So in honor of the upcoming (faux) holiday, I thought I would take a look back at my history of Valentine's Days. It all started in 2002. I just had my first kiss the January before. But the guy I was dating at the time decided that he would break up with me on Feb 2nd. 2/2/2002 to be exact, which started my hatred of the number 2 but that's a story for another day. So although I thought that was going to be my first Valentine's Day that I celebrated with a significant other, it was not. Later that year, I moved to another school and started dating a guy that fall. So in February of 2003, I got to celebrate my first Valentine's day with a boy (imagine little-high-school-girl giggle here).
The guy that I had my "first Valentine's" with, I dated for almost 5 year so there were lots of V-days in there. I do know that on my first one I got a teddy bear that he had sprayed with his cologne and a card (and some flowers?) The first and second get mixed up. On one of them I made him a 2 layered, heart shaped, german chocolate cake with the coconut frosting because that was his favorite dessert. I brought it to school with me to surprise him with it. That was disaster. He had to leave school early to go to a wrestling meet and couldn't take it with him because it would have been a mess and it he couldn't eat it because he had to "make weight". I don't remember what I ended up doing with it, I just remember that I was extremely embarrassed and crushed that I went through all the effort to make him, what I thought was a thoughtful gift, to be essentially turned down.
The other V-days I spent with him all kind of blend together. But I did some mild digging through my boxes of old stuff and 2005 Valentines day he was going to college down in KS and I was still in high school. I don't remember what happened but, there is a sad face :( on that day in my planner. So I'm going to guess that it didn't end well. In 2006 we both would have been in Kearney going to school. I found a planner for this year and apparently we "broke up" on 2/9 that year. I'm not sure when we got back together but I know we were back together mid March. I don't remember what happened in 2007. But apparently nothing spectacular happened because I can't remember them. I'm sure back then I could tell you exactly what happened.
In 2008, I believe I was single. In 2009, I was "seeing" a guy but we just went out for dinner a couple days before or a couple of days after. I think it was at that dinner that we both realized we didn't have much in common. The February of 2010 may very well be my last "single" Valentines Day. I believe I spent that one getting annihilated off of a mixed drink recipe I threw together called "Love Potion". But as I recall, it was a pretty awesome night.
In February 2011 I celebrated my first Valentine's Day with my current boyfriend. It also happened to be our 6 month anniversary. He got me a dozen red roses that were delivered to me at work and then we went out to Red Lobster for dinner. He got there early so that he could put our names on the list because it was over an hour wait. I remember walking up to the restaurant and seeing him standing there in his suit jacket and button up shirt. He was so handsome, he literally took my breath away. We were planning on seeing a movie after word but with how long everything took, we just ended up postponing that part of the date. Our second Valentine's Day he had another dozen roses delivered to me at work but this time they were beautifully multi-colored roses. Then for dinner we decided to skip the long waits at the restaurants and stay at home. We made lasagna together, chocolate covered strawberries for dessert and a bottle of champagne we had left over from New Years Eve. We even ate most of it by candlelight. It was a very romantic evening.
Now it's our third Valentine's together and I feel like a kid the day before Christmas. I don't even care what he gets me. I'm just so excited knowing that tomorrow night we get to have a night where we cook a special dinner together. And looking back at all the crumby valentine's days that I have had and it just makes me that much more grateful that I have such a loving man in my life.
So to those of you out there that are single, I suggest searching for a fun drink you can mix and get drunk off of, getting a group of single friends together and play some good ol' fashion drinking games. You'll get the sweet sappy Valentine's Day another year. To those of you who are in a relationship, I hope yours is filled with love and happiness. Just don't forget to continue the trend throughout the year :)
