have a weekend getaway. it didn't matter that we were only staying twenty-five minutes from home, it felt like we could've been states away judging by how carefree and disconnected from work and school we felt :) it was soooo nice!!! anyway i thought it would be fun for our first blog entry to tell about our weekend!

we started out saturday afternoon by going to visit grandpa gary in the hospital. it's weird - he is maybe just over an hour away from us, but it seems so much further than that since it takes a good chunk of time to get there and back, plus it requires mike and i to be able to coordinate schedules for that chunk of time. anyway, i think the last time we visited him was on Christmas eve and he is looking much improved from then! he was sitting up with his hockey helmet on (hehe, super stylin) and napping when we walked in. we said hi and told him about our valentine's weekend plans and how we were going to the temple and everything. he opened his eyes and even seemed like he was trying to talk at one point. we sang "i love to see the temple" to him and teased him about whatever old tv show he was watching haha before leaving. we didn't get to stay long since we needed to head out to make it to the temple session on time, but it really felt nice to go and see him again :) plus even better that he's made some marked progress since last time! we love grandpa!!!

it was wonderful to go to the temple together as a part of our valentine's celebration!!!! we realized with a little bit of dismay that the last time we were at the temple together was on our wedding day!!! we would like to go more often than that! we'll have to work on it i suppose :) anyhow, it was wonderful to be in there together and extra glorious to be in the celestial room together and to just enjoy the feeling of peace and joy that the temple affords. i love that. that is definitely a feeling that is not easily replicated in today's world outside of the temple. i do think i felt that at my parent's house though :) me and mike have already talked about how we want our future home to have that feeling too. and we try to make our basement home right now have it! all we have on the walls are pictures of the Savior and our marriage certificate :) it's a start!

after the temple we went ahead and checked into the courtyard marriott in maple grove. 

 

we thought it was pretty neat because those blue lights in the picture actually change color every so often and it was green when we got there :) we also saw it when it was purple! we ate dinner at chili's off the 2 for $20 menu and watched several episodes of 24 when we got back afterwards. we greatly enjoyed the chocolate covered fruit and nut medley that mike picked up at costco for us during our 24 marathon!

one of the things i'm most excited about from our weekend is the AWESOME french bakery we found called Chez Arnaud! man, i wish we could've sampled every pastry in the place! but we settled on an apple tart (yum!), a piece of some fancy chocolate mousse cake (decadent!), and the "paris-minneapolis" which was our favorite - so tasty!!! it was basically a donut shaped pastry about the consistency of the bready part of a cream puff sliced in half like a bagel with this ultra delicious filling stuff. i'm not sure how to describe the flavor except for "wow" and "i would like more please". the owner of the bakery is an older gentleman from France who is way cool! he took our order and made everything sound so much fancier with his stellar french accent :) mike was particularly keen on the fact that they had fresh pressed apple juice made to order - we even got to watch the guy press the apples for the juice through the big bakery kitchen window! it was fun to see all the bakers at work too :) anyhow, we give this place 5 big, bright, glowing stars and say that anyone who wants to come visit us in MN, you should definitely check out this place and we'd be more than happy to escort you there :)

our culinary escapades over the weekend did not end there, for we enjoyed a tasty meal at P.F. Changs also!! it was mike's first time and only my second time ever and we thoroughly enjoyed it :) i got crispy honey chicken and mike got sesame chicken...let's just say there were no leftovers ;) we even got dessert, but to-go to let things settle a bit first. it was both of our first times taking down the great wall of chocolate, but we managed quite well with both of us working on it later on, even if the going was slowed down significantly by the last bite :)

also at P.F. Chang's we had a really great server who made the experience even more enjoyable for us :) i miss being able to do that for people. it was fun to be a part of making someone else's night out even more fun when i worked at the olive garden. it's not quite the same experience trying to make someone's bank visit more delightful haha :)

we went to the maple grove ward for Sacrament meeting on sunday and had to set up extra chairs in the overflow for us to have a seat! that ward was big!!! it was nice to hear the talks on temple worship though and how it enriches our lives especially since we had just gone the day before! it was nice when someone followed us out of the chapel after the meeting to find out if we were new in the ward - it felt good to know that even in such a big, busy ward (there were tons of kids!) we were still noticed :) we told him we were from big lake, just enjoying a weekend away at the maple grove marriott and thought we'd visit their ward instead of going back to ours. he said we're welcome to stay at the marriott and visit their ward anytime :)

did i mention how nice i was to be able to sleep in?? i feel like i haven't done that in quite awhile!! it was also pretty neat to have someone make our bed for us and bring us fresh towels and whatnot. this led to a great daydream by mike and i about what it'd be like to have a maid and how long we'd wait to do that so our kids could learn responsibility through chores and stuff hahaha. it's nice to dream about being in the position to even consider hiring someone to take care of that stuff someday :) and even nicer to have someone do it even if just for a day at the marriott!

we did eat breakfast today at this place called the original pancake house. the pancakes were tasty, but that's about all i enjoyed about this place other than the company :) the service wasn't great and my omelette was pretty weird-looking! it looked like they cooked it in a whoopie cushion and implanted a cheese tumor on the side of it. hahaha. that meaning it was about the size and shape of a large whoopie cushion and all the cheese was in a weird bulge off one side of it. not too impressive. so next time we'll know to just hit up the french bakery again :)

so now we're back to real life and regular schedules...sigh. since getting back we've found out that the transmission is handicapped on mike's car, so we are pretty much just going to put it on craigslist for a chunk of change and hope a mechanically inclined friend decides to go for it and fix it up. we are pretty much waiting on hearing about mike's byu application before deciding what to do about his car. so that's the big situation we're trying to work out right now. i'm glad that we found that out after our weekend though...it was so nice to not have anything to worry about. no homework for mike or trying to make a sale at the bank for jaime :) of course life can't always be like that, but it was nice to have a weekend when it was just for those couple days!! and it was even nicer to have a wonderful husband to be able to spend it with!!!!! it seemed like a mini-honeymoon :) i love my mike and i'm so glad he loves me too!!!

hahahahahahaha. we had alot of fun with those in case you couldn't tell :)