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 ;)

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 :)