Our Modest Super Great Valentine's Day

This is our third Valentine's Day together and our second one married - and I really wanted to make it special. I'm not much of a gift giver, I'm pretty terrible actually. But I decided to start early this year and do my research. John had been talking a lot about planes and has been youtubing rc flights so I knew what I had to do. After a month of reading reviews and shopping around I found this bad boy:

Soo.... He doesn't look super cool, but I knew that this was a great starter plane, ready to fly, and not easily broken. Unfortunately John showed up for lunch just a few minutes after it arrived at our doorstep (a whole week before Valentine's Day) so he saw the box and I told him if he wanted to he could open it. So he did and he was so excited! We flew it that night after work. He offered me a turn at flying it which I warned him against but finally I gave in and flew the plane into the ground breaking a wing in the process. John was able to glue the wing back on and we flew it again the next day. That was when he broke the wing.

We glued it again and plan to fly it some more this weekend. Am I the best or what?

 I decided to make some naughty sugary breakfast for our Valentine's Day dinner and call it good. We covered our desk with a bedsheet and set Nora in front of Yo Gabba Gabba and had a pretty nice evening.

Yes those roses are made of bacon. I accidentally started a grease fire making them in the oven but it was totally worth it. And those are banana chocolate chip pancakes and maple peanut butter syrup. Thank you OurBestBites/Pinterest. I put on my favorite dress and John put on his suit pants and my favorite blue shirt of his and it was really fun. John got me flowers. I LOVE flowers. I wish I could wake up to flowers everyday and I am always sure to walk by them in grocery store even though I never buy them. Have I mentioned it was a great day? Okay I need to stop bragging. But really I love Valentine's Day. And it's not because I've always had a date. In fact John was my first real Valentine. I still have the card he gave me. On the front were two Iguanas and the caption read: "Iguana love you forever." But before John, I enjoyed valentine's day because of the candy, the expressions of love between my Mom and Dad, the stuffed animals that would always be waiting on my bed in the morning courtesy of two really thoughtful parents, and just the overall romance and thoughtfulness of the day.

Nora had a fun day too. She finally figured out how to crawl. I guess I shouldn't say finally because she is right on schedule at seven months. She is enjoying her new freedom by pulling power cords, window blinds, and getting stuck in corners behind furniture. Really though, I am trying my best to watch her. I was talking to John about how she is always crawling to our laptop to bang on the keyboard. And he said:

"She can't help it, she has it in her blood."
I hope your Valentine's Day was great too!

Dandelions

So as usual not much has happened this last week. You're probably asking yourself, "Why does she bother writing when she has nothing to say?" but aha I've got you now! Because I've been thinking about that a lot in the last few days - about how even though there doesn't appear to be a lot going on right now, there's so much I feel like writing about.

So, to start off I'll talk about John who is an amazing Dad to Nora. After driving home from church we all got out and I was ready to dash into the kitchen and cook and eat anything and everything in our fridge. But John who was holding Nora, stopped in front of our building and set Nora down in the grass. He knelt down with her and started blowing dandelions and picking flowers and holding them up to her and describing them. She stared at them for a while, gave John a funny look and then tried to eat a few of them. But the whole time this is happening I'm thinking... who does that? I had never even noticed the flowers on the minuscule patch of grass next to our apartment building. Sometimes I let Nora pull the leaves down from the trees on our walks but I never sit and talk to her about them ask her what she thinks, etc. John has this amazing gentle way of talking to Nora and teaching her and he's never in a rush the way I am. By the time John stood up to get into the apartment there was a puddle in the place where my heart should be.

Unfortunately Nora's attitude about their flower lesson was the dictionary definition of ennui. I felt bad for John about how little she cared about their time together until I heard him say this on our way up the stairs:

"I'm so proud of you Nora.  Just like Dada taught you. Flowers are dumb."



So I guess even though I'm not snowboarding in Patagonia or even graduating this Spring like I thought I would be, my life is so happy and made up of small, wonderful (though not super exciting) experiences.

Happy Valentine's Day... almost. Have I mentioned that Valentine's day is my 3rd favorite holiday right after Christmas and Easter? I guess I'll talk about how ours went next week.

Rachel