Happy Valentine's Day!

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved Valentine's Day. It was always such a fun holiday. February is such an bleak month anyway, that a day to celebrate love always seemed like a nice addition to the month. When I was in elementary school, I loved getting those little Valentine's Day cards that had the latest cool cartoon character on them and I always loved making my own V-Day cards with glitter and glue (I still do, actually, I even made some this year!) It was always fun to see who would give you one from your class. Then Valentine's Day got even more exciting as I got older because I always had a crush on someone. Even in those awkward junior high years, I never had a bad Valentine's Day experience. This streak of good Valentine's Days continued through my angry-girl/boy-hating sophomore year of college when I had my heart seriously broken, and somehow I still came up with some way to celebrate. So, when I met Jon (my husband now) I was very excited to be with someone who could understand my love of the holiday.

Referring to #15 and #42 on my 100 things about me list, here's a bit of explanation. Jon actually proposed to me on Valentine's Day. (I know... some of you are thinking "gag me!") But now you can understand how excited I was to actually be surprised (#42 ) on my favorite holiday (#15 - because every holiday is my favorite). Jon and I had been talking about getting married for months by that time and I thought I knew everything about his plans to propose. We had gone ring shopping and he knew the style of ring that I liked, so I knew it was just a matter of time. I kept hinting that it would be nice if things were official before my mom came to visit in March so she would know we were serious about getting married and more importantly, so we could start planning for the wedding that summer. But Jon just kept playing it off and telling me that he still didn't have enough money, etc. and that he was working on it. This drove me totally nuts. Valentine's Day was coming up, but the thought never occured to me that he would actually propose that night. So, when V-Day finally rolled around, we made some pretty standard plans to have dinner that night and maybe watch a movie. That day, as I went to my classes, I was shocked at how many of my friends were showing up to class with a new addition to their ring finger. (I guess it's not that suprising -- I did go to BYU.) And all of my roommates kept bugging me about whether or not I thought Jon was going to propose that night. I laughed -- I told them the same line he had been telling me for months.

That night, Jon came and picked me up and we went back to his apartment. I thought that maybe we were just going to hang out before we went out to eat. We ran into his roommate who had been dating his girlfriend for just a few months less than we had been dating. He was totally giddy because he had decided to propose to his girlfriend that night. I knew that his girlfriend had NO idea, whatsoever. And then he showed me the ring... he had designed it himself and it was amazing. The second I saw that ring, it was like a switch just turned on inside of me and I got insanely jealous. He could sense my jealousy and then he even started rubbing it in. I couldn't believe it! He started telling me how they were going to go up to Sundance and he was going to write "Will you marry me?" in the snow. This completely sent me over the edge -- I was so upset. Then Jon came in and told me that he had made dinner and that we were going to be staying in. Usually I would have thought this idea was so sweet, especially because I knew he had a big test the next day and he had spent so much time preparing the meal, but it didn't matter at this point. All I could think about was the fact that I wasn't the one up at Sundance being proposed to that night. Jon could sense that I was upset and kept trying to cheer me up, but it didn't matter I was just way too upset (it was at this point that I though that my streak of wonderful Valentine's Days was over). So, I did what any respectable insanely jealous girlfriend would do -- I started nagging. I started asking him why he didn't have the money yet and I started telling him about how my friend's dad knows a jeweler and that he could get a discount, etc., etc., etc. It was almost as though he was enjoying my nagging because he started coming up with these ridiculous reasons why he still wasn't ready to propose. I couldn't even finish eating -- I was so mad at that point. So, we decided to cut the meal short and exchange gifts. I was sure my gift was better than his --I had gotten him the latest Abercrombie sweater, afterall. He told me that he would just be a minute and that he had to finish wrapping my gift. As I sat and sulked in his living room, I could hear him fussing with wrapping paper and tape up in his room. He was taking SO long and this just made me get more upset. He seriously took like 30 minutes to wrap my gift. And all I could think about was, "It wouldn't be taking this long if you had just bought a ring!" Finally, he came down with a HUGE box. I just about lost it. As soon as I saw that box, I though for sure that I knew what it was. I thought it was this giant stuffed V-Day frog that I saw at Wal-mart the week before when we were there and I said that I thought it was cute. I was so sure that as I sat there tearing the paper off and opening the box up, I was trying to figure out how I was going to fake the fact that I was excited about it. I continued to open up the box as I envisioned the bright green fur popping out, but to my sheer surprise -- all I saw was a tiny little jewelry box taped to the bottom of the big box. I burst into tears! My emotions had been on such a rollercoaster by this point that I didn't even know what to do with myself. So, Jon took the box and opened it. He got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. I was so excited! But then I started to realize how I had been acting and I couldn't stop apologizing. He just laughed. He knew how mad I was, but he just kept pushing my buttons because he thought it would be an even bigger surprise. And it was! He made a CD of music from my favorite Julia Roberts movies (refer to #28 on my list) and we danced the night away. It was perfect.

Jon actually had the day off yesterday (his first day off in 3 weeks) so we were able to spend some quality time together. We woke up to snow (#68 on my 100 things) making the day even more exciting! Jon got up with the baby in the morning (yay! -- love those days) and I made french toast in the shape of hearts.

We celebrated with Noah too. We gave him 2 new books, "Mommy Hugs" and "Daddy Kisses", (from my recent discovery of the discount children book section at Marshalls!) and I gave him a Snoopy Whitman's chocolate box (really meant for me, of course). I have always been excited to give my kids those cute Charlie Brown chocolate boxes ever since my mom gave them to us as kids :) I made Jon a scrapbook of some photos of us together (in hopes of remembering "the good times") and helping us get through this time now when we never see each other. And Jon got me flowers and chocolates (#55 -- hooray!) We delivered V-Day cookies to some friends and then we ordered Indian food after Noah went to bed. It was a great day.