Valentine's Day Past and Present

Yes, it's true. I slacked off with my weekly post last Monday night. (It's nice to know that some of you noticed though, I must say!) And since I was planning on posting about Valentine's Day, I thought I better hurry up and do it while we're at least still in the month of February!

So without further ado... Jonathan and I have celebrated 8 V-Day's together now and I will admit that I don't actually remember all 8 of them precisely. But a few of them do stick out in my memory so I just thought I'd share.

Now, on our very first Valentine's Day together, we had only been dating since mid December. And we had already broken up for like a week and gotten back together somewhere in those two months... But by the time February 14th rolled around we were both madly in love I am sure. So, anyway, a few days before V-Day, Jonathan casually asks me if I would like to go to New Orleans Riverfront Restuarant (one of the nicer restaurants in Columbia, SC at the time) for our Valentine's date. Now, let me interject that right before (as in two weeks before) I met and started dating Jonathan, my boyfriend of the past year and I had just broken up. He was from New Orleans and I had been on several trips to visit him there. Jonathan was aware of this. In fact, he was more than aware. That little aforementioned week long "break up" between Jonathan and I was due to the fact that I thought it was unfair to continue pursuing a relationship with him while I was getting over my last relationship and still had some feelings for my previous boyfriend. As it ended up, the break up I had instigated with Jonathan ended rather quickly b/c he characteristically decided that he would take aggressive action and win me over. He boldly declared his love and began sending me flowers, etc. It worked. =) So, when Jonathan asked me to go to this particular restuarant  for our first ever Valentine's date, I (naturally) assumed he was being totally insensitive. And I burst into tears. Sobs. He (naturally)  had no idea why and thought I must not want to go out with him at all. He perservered though and comforted me and calmed me down enough to figure out what the problem was. But even now, he doesn't really understand what the problem was, I am sure. He just thought he was asking me out to a nice restaurant. The funny thing is, I can't remember if we ended up going there on Valentine's Day or not... I tried to find a picture, but the glorious establishment has since closed down and this sad remainder was all I could come up with:

Incidentally, about 4 months later, Jonathan proposed and I said "Yes" about 100 yards from the restuarant - right under this bridge that crosses the river the restaurant overlooks.

Oh! And I almost forgot! We had our rehearsal dinner at New Orleans Riverfront Restaurant since it overlooks the place where we got engaged!

HAHAHAHA! It is all very hilarious to me now.

On the Valentine's Day during our third year of marriage, Jonathan surprised me by taking me on a journey (I had no idea where we were going) that ended up at the jewelry store where he let me pick out my third ring! The one with the little diamonds in it.

That was a good Valentine's Day. I'm pretty sure I did not cry.

For a couple years while living in SC, we had the tradition of eating sushi at Sushi Yoshi in Five Points on V-Day. It's a cozy little hole in the wall that was never cowded on Valentine's. For some reason, I think sushi is a very romantic food.

Yummy.

In 2010, about a month before JD was born, we took a little trip north of Austin and celebrated our last Valentine's Day without kiddos here:

At the Warwick Melrose boutique hotel in the Oak Lawn neighborhood of Dallas. That weekend Dallas had gotten a record amount of snow - like three feet!! And it was quite lovely being holed up in our luxurious one of a kind hotel room. We did make one foray out through the snow drifts to

for brunch and it was ah-mazing. Well worth the hour long wait crowded into a small warm bakery with only a huge cinnamon bun and a hot coffee to tide over my pregnant self until our table was ready...

Last year, our Valentine's date included a babysitter for the first time. Well, she wasn't included in the date but you know what I mean... We went to

That's right. An Italian restaurant called Romeo's. On Valentine's Day. We had a Groupon. They had an extra tent set up for more seating and we got the privilege of sitting in this "love tent" complete with cupid and heart shaped cutouts stuck to the canvas sides, live music (think romantic crooning), and a red balloon for all the ladies. Aaah. It was the epitome of classic V-day cheesiness. We had a wonderful night observing and discussing the other couples - guessing which ones had just gotten together only to be awkwardly faced with Valentines's Day right off the bat, which ones had been together for a long time and making up stories for everything in between. Good times. Average pasta.



And that brings us to this Valentine's Day. We opted to stay in. I put my sweet little boy to bed while Jonathan went out and came back with this:

A bag of Whole Foods deliciousness- roasted chicken, sweet potatoes, veggies and a nice selection from the chocolate bar that I drool over every time we pass by (cabernet truffle, strawberry balsamic truffle, dark chocolate with cherry and almonds, etc.).  A bottle of wine (with a bow no less!). A red rose. Candles. And a love letter. Does it get any better than that? I think not.