Belated Valentine's Day Post

Yes, I am inundating my blog today with posts. I post when I can! Today I've had a lot to say. I've also had more viewers today than I've ever had, which is really exciting! I'd love more comments, ya'll. ( :

Some of the blogs I follow did posts on Valentine's Day last week. Most of them talked about how they decorated their house for the holiday. One blogger said she didn't do much decorating since its only one day. That was such a funny comment to me; all holidays are only one day, and we make a big deal out of some of them. ( :  Well, I don't do any decorating at all for Valentine's Day. The only holiday I decorate the house for is Christmas. Well, I decorate for fall, too, but that's not a holiday.

This post obviously won't be about my Valentine's decorations. I did make Valentines with C, but we only made 3 (one for her daddy, and one for each set of her grandparents). I just cut out big red hearts and had her put her hand prints on them in white paint. They turned out really cute! I figure in a few years she'll have plenty of friends and then we can break out the big-guns for crafting, haha.

What I wanted to talk about in this post is my sweet, sweet husband. I have never made a big deal out of this holiday, and never expected my significant other to do anything special for me. DH normally doesn't do more than chocolates, a card, and flowers, which is more than enough for me. Our anniversary is a week after Valentine's Day (February 21 - this Thursday!!), so since we got married we definitely haven't done too much for this holiday. We take a trip every year for our anniversary. This year, we decided not to do anything for Valentine's and just save our money for the trip (which we'll be taking next month).

So I got DH a really sweet card. And that's it.

I had planned to get up early that morning to cook him breakfast (he leaves for work much earlier than me), but C was getting sick and I was up most of the night with her, and couldn't bring myself to get up earlier than I absolutely had to. DH understood. But he surprised me by cooking ME breakfast! He normally wakes me up right before he leaves, just to tell me goodbye. (I have tried to make myself get up every morning with him, so we can spend extra time together, but I am NOT a morning person and when I tried I was just cranky all day, so now I just sleep until I have to get up, which is later than him.) Anyway, he cooked me bacon, eggs, and grits, which was wonderful since I usually just have toast before work.

This was also waiting for me:

 

 That card was really sweet. I was tickled to death! Later that day, the florist delivered a gorgeous bouquet of flowers to me at work. I'm not big on roses, and my favorite flowers are daisies, so that's why we have the weird mix here:

At this point I was feeling somewhat guilty that I didn't get DH anything except a dinky card. But, come on, we had agreed not to do presents!!

Then he called me after lunch to tell me he had another surprise for me. Argh! I had no idea what to expect. My man loves to give gifts, and he can be extravagant sometimes. But since we're supposed to be saving our money for the trip, I figured he'd bought me "Breaking Dawn: Part II" on DVD. Or something else in that price range. Something sweet or cute.

I should have known he'd go for extravagant!! When we got home from work, he presented me with another box of chocolates and some long-stemmed roses.

Now, I'm not big on roses, but these were gorgeous. THEN he handed me a small box with the tell-tale wrapping of our local jewelry store. (I know this wrapping well since he got me several pieces of jewelry for Christmas. Yes, my man spoils me, and no, I never ask for any of this!) Inside was an absolutely beautiful heart necklace:

It has white and chocolate diamonds. sigh. Its so sparkly. I love it, of course, but can you imagine how guilty I felt for not getting him anything??! He wasn't mad at all, though. That's just how he is. He loves to give gifts, and truly doesn't expect anything in return. Of course I put the necklace on and haven't taken it off since. ( :

Some people say men use Valentine's Day to give their wife something sweet and make up for the rest of the year, when he's not sweet or loving. I know that some men do that. But not my man. He typically only buys me stuff like this on holidays or special occasions (like our anniversary), but he does sweet things for me all the time. He just likes to go all out when he gets the chance!

The thing is, he knows I don't expect anything extravagant like this necklace. He knows I don't even have to get flowers delivered at work. I do like cards, and I've told him that enough that he knows that, haha! He just buys me nice things because I don't expect them. For Christmas he got me a sterling silver chain and charm, a gold chain, and 2 gold charms. Way more than he should have. I think he likes to shock me! (For the record, he doesn't go with jewelry for every occasion. He's pretty creative with gifts.)

I know that giving gifts is part of his love language. Its not mine, but I can sure appreciate it. What's interesting to me is that while he likes to give gifts, he's not much on receiving them. He's appreciative if he gets a gift, but it doesn't bring him as much pleasure as watching me or someone else open something from him. He likes love to be shown to him by doing acts of service - keeping his clothes washed, keeping the house clean, doing little extra things to help him, etc. Which works great, since those are the things I excel at. (For the record, my love language is quality time. When my man spends time with me, that says so much to my heart!)

My marriage is not perfect by any means. But I know how blessed I am. I pray that God continues to bless my marriage and make it continually stronger. I'm happy to report that on Thursday we'll have been married for 4 years! I know that's not very long, but considering not long before I met him, I wasn't sure I ever wanted to be married, this is a pretty big deal. ( :

And I did buy him a small gift, even though I said I wasn't! haha ( :