Be Mine.

All you need is love.  

Don and I had a really great Valentine's Day.  We certainly celebrated in style, and I have been excited to post about it all week.    

So, something you may not about me is...I love Valentine's Day.  I really look forward to it.  I am a big fan of celebrating holidays, and Valentine's Day is no exception.  The thought of flowers and chocolate just brings a smile to my face.

As it turns out, both of us had secret plans to wake up early to surprise the other one...that sort of makes things complicated.  The night before V-day we had the following conversation:

Carolyn:  "Wait, you are getting up at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow?!  But you don't usually get up until 6 a.m.!"

Don:  "Well, I have to get some reading done before work tomorrow, so yeah, I think I'll get up at 5 a.m.."

Carolyn:  "So...are you going to shower in the morning?"

Don:  "Yeah." 

Don:  "Wait, what does that have to do with anything?" 

Well, i'll tell you what it had to do with.  It had to do with that fact that I didn't know how to surprise Don with breakfast in the morning if he was going to wake up at 5 a.m.!  It seemed a bit ridiculous to wake up at 4:30 a.m. just for the sake of surprising him with food at 5 a.m.  Who really wants to eat at 5 a.m. anyway?  I have my limits, I guess.  So...my desperate "plan b" thought was that I could *maybe* fix breakfast while he was in the shower.  

(On the flip side, Don wanted to wake up at 5 a.m. to buy flowers for me before I woke up.  I'm not sure we could have planned this any better had we tried.)

Finally, after an awkward exchange about his showering habits and a hijacked bowl of cereal, I gave up and told Don that I was making him breakfast.  Then, he explained that he wanted to make sure I had flowers before I woke up.  We're cool.

Breakfast, with beautiful flowers.

French toast with strawberries and bananas.  Yum!

That night, Don took me out to a tasty Thai restaurant right.  Then, when we got back to the apartment, we made chocolate covered strawberries!  SO fun.  This was also Don's idea.  He even bought white and dark chocolate so we could make tuxedo strawberries.

Dipping strawberries.

Little tuxedos!

You can't really tell, but I was really excited to make the strawberries.  This was a very nice, and very successful, surprise.

I also decorated our apartment.  (I told you I love Valentine's Day.  I wasn't kidding.)  

These cute little paper hearts just took over our window.  I couldn't stop them.

My dear Don:

I love you! 

-Me

The big 31. Or 13. Doesn't matter.

Ah...Don turned the ripe old age of 31 on Sunday.  He has officially, and gracefully, solidified his position in the 30's decade.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DON!!!

We celebrated by going out to eat Saturday night.  When I asked Don where he wanted to go...well, I should have known.  

His immediate response was, "Qdoba. I have a birthday coupon."  I laughed.  You see, Qdoba offered him a double dose of exactly what he wanted. 1)  his favorite burrito, and 2)  an opportunity to save money.  I don't think he could have come up with a better birthday dinner.

Sunday was, of course, the Super Bowl.  We had two Super Bowl party invites that we wanted to go to, so we had the birthday festivities before heading out for the evening.

I knew Don wouldn't really like cake, so I suggested a couple of options for a birthday treat.  He opted for homemade gingerbread cookies.  Oh-my-tasty.  I used a recipe from our wedding, and they were so good! (Normally my baking adventures don't turn out well, but perhaps my sugar cookie experience helped?!)  

We were in the super bowl spirit, so I made our cookies in the shape of footballs just for kicks.  (HA....no pun intended!!  I'm definitely laughing to myself right now.)

The stars are for the Patriots.  GO Pats!!  It's really too bad they lost, my gingerbread was so prepared for a win.   :(  However, Don and I are also big fans of New York, so we didn't take it too hard, to say the least.

Back to Don's birthday, I made him some special "31" cookies.  See below.

Notice how distinguished and age-appropriate Don looks with his beard.  Well, after we took that picture, Don got really excited and he said, "I have an idea.  I'll go shave, and then take another picture like this..."

So funny.  As you can see, Don didn't actually shave, but he did rearrange the "31" whilst flashing quite the cheeky smirk for the camera.

Anyway...Happy Birthday Don! I love you!

Utah Trip

Per my usual intro...I give you excuses about why I haven't posted recently.  I don't have enough time!  Every extra "computer"  minute I had over the past several weeks has been used to download and install my new Adobe Photoshop!  With our sloooooooow internet, it took approximately 48 hours of straight install time to finish the job.  I do not exaggerate.  48 hours.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Don and I went to visit his family in Utah.  I was only there for 3 days, but it was really fun.  Not only did I successfully complete 2 full ski days, but I also got to see my brother, and many good friends.  My non in-law adventures included:

**Hanging out with Stephen and his girlfriend Friday night.  Woot!  We watched We Bought a Zoo.  So fun.

**Chili's reunion.  You know who you are...I miss you!!!  Thanks for driving down from the SLC for me. :)

**My runner buddies!  I finally got to see so many of my old BYU teammates.  It had been years since I had seen some of them.  It was so great to catch up.

Now...for the pictures and the in-law adventures!  Like I said, I went skiing 2 out of the 3 days I was there.  I only took pictures skiing because my camera batteries died halfway through the trip.

I didn't have any ski gear, so I donned Dan's sweet spandex get-up from the 70's.  Complete with suspenders.  I had to criss-cross them so they wouldn't fall off!

(Truth be told, I really liked my outdated snow suit.)

Me and Don.

Don's family.

I have to post this video.  It's just great.  As a preface...I thought I was flying down the mountain.  I was so scared, and I really thought I was getting out of control.  HA!  Check out the video of my "super fast" skiing.

I'm going so pokey!!  I love Don's comments about my fears and inhibitions being gone.  If he only knew how scared I was to fall, and that  I would go to great physical and mental lengths to avoid falling down.  What a gem of a video.

After skiing on my second day, we stopped in at the outlet mall for a mini shopping trip.  Don's mom got me an early birthday present with some new running shoes and a tank top.  Yay!  Thank you for the gifts!

On top of the birthday gifts, we also exchanged Christmas gifts.  (Back in December, we had collectively decided not to spend money on shipping this year...haha.).  I got a cute new running top from my brother-in-law.  Another yay!  It looks like my running wardrobe is rapidly expanding.

The days went quickly, but we had a lot of fun.  Skiing, eating, celebrating Dan's birthday, shopping, movies, and more.  

Thanks for a great trip.