XOXO

Oh Valentines... I seriously L-O-V-E this holiday! (No pun intended :) Oli and I celebrated Valentines as long as we could. We started on Friday and ended our holiday festivities on Monday. It was absolutely wonderful! It was very nice having time off from work and school to just simply be with each other. I truly love being married to my best friend and having the knowledge and comfort that we can be together forever. Just when I thought being married couldn't get any better, it does.

Friday: This is Oli just getting home from school and looking at all the hearts and the things that were written on them about him.



There were many, many hearts dangling around in our house! (There still are)
It's very easy coming up with things about Oli :) 

Then that night our stake held a wonderful Valentines Dance! There was dinner catered by Iron Gate Grill and great company! After  the wonderful dinner, the dance began. Oli and I absolutely LOVED dancing!  We danced until almost everyone was gone and they were closing up the gym. We seriously had such a blast dancing together and being crazy with our "sweet" dance moves!

The rose Oli surprised me with when he came to "pick me up" for the dance :) I really love roses, or any flower in general. It adds simple beauty to our home.

Here we are traveling to go to the dance. We were super excited to go dancing :)

This is us after the dance. I seriously cannot say enough how much fun we had! We honestly danced our little hearts out!

Saturday: On Saturday we made a date out of the entire day. We slept in and watched cartoons in the morning. All throughout the day we were both giving each other little surprises. Then later on in the evening I set up a really fun theme called "La Josefina Spa" and went all out from the robes to the music! It was such a fun date! Then we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith and had pizza, buffalo wings, french fries, and awesome cake!

Sunday: The Scavenger Hunt

Oli surprised me with such a special gift on Sunday. After we got back from Church, he told me that he would be gone for a little bit. I recognized something was a bit sneaky because it is not like him to up and leave like that.
That is when after about an hour or so, he came and picked me up and told me that we were going on an adventure. 

First Clue:

"The Cool Place to Be!"
This was Kenny Brown and Kyle Hardy's apartment. This is where our group would go to do EVERYTHING! :) From playing games to the late hours of the night, tie-dying t-shirts, playing Frisbee, listening to music, making crepes, watching Friends and Heroes episodes... this was the happening place while we were dating!
I absolutely loved being over there with all of our friends.

Second Clue:
"We watched 1,000 episodes of Gilmore Girls here."
This is of course my old apartment! All of us girls loved watching Gilmore Girls, and our goal was to finish all of the seasons before the year was over and we moved out. So whenever Oli came over, it was likely that their was a bowl of buttery popcorn and all of us girls watching Gilmore Girls. He was a great sport and watched almost all of them with us! (And he secretly liked them, what a stud!)

Third Clue:
"We play jokes and eat pizza here late at night."
This is Adam's Park. We have had many fun nights here, from swinging at midnight to simply eating pizza and talking about what we had in mind with our lives. One of our first dates was here. It holds a very dear place in our hearts.

Fourth Clue:
"This is where we said I love you."
This picture may deceive you. We did not say I love you under a staircase :)  However this is the staircase that leads to Oli and Ike's old apartment, Valley West. I could not believe the transformation that these apartments have made since Oli and Ike lived here. They are gorgeous now! And they are not  apartments anymore, they are condos. We are already using the statements, "Remember when.." :)
However, back to the story. The first time we said I love you, we were at Oli's apartment. This was right before I was leaving to go on a road-trip with my girlfriends, and we were already missing each other :) We both knew that we loved each other a while before this, however this was the right time, and a time we could say it without feeling that it was being too fast :)

Fifth Clue:
"This is where we watched so many Office episodes."
This was at our very last apartment. We spent countless nights playing games, reading together, and watching the Office on the Internet. This slight obsession of ours with the Office started when we were first dating, and since then we could not get enough of it. It has been the root of many of our inside jokes, and something that makes us laugh- very, very hard. :)

 Sixth Clue:
"We go here and relax in the summer."
This is a place that we found while taking a Sunday walk on a warm summer day last year. We came across it by accident, as we were traveling through different areas, and then suddenly we walked down a hill and it opened to this B-E-A-UTIFUL secluded park. It is a natural park, so there are no swings or playgrounds. That it is what makes it so peaceful and a wonderful place for picnics or simply an adventure!

Seventh Clue:
"This is where we first broke the law together."
Well, this was not intentional, we promise :) We were taking a hike in the mountains by First Dam. It was already getting pretty late, however we wanted to make it to a certain destination. Once we made it to that destination, we kept joking about there being snakes. We would both be trying to get the other one to believe that there was a snake by us. Well, for those of you who can recall "The Boy Who Called Wolf" story, you will know what follows. We were heading back on the trail, and we were at a critical point where there was only one way to get down off the mountain. Well, Oli was walking in front of me, when all of the sudden he jumps EXTREMELY high and ran back to where I was walking. Yes, there was a rattlesnake on a rock on the trail we needed to be taking. There we were, it was starting to get dark, and there was no way of getting to our car. You could not go down or up the steep hill because of the dense trees and brush that covered the mountains. We were stuck, and it was starting to get dark.  This is when Oli and I simply turned around, and we stated that we would cross the river if we had to. We walked back with a long stick for keeping snakes at a far distance while we walked back to the destination we just came from. Once we arrived, the only place there was to get to a safe place off the mountain was either through crossing the river, or through climbing over a barb wire fence and crossing the bridge over the spillway. It sounds like a simple decision, however the "Do not Trespass, Violators will be Prosecuted" signs were hanging all over the fence. Well, to make a long story short, we crossed the fence and ran across the bridge, all the while feeling like we were going to fall into the spillway. Then we crossed the fence once more to safely make it to the road! Whew... that is our story of the day we did not intentionally mean to break the law :)

This was the actual night of the adventure :)

Eighth Clue:
"We fell asleep here under a blanket for hours."
This is where we go to relax during the summer or to have a fun little picnic. It is First Dam! Last semester we were so exhausted from school that when we came here to feed the ducks and read, we both fell asleep under a blanket for about two hours. Ah.. it was wonderful. Just talking about all this is getting me antsy for Spring and Summer :)

Ninth Clue:
"We look at the city and talk here."
This is the beautiful Logan temple. When we were dating we would jog here, when we were engaged we would come and discuss our excitement of marriage here, and now that we are married we go inside and do Temple work. I love the Logan Temple!

Tenth Clue:
"Where we continue our journey..."
This of course is our lovely apartment that we are currently living in! At all of these destinations, there were pieces of paper with writing on them. Once I got home, I was able to put the whole note together.
It was beautiful, and there are no words to express how I feel about it.

Oli, you make me so happy.

I really love Valentines. In the end, it really doesn't matter the gifts. It is simply having a day set apart for those people that you love.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines!

xoxo,

The Gearys