Monday, February 24, 2014

Nontraditional Valentine's Day

We've never been "Valentine's Day" people. I think this is because we both try to do special things for each other when the moment strikes, not because of a specific day on the calendar. That and we are not big into spending money for the sake of spending money. So we've spent many a Valentine's Day at home on our couch, sans gifts, perfectly content to just enjoy a night together.

Which is why, when I returned home from Austin I was surprised to have Eric run into our spare room and tell me he was grabbing my Valentine's gift. Because, you know, it wasn't Valentine's Day. And we don't do gifts.

He came back with this little guy:



A cute little minion-shaped Valentine box. It was filled with my favorite candy (Hot Tamales) and the sweetest card ever. So then, I pretty much had to put it on my desk, right?

Magically, it started to be filled with Valentines from kiddos from church. Magically or my coworkers put it on Facebook. One or the other. Either way it was adorable and I loved receiving so many fun Valentine messages from kids.

So what I'm trying to say is my Valentine's Day had pretty much already been made. I didn't need anything else and it had already been a great holiday. Before the holiday started.

But it got better from there.

I got to work on Valentine's Day and there was a special Valentine that wouldn't fit in my minion:


Tears brimmed in my eyes. My sweet friend had found this and thought of us. It is sitting on our mantle right now. I am sure, at some point, I will frame it. It was a reminder that though our little guy is not with us, he's always with us.  And we can't think of love without thinking of him.

So, to get to the more "non-traditional" part of our Valentine's Day. I'm about to lose some of you. I know. That's ok. I'm cool with it.

E and I had been talking about getting new tattoos soon. We both wanted one. E's third. My first. I want one to commemorate IC's adoption but I wanted to wait until we got him home. So, I had another idea in mind. We talked and talked and talked about it. 

And since we had no Valentine's plans, we thought that might be something fun to do together. We planned our tats and assumed the tattoo parlor would be nice and quiet since everyone would be out to dinner with their special someone. Surely no one else planned to get tattoos for Valentine's Day, right?

Well, that would have been true last year. Or the year before. Little did we know, though, the tattoo parlor we chose was tired of such a quiet, boring Valentine's Day. So they ran a special on Facebook. They were giving a huge discount to people who came in as a couple and both people wanted tattoos.

When we arrived the place was packed! We were told it would be a three-hour wait. We filled out our paperwork, finished our designs, paid, and went to dinner. Dinner was so lovely and leisurely.

Two hours later we came back and found we still had an hour-long wait. We finally got into the chair and left with permanent ink.  Please note the photos were taken within a few hours of the art. They are a little red. They're still healing but we are both really pleased:


My foot. From Esther 4:14. If you are really perceptive you might notice I used this wording in talking about my experiences at IF. 


Husband's arm. It definitely makes a statement. And of course, that statement is we are grafted into God's family through the cross. How blessed we have already been through adoption.


We had such a wonderful night we've been talking about making it a Valentine tradition. Then again, we may run out of skin.
For now we'll just call it a beautiful memory. Nontraditional and beautiful. Just like us:).

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