Valentine's day

This year, my husband and I got to celebrate our first Valentine's day together. This made me really happy for several reasons. First of all, for the past few years I have been excited about finally being married on Valentine's day and spending it with someone I love (aww). That's really the main reason. Another reason, though, is because until now I had a tendency to start dating someone right before Valentine's day and break up with them shortly after. My family noticed this pattern I guess and always gives me a hard time about it. They have reason to make fun of me for this as it happened probably 4 out of the last 6 years (I didn't do it on purpose, it just happened that way!). Sorry family, that pattern is over!

For the special day we decided to go out to dinner and go ice skating! I really wanted to go outside (you know, like in the movie Serendipity? it's so romantic, right?) so we looked up outdoor ice skating rinks and there are some here in the Utah valley! Who knew?

This is what the place looked like:

We got there and thought it was closed because noone was on it. Nope, it was open! So Richard and I got to skate around it by ourselves for like 30 mins until some 13-year-old's birthday party came to join us. One of the girls said, "Sorry for ruining your Valentine's day". haha. It was actually nice to have them with us because a. it made us feel better about not being able to skate very well on the ice and b. it gave us someone to take pictures for us!

The best part about it was that it was only $1.50 for the skate rental each and free to skate! Can't beat it. The worst part would definitely be the cracks in the ice... it was pretty hard to skate on because the ice had mountain range-type bumps in it and cracks, etc. I guess when you're not charging admission it's hard to want to use a lot of money to maintain the ice. It was still really fun though! Here are some pics captured by our 13 year-old photographer.


Don't feel bad for her, she really only took that top picture, we took the rest ourselves.

I also came home to these beauties
Thanks babe! I love flowers.

It was great to be able to spend Valentine's day with the one I love! Looking forward to many more. It was great to spend the day with our fish, Sunny and Erwin too. I helped them celebrate the occasion by eating an extra piece of cake for them. You're welcome, guys!

We also have a new addition to the family that I forgot to mention...

a basil plant!!! It was an early Valentine's day gift for myself. I literally jumped up and down when I saw this thing for sale at Winco. I think I was more excited about this than the fish. As an avid watcher of the Food Network, I see them cook with this beautiful, fresh basil that they somehow have growing in their home in cute little mugs. Well you better believe I wasn't gonna pass this opportunity up to become more like Ina or Rachel Ray. So here she is! Apparently these plants are really hard to keep alive... mine is really wilted. Apparently they need like 8 hours of sunlight a day (we live in Utah and it's winter..?). For that reason, the thing is in our bedroom next to the South-facing window, to which we now have to leave the blinds open every day. If it dies I hope I can at least make some pasta sauce first. Nothing like fresh basil, mmmm.

Any advice on how to keep the thing alive would be appreciated! Seems to be hanging in there so far, but I have my doubts on how long it will be around...

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day!