Valentine's Day

Since I am leaving on a jet plane (thank you John Denver) tomorrow Troy and I decided to have Valentine's Day early. He has a Bible study tonight so we opted for last night. I didn't want to pay a sitter so Troy took care of Garrett while I surprised him with Chinese food or, as I referred to it last night and probably henceforth, Chinee Foose. And no, that's not alcohol in the bottle, it's sparkling cider so why I suddenly lost the ability to speak is beyond me but, when I tripped over my tongue and it came out Chinee Foose instead of Chinese food, we laughed about it for a good few minutes. That's what love does to you. Even after five years of celebrating Valentine's Day together, we still laugh like a couple of fools on a second date. Troy put Garrett down at 7:30 and came downstairs to chow main, fried rice, broccoli beef, orange chicken and chicken with mushrooms from Panda Express. Had I known that Salt Lake has a P.F. Chang's I probably would have brought home shrimp chow main and lettuce wraps. But, as I was ignorant to that marvelous fact, Panda was the establishment of choice. We ate and ate and then we scraped the leftovers back into their adorable boxes--and okay, when I think of China I think of warriors and extremes in regards to little girls and crouching tigers and hidden dragons so why is their food preparation so antithetically cute? When all was said and done, this is what we had left.


Now, it's a little difficult to see in these pictures but I am so not kidding when I say that three of five boxes are full and the other two are almost full. So here is the question: Is Chinese food truly magical? How does it do that? It seems to regenerate right before your eyes. We seriously ate until we were stuffed. And I am sure that three of us (at this point Garrett really likes Chinese food) will eat hearty portions again this evening and, if I were a betting person, I'd bet that we'll still have leftovers. But the small boxes just looked so small and the large boxes looked, well, small. And I wanted to have enough so I bought the family feast. It was cost effective and, apparently, for $25.00, we're going to eat Chinee foose forEVER.

Also, it should be noted that I not only took a shower, blew my hair dry, curled it, and put on a decent amount of make up for my date, I also wore this to, you know, tell my husband that I still think he's worth more than my usual "lounge around the house in jeans with my hair in a scrunchie" attire:

And yes, I realize that my neck looks extremely bizarre in this shot, kind of like a tortoise with a goiter. But that is so not what we should be focusing on here. We should be making note of the fact that both of my eyes appear to be the same size. I'm not even kidding you that one of my eyes is so much bigger than the other one when I smile. This weird skin flap shoves up and decreases the size of one and it is truly unfortunate. But NOT IN THIS PICTURE HALLELUJAH AND GLORY BE!


Alright so, we had a delicious dinner. Our son slept peacefully above our heads. We even danced which, if you know anything about either of us you know is a rare occasion indeed. I think it was a wonderful evening that should be duplicated often. Except that maybe next time I will trust that the small box holds enough food for two people? Then again, probably not.

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In other news, you have absolutely got to see this video of my son. He's maybe got a little too much Carapace* blood running through his veins. Like my father and grandmother who have legendary stories told about them, this boy likes to clean. I turned my back for one minute, turned around and he was frantically doing this...with elbow grease, even.

Do you all hear Amy Grant belting "Every Heartbeat" in the background? Troy got me her greatest hits for Valentine's Day because he loves me like that. And you know what, there was a time, in late high school, when I was a little embarrassed to share my adoration of Ms. Grant with my peers. But the truth of the matter is that I not ashamed of my love for her. If you want the whole truth, my son and I were dancing to "Baby, Baby" like a couple of nut jobs just moments before the video was taken. And you know what, if that changes your impression of me, well, well, well...too bad. I love me some Amy Grant. There I said it.

Oh and postscript, the bananas were for MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). We're feeding the families at a shelter tonight and my job was to supply a fruit item. I had chosen apples but then someone obtained a crate of them. I switched to bananas. I'm glad. If I'd been seen with a large number of apples all I could have said was, "For the horses" or "We're attempting to bake Utah's biggest pie." That is much less fun to say than, "Boy oh boy is our monkey gonna be one happy simian."



*As always, my maiden name has been changed to protect the innocent from murderous stalkers.