The Curse of Valentines Day

Here we are on our first Valentines Day 7 years ago

My husband and I have never had a successful Valentines Day. First of all, we have a hard time putting too much effort into Valentines Day because our anniversary is on St. Patricks Day and we would rather save our time, energy and money on that (which is more of a holiday in our opinion) because truly, how romantic is it celebrating your love with a million other couples?

I think we sealed our V-Day fate on the very first Valentines Day right before we got together. That was the last holiday I celebrated with my ex (and that didn't go well either) and a few weeks later I started hanging out with Kevin as a "rebound". Don't worry- he loves telling people how I just couldn't get enough of him and how he went from a rebound to a perminate fixture. So anyway, I figure I already had that bad V-Day mojo surrounding me when we started dating. So, 11 months later we had our first V-Day and I made us the shirts above and we proudly wore them all day. He also brought me what I call 'the works' (flowers, balloons, chocolates) to my work and we went out to dinner.

Later that night, we got into a fight and I tried to break up with him. Basically he started loosing all his friends because he spent so much time with me and I just didn't want to be 'that girlfriend' that caused him to loose all his friendships. I was his first serious girlfriend and he wasn't as good at balancing his time between the friends we shared together and the friends he had before we started dating. It killed me to be the reason he was loosing friends, and when I tried to do what I thought was right he flat out told me that our breakup wasn't happening. It was one of the best my-life-is-a-movie moments. Hubby- please forgive me for sharing this! We were both crying and he said "I'm not done loving you yet" and that was that. I knew I couldn't leave this wonderful man, and I am so proud to be his wife because we still have those movie-like moments that remind me how blessed and lucky I am.

It's hard to recount all 7 of our V-Days but they all consistently have hiccups in them to make them anything but romantic. One of them my friend and I thought it would be funny to get our guys "Its a Girl" balloons. I have a sick sense of humor sometimes and I thought it would be funny. My friend's boyfriend ran away from her screaming "NOOOO!" so it wasn't until then that I got nervous about our prank. When we went to give Kev his balloon he just hugged me and kissed me and asked if it was for real with a huge smile on his face. (Yes, I'm aware this prank now makes me a huge bitch) He proved to me again how wonderful he is, and I still get a laugh remembering him trying to sneak the balloon in past his parents and eventually popping it to hide in his sock drawer.

On another V-Day we were living with another couple and they weren't the most... stable.. couple and everything that we did for each other somehow caused a problem with them and we got stuck dealing with it. Kev rescued us from the drama in time to go to dinner in Pebble Beach at a place called Roy's and while the dinner was fantastic I had too much to drink and got sick, so our celebrating ended there. Plus, we could hear the other couple fighting through the walls- not the most romantic situation. However, it did make us feel lucky to have each other and to be grateful that we didn't have silly fights like that.

This year we figured our tattoos would be our V-Day presents to each other. Somehow my husband got the day off, but I had to work. He came and met me for lunch but otherwise my day was pretty normal. When I got home I found these waiting for me:


I named the leemer Lolly and tulips are my favorite. 

My husband had another surprise too: he booked our flights to visit some very special people for our first wedding anniversary. We are going to renew our vows with the people I lovingly refer to as 'my other family' who couldn't be at our big wedding in March, so it's the perfect way to celebrate in my opinion. We talked about the trip, and started to make plans but we hadn't been able to afford the tickets just yet so I was more than excited to find out the trip has moved from hopeful plans to a definite action. I seriously cannot wait! We spent some time at the beach too since it was a really nice day, it was just what we needed, to be by the water. We love water over here.

I am usually the planner in our relationship but I always leave V-Day up to him to figure out. I think of it as a present to myself, to just go along for the ride. This year we took so long to figure out if we even wanted to do anything that it was too late to go out to dinner, so we ended up getting a pizza, a movie and some drinks and went back home to celebrate. The hiccup this year was that I was just too tired to care about going out, and when he finally convinced me I got all dressed up only to be told there was a 2 hour wait everywhere we tried to go. Basically I got all dolled up to go back home- a few years ago this would have warranted a small fight but maybe it's all the changes in our life that has calmed me, or at least changed my view on things because I was happy to go through with our plan B. I just wanted to be cozy at home, not uncomfortable surrounded by strangers. It also helped that he is taking me to Macy's to spend our 'dinner money' on me now (and my changing body). So maybe we started making up for all the past V-Day mistakes and next year will be completely hiccup free.

Although, I'm starting to love the hiccups...