Valentine's Day

The week that included February 14th...

The Lovebirds...

So here's an interesting thought... Before Brad, I had to rely on the goodness of the hearts of my single friends for any sort of Valentine. That is correct. I was never really officially dating anyone on Valentine's Day prior to VD 2011. Which I, of course, am not ashamed of. That being said, I fortunately haven't ever found Valentine's Day distressing either, which I know it can be for people, and I just want to take this moment to give a shout out to all the wonderful people in my life that have always taken care of me. Especially on Valentine's Day. You know who you are. But, I doubt all of you read this blog...

On to the 14th.

Ok, so Brad is in school. I am working full-time, but we don't have a ton of loose change lying around for big gifts or anything, so this holiday, we decided we would keep it small, and do nice things for each other. We also decided to avoid the crowds of Tuesday night and go out/celebrate on Friday night instead. Also, this way we wouldn't have to get up early for school or work the next day. This was either lame or brilliant of us, and I choose brilliant.

So, Saturday before Valentine's Day I snuck away with Brad's car, and I cleaned it out, including vacuuming, which if you've ever seen Brad's car, you'll know this was a Valentine's miracle. Good deed: check.

Next day we went and had dinner with the fam. It was a PINK themed dinner, in honor of St Valentino or whoever. We made pretty twisty bread, which had a pink filling. And a salad. It had strawberries, so kinda pink... But there were also red jello hearts and twice baked potatoes that were colored pink, and a variety of other things. It was cute. And delish.

This is the lovely twisty bread. The bread looks a little better than it tasted, I'm afraid. I let it rise too long. Oh, well. I'll get better as time goes on. Thanks, Mumsy, for the recipe! It was still good, even if it wasn't as good as you make it!

This salad is SO good. I found it on allrecipes.com, and I changed it up a little, but really yummy. Romaine and spinach, mangoes, strawberries, blueberries, cilantro, little red onion, raspberry vinaigrette, feta cheese, and sugared pecans. The recipe didn't call for feta, and it called for blackberries, shredded parmesan and walnuts, but... I liked it my way.

This is Mia reading me a story about dinosaurs on a pirate ship. She's cute.

Grant. Skinny jeans. Can't get much better than that!

Lyzie did my hair a lot that night. She braided it and re-braided it. She's pretty good. And such a doll.

Ava is working away at putting together Valentine's for her classmates. She is adorable, and so smart.

On Tuesday morning, Brad had to got to school early, so I made breakfast! When we left the apartment, there were balloons and Valentine's treats on our doorstep from the family holiday fairy (Brad's mom).

So cute, eh? Nedra knows I don't have many dish towels, let alone special ones for each holiday. This balloon offered about 5 minutes solid entertainment. And a little dizziness.

I guess these cookies are tradition in Brad's family. They have cherry centers! And do you know how hard it is to find heart cookie cutters when it isn't Valentine's Day?

At work we got suh-lammed with little Valentine treats or cards or little notes. We have a "fun-committee." Which, I gotta be honest, is pretty great. They come around with hot chocolate carts at Christmas, and made little bags for everyone to exchange cards at Valentines. On Halloween we all wore crazy hats and had a "harvest potluck." They're so... fun. I got a really special card at work. From one of the doctors there. He adopted me into his family as his daughter a while back because, I thought, he liked me. Well, turns out he just feels sorry for me. He calls me Eddie. As in, Eddie Munster.

I don't get it...

This is from Dr. Stewart. Caption: Eddie, I am giving you this card because I suspect as a little girl, you were the only one in class who never got one. (SAD).

They even spelled my name right!! That's my little red ribbon my dear friend Sue tied on my headset, to give it a little sparkle. That was for Christmas, though. I still wear it. That bag was full of Valentines, so eat that Dr. Stewart!!

Then, that night, since we had decided to go out Friday, we made an awesome dinner together. One I would gladly eat again. And! I got Brad a sweet little card that I'm sure mattered for about 5 seconds. We watched a movie together, and then went to bed. Simple and sweet.

Roasted vegetables. Ok, these are easy and so, so good. You cut up asparagus, onion, red, and yellow bell peppers, mix them with a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic powder, salt and freshly ground pepper. You heat a cookie sheet in the oven at about 450-475, and put the veggies on the hot pan. Then cook them for about 20 minutes until fork tender, stirring occasionally.

The pasta was a frozen bag of ravioli from Costco, which was also delicious.

When Friday rolled around, Brad took me to a restaurant called Hall Street Grill, that was pretty fancy. I mean, they offered to take Brad's coat, even. We knew it was legit right then. Thank you, Daddy, for contributing to our lovely 1st Valentine's dinner as married peeps! Anyway, after we ate, we looked for movies to go see, but nothing really looked that good to us (me), so we decided to get a movie we (I) wanted to see at Redbox (The Help, cuz I wanted Brad to watch it with me!) and get brownie mix and ice cream, because it was our DAY OFF of no eating treats. Woot! We made the brownies together, and ate them with ice cream on top. Best. Thing. Ever. Only thing I woulda liked more would have been having it topped with some homemade hot fudge sauce like my Aunt Kathy used to make. Well, she prolly still does make it. I just haven't been blessed enough to eat it for over a decade.

So...I just had my point and shoot, which is a good camera, but difficult to adjust the lighting. Well, perhaps I'm just clueless. Anyway, both plates were white. We didn't have one yellow plate and one white. This is chicken and something else. Not quite sure what. It was Bradley's meal.

This was mine, and it was good. It had shrimp and chicken, and had a spicy tomato-based cream sauce. Yum.

Aww, the happy couple. Happy Valentine's Day.