February 9-15

Our highlight of the week was Valentine’s Day! We spent a few days celebrating and enjoyed every minute of being together.

Thursday I met Mark on campus after my work and between his classes. We went to the Sky Room for lunch. The Sky Room is a fancy restaurant on campus. We got the soup and salad bar. The food was delicious and the view of the mountains was beautiful.

Friday morning we exchanged presents. I gave Mark a calendar with pictures of us and Mark gave me the first three Rangers Apprentice books and chocolates. We gave Flynn treats and toy sloths. He loves them and will even carry them in his mouth when we go on walks.

Throughout the day I text Mark cheesy Valentine cards made by the DNR. The bobcat was his favorite.

We bought tickets to a date night event with Hank Smith and John Bytheway. We laughed so hard we cried and we gained some good tips for our relationship. We were reminded to recognize our differences as men and women and were given advice on how to support each other. One idea I loved was making the 5 minutes before we part in the morning and the 5 minutes when we reunite in the evening extra special.

After the event we came home to eat an Oreo Cheesecake I baked. It was delicious! We stayed up late watching Monk and the next morning I didn’t have any lessons. I found myself wide awake at 7:00am, but that is much better than my regular 3:40am.

We enjoyed more time together on Saturday going on walks, doing a little shopping, and eating more cheesecake! I read an entire book! Granted, it was a middle school level read, but that’s a big deal for me because I’ve been trying to rekindle my love for reading. All the reading I did for college made me too tired to read for fun. I used to spend so much free time reading when I was growing up and I hope I can find some more good books so I’ll love reading that much again! Mark knew this was important to me and was so sweet to give me fun, quick-read books for my valentines gift.