Valentine Treats

We all know that I am slightly frugal at times. Jacob has helped me loosen my reigns some, over time. I mean, I would never buy tickets to sporting events when I was single, and now I live for them!

Anyway, I've never been that big on Valentine's Day. Sure, all those years when I was single I would dream of being swept off my feet on Valentine's Day. I never despised the day like some people do. I mean, who am I to pass up loads of chocolate from my little kiddies? I usually ended up feeling sorry for myself at some point though. In fact, 3 years ago today I joined e-Harmony because I had a terrible day, which ended in tears. Even though I had to wait a few months, getting up the courage to join is what led me to my future husband!

Even though, I'd always dreamt of getting special things on Valentine's Day, that frugal part of me took control of my brain. I told Jacob our first year that all I wanted to do was exchange cards. That Valentine's Day was spent at Jeff and Heidi's wedding, which was a wonderful day. Jacob and I exchanged cards and went out for dinner and Olive Garden the next night. It was perfect.

Last year, I think we did the same thing. I know we only did cards and I'm pretty sure we went to Olive Garden again. A few co-workers got flowers and everyone posted things online that they got. I think I did feel just a little envious, but at the same time I was totally fine just doing cards again.

Fast forward to this year. I started mentioning last week that maybe, just maybe this year I might like something. I know Jacob was pretty cautious about it, because I tend to say things are okay and then totally freak out about money later on. I promised him that it was okay this time! He wanted to figure out what to give me on his own and I wanted to be surprised. I had no idea what I was going to get, so today I got a special delivery at work! (I took these pictures at home tonight).

A whole array of beautiful roses and a little box of chocolates. I know it costs a lot more on Valentine's Day to buy flowers, but what a special treat. I've honestly never gotten flowers from a guy before today (unless you count a baby boy from daycare. haha!). It just made me feel really special and loved. I know Jacob would love to buy me surprises from time to time, and I realize now that I need to let him. Yes, we need to be careful with our money, but we also need to be able to do nice things for each other. He is such a loving a caring husband, and I need to let him pamper me sometimes. I don't need these things to feel loved or special, but who knew that it could feel so good? Every time I looked at them today I would smile.

I also kind of got something for him. I had to make a voucher that I slipped into his card, but we'll make plans in a couple of months.

Best Valentine's Day of my life today. Hope you all had a great one too!

Random Questions

Just because I needed to do something mindless to relax.

What traits are most important to you in your significant other?
Honest, loving, caring, understanding, silliness :)


Would you rather be burned alive or freeze to death?
I'd rather not have either happen, but if I had to I would freeze to death. I can't even imagine being on fire. At least if you froze to death you could just close your eyes and slip away.

Do you live in a fantasy world or in reality?
I daydream a lot, so in that sense I live in a fantasy, but then I'm always snapped right back into reality.

Are you a straight shooter or do you beat around the bush?
I beat around the bush. I wish I was a straight shooter sometimes, but I'm too scared.

If you found a million dollar lottery ticket with no name on it would you cash it in?
Well...if no one else was gonna claim it and it couldn't be tracked, then heck yeah!

If you could be any Disney character which one would you be?
Belle. For sure!

What is your favorite food smell?
That depends completely on my appetite. Pot roast in a great smell though. Also a cake baking in the oven. Mmm.

What odd smells do you like?
Brand new flip flops, rubber cement, spray paint

What smells turn you off?
Lots. Strong floral prefume. And a lot of the air fresheners at our daycare make me want to puke. My boss keeps sticking this Raspberry Truffle one in our room and I keep taking it out. Sounds good...but it's gag worthy.

What traits turn you off in other people?
People who think way too highly of themselves. People who can always "one up" you on everything. People who exaggerate everything. Hypochondriacs.

What does your name mean?
Most books say "Lamb" or "Ewe", but my mom once had a book that said Rachel means, "Motherly" which has proven to be quite fitting over the years.

What are your strengths?
I'm an awesome multi-tasker when it comes to babies. I've been known to: put 3 babies to sleep at one time. (1 in my arm and 2 in bouncy seats). Feed 2 babies bottles at a time (one in my arms, one in a bouncy seat using my foot to hold the bottle in place). I'm also pretty good at finding deals...I just wish I did it more often.

What are your weaknesses?
MATH. Remembering things.

What would be the perfect gift someone could get you?
An all expense paid trip to Europe...anyone willing to get this for me?

If you could live off of 3 foods what would they be?
Pizza, enchiladas, chocolate

What do you do when no one else is looking?
Wouldn't you like to know? Haha.

What is your midnight snack weakness?
I very rarely eat in the middle of the night. I would probably be cereal though. Or a cookie if there was one around.

Would you prefer to be hot or cold in bed?
Hot. I hate being cold. Absolutely hate it.

Yeah. It's been a crazy week so far, and I don't see it getting any less crazy. I'm really looking forward to getting to have a girl's night on Friday. I'm just living for the weekend. I had a killer headache for most of today. Thankfully it's gone, but I'm just plain tired now. I'm just waiting for Jacob to get home. I haven't been able to talk to him all day because he forgot his phone at home this morning.

Only a week until I leave for California. I'm getting really excited to see my sister's, my parent's and Jim and Logan. Next Friday Erica will become a wife and I'll gain a new brother and "officially" be an aunt! I can't wait!

Weekend Recap

Well, Jacob is officially 28! For his birthday, I left little notes around the house again for him to find just like I did last year. One had some Milky Way's attached to it!

Friday night Jacob got to pick where we were going out to eat. He of course picked Olive Garden, so we left as soon as I got off work so we wouldn't have to wait as long. He wanted to bring his presents along as well. Plus we planned to go shopping so he could use some of his birthday money from the parents. I only got him a couple of things, but let him know that he could pick out one more thing that he wanted.

Olive Garden was delicious as always. The guy who seated us had to be the best I've ever had. He was so nice, and he even pulled out my chair and took my coat off for me. Can't say I've ever had that happen at Olive Garden before. Jacob wanted to open his gifts before our food came. You can't really tell from the pictures, but I used little boy wrapping paper. It was what I had leftover from Jack's birthday! So, it had airplanes and said things like, "Atta Boy!" Haha!

My camera was taking forever, so he's smiling, but getting annoyed!

Reading his card. Once again, I picked well. I love funny cards!

Lost Season 6 on Blu Ray. I was quite proud of this deal. I scored it for $29. (Best Buy is selling it for $64) I sure love Amazon!

Jacob loves puzzles, so I happened to find one of Busch Stadium and ordered it. Little did I know until he opened it that he and his dad were AT the game in the picture! How cool is that?!

After supper we went to Best Buy and looked around and then headed to the "fancy" WalMart. Jacob picked out a few DVDs and then we headed home, snuggled up and watched some of his new shows. A perfect birthday for my wonderful husband!

Yesterday morning I was supposed to go to a Stampin' Up card making party with some friends from church, but the snow ruined our plans. The weather man said a "light dusting."

It didn't accumulate to THAT much, but it was snowing so hard that Sandy couldn't see the road, and it just isn't worth it to risk it. We were all bummed, but now the 4 of us are going to get together for supper and card making on Friday night. I can't wait!

So, I did some organizing and then watched TV for most of the day. Then we went to the Band-a-que at the high school. Good eats and heard all of the bands from 5th grade through high school play. I actually had a lot of fun. We sat by some people from church and I enjoyed getting to talk to Aaren for awhile and play with their little girl.

This morning on our way to church the road was clear until we were only a few miles out of Assumption. All of a sudden the whole road was totally snow covered and we started fish tailing. Thank goodness Jacob is really calm and knows exactly what to do. If he didn't we would have been in the ditch. We actually ended up fish tailing again about a minute later. I can't say I'm a fan!

Church was good today. I was in a more positive mood. I had fun playing with Liam for awhile this morning too. The church was having their Annual business meeting today and Jacob wanted to stay. I had a sense of doom come over me. Here I'm used to Valley View Annual meeting lasting for 2 hours or more...this meeting lasted about 5 minutes! All we did was approve the budget. I've never seen a meeting go so fast. Amen!

Relaxing afternoon and now I'm making some food for the Super Bowl. GO STEELERS!

28 Memories for my Hubby's 28th!

In honor of Jacob's 28th birthday tomorrow, I've written out 28 memories!

1. I'll always remember the first time that we talked on the phone to each other. I was so nervous all day long knowing that you were going to call. I coudn't even eat lunch that day. Little did I know, you were equally as nervous. Yet, we ended up spending over 2 hours talking to each other that night and you started to win me over.

2. Meeting you in person. Another day where I was a ball of nerves. I remember nervously watching you pull up to my apartment. I wasn't sure if I had totally lost my mind. Who invites a stranger to visit her!? As it turns out, it's was TOTALLY worth it! We were so nervous that night that neither of us could finish our supper...and now after knowing you awhile, you must've been nervous. You love to eat!

3. Sharing our first kiss during the museum scene in "Ferris Beuller's Day Off"

4. Going to Villa Grove with you for the first time. I was so scared your parent's wouldn't like me. I was terrified to go in the house! Thankfully they took me right in! Then getting you to take me up to Ag Days. We got a funnel cake to share and then road the Scrambler!

5. You getting me to dance with you at Abby and Anthony's wedding. I never danced before that, and I couldn't believe I actually agreed to it! (Secretly, I just wanted to be close to you!) We danced to "Take My Breath Away"

6. Getting engaged at Olive Garden. You were acting to weird that night, so I pretty much knew you had to be proposing. Every time you'd reach into your pocket I would think, "This is it!"...and then you would pull out a Kleenex! But then you popped the question and I couldn't wait until I could become Rachel Elam.

7. Our first Christmas, we drove to Villa Grove together in an ice storm. That was a pretty scary ride!


8. Searching for our first house. We found it in one day! I remember I was dead set on a different house and you kept telling me not to get my hopes up. Then it turned out that I didn't really like that house at all. You still say that you knew this was going to be our house from the moment I saw the front porch!

9. Getting to be with you on the day we closed on the house...my 25th birthday! I came to school with you that day. Then we closed on our house and came here to check it out again once we got the keys! Then you took me to Round Table for my birthday dinner. That was a great day!

10. Moving day! A bit of an emotional day for me (okay...when isn't there a day when I'm emotional?). Sad to be leaving Iowa, yet so excited for our  new adventure in life! Boy were we on each other's nerves that day. We had a giant fight in the car as we were heading to Taylorville from your apartment. Thankfully it cleared the air and made the rest of the day go much better!

11. Our wedding day. The day that seems like it would never came, really did come! I remember the look on your face when you saw me for the first time that day. I was so excited to get to spend the rest of my life with the man that I love. That day was absolutely perfect (minus the glass candle holder that blew up before the ceremony! Haha!).

12. Eating Tato Skins from the vending machine on our wedding night because we were so hungry! It had been hours since we ate and then we realized we didn't even get any of our cake, except for the bite we fed each other!

13. Our Honeymoon in St. Louis. It was the perfect choice and I was glad you convinced me to go there. It was so relaxing, and fun just getting to spend time with each other without any other care in the world. Lots of fun memories made...like: going to the top of the Arch, going to 6 Flags,  and going to the Cardinals game! My first baseball game and you finally got me to cave into getting tickets for the Cardinals Club, which really was an awesome experience.

14. How you make up silly songs about everything! They always make me laugh.

15. Going to the fireworks the first year we were married. I insisted that we go early because I was used to people in Cedar Rapids gathering 5 hours before they started to get a prime spot! We got there 2 hours early and we the only ones in the spot for over an hour. Oops! Then we had to listen to a girl talk on her phone through half the fireworks! At least they were pretty!

16. How you can calm me down after I freak out about really silly things...like the night I added Shake and Bake to the rice instead of the flavor packet! I have a lot of silly freak outs, but you always make it better.

17. How we text each other even when we're in the same room. You started doing it once and for some reason we still do it. I love being dorks together.

18. I remember when you pointed out to me that I skipped #18 (and #21) about 2 minutes ago!

19. The day of the fuel pump incident. I remember driving to church that morning and you said the car wasn't accelerating. Then we realized it was dying and assumed we ran out of gas. For some reason this struck us as hilarious...until Sandy came with gas and it turned out that wasn't the problem. It was rainy and cold. Neither one of us had our finer moments that day, but in the end it taught us both how to handle a situation better and it didn't seem like such a crisis the next time the car died!

20. I love when you pull out the card table and we play board games together.

21. Belting out, "Cherry Christmas" by Neil Diamond together, because that song is basically amazing.

22. Putting up our Christmas tree the first year. We had to go buy one. I picked the tree and you picked the topper. We decided to make it a tradition that you will always put the topper on after the rest of the tree has been decorated!

23. Going to Illinois games with you. I didn't see myself having fun at a game with a team that I didn't care about nearly as much as my beloved Hawkeyes, but I did! You bought me my first Illini t-shirt (pink, because I didn't want to feel like a traitor and wear orange!). I love the atmosphere and cheering at the top of my lungs. But...you'll never get me to sing, "Hail to the Orange, Hail to the Blue..."! :)

24. Taking you to "The Holy Land"...aka (Historic) Kinnick Stadium. Getting to share with you my team's traditions. Riding the Hawkeye Express. Doing the Burrito Lift (haha!) and letting you hear my crazy side by screaming at the stop of my lungs things like, "I LOVE YOU MCNUTT!" Somehow you still love me and claim me as your wife!

25. Going to Cardinals games together. You've taught me SO much about baseball and I love getting to watch games with you. I love walking into Busch Stadium with you ( just picturing it now makes me excited to go to a game this year!) Maybe Pujol's will hit me my Grand Slam this year! Plus I'm your good luck charm. 5 games and I've never seen a loss.

26. Watching fun TV shows together. You've successfully gotten me to fall in love with LOST and House. And I even got you to watch a Reality show with me...I just knew you'd love Gordon Ramsay!

27. Totally random,but hilarious. Remember the time we went to Veracruz and you ordered a side of refried beans. Then when they brought it out an entire entree plate was FILLED with them. Most epic plate of refried beans EVER.

28. I love how you can make me just erupt into laughter sometimes. The moments were we just lay there laughing about how silly be are. Those are the moments I love the very most.

I love getting to make memories with you and look forward to making so many more as we grow old and senile together. (10 bucks says my memory goes way before yours).

I love you so much! Happy Birthday!

SNOW DAY!!!

Finally I don't have to be jealous of my husband for getting a snow day, because I got one too!

I'll back up to yesterday though because that's when they hype all started. Well, it started Monday, but I was sure hoping for a snow day yesterday! I got a text from my boss to call before coming in. She had me come in a little early, but usually 4 other staff go in before me. All of those staff live out of town, so I was the first one in besides my boss. It was pretty weird to only have 4 kids at 7:30!

By 9:30 several more kids rolled in. We had maybe 25-30 kids out of about 80. I didn't have any babies, so we combined the toddlers, 2's and a few 3's. The older 3's and preschoolers in another room and then the school agers. So out of 11 regular staff only 4 of us came in. The 4 of us were pretty bummed out that we had to be there, but we tried to make the best of it. The sleet started coming down pretty hard around 12 and by 1:30 several kids had been picked up. We found out a few minutes later that our boss was going to start calling parent's and we were going to get to close early! I ended up getting to go at 2 and everyone else was gone by 3 or before. We were really hoping for a snow day Wednesday but it didn't seem too promising.

I enjoyed my extra few hours at home yesterday afternoon. I played games on the computer and then rode 11 miles on our bike while watching Jacob play Rock Band 3. Then I decided I'd better take a shower because I saw that people in smaller towns were losing their power, and I needed to wash my hair! Got that done and supper was almost finished cooking when the lights started flickering! Thankfully they stayed on. They flickered a few more times, but we kept our power all night.

We decided to bust out some board games and played Life and a couple rounds of Clue. I love games!

Around 9:00 I got a text from my boss saying we were CLOSED! Yay! I may have gotten slightly giddy...or started yelling for Jacob and then doing this insane cackle while shouting that I had a snow day! Jacob's school had already called off around 5:00. The funny thing is, Taylorville only ended up with about 6 inches. Springfield, however got a foot!  But almost everything is closed in town anyway. Now the sun is shining and I get to enjoy a day filled with nothingness.

We slept in this morning and just got to lay in bed and talk before getting up. I would have slept longer, but the dentist called to say they closed, so my appointment is yet again postponed. I wasn't going to drive to Decatur today anyway, so it saved me from having to call later. I got up and made some eggs and bacon for breakfast and now here I sit. I'm thinking Jacob and I will duke it out over a game of Monopoly later and watch "Groundhog Day" because I feel it's quite appropriate for this day. (And the groundhog DIDN'T see his shadow today!).

Hope everyone is as lucky and gets to stay home today too!