You know what's crazy? Last night, I dreamed that I found two mice in our bedroom. When I got to work this morning, I discovered that I had a little visitor in my cube over the weekend. The foil covered chocolate heart that a co-worker left on my desk on Friday was no more, and the only thing left was the shredded foil! Then I found not one, but two mouse turds on my desk. Gross!! I spent the next hour scrubbing my desk with Lysol. Not sure if it was related to my dream in any way, but it sure was unusual!
Speaking of hearts, Jon completed melted mine on Valentine's Day. We've never been go-all-out Valentines and prefer to spend a quiet evening at home rather than spending a lot of money on a fancy dinner in a crowded restaurant. If you remember, I spent last Valentine's Day at the hair salon, getting my long hair chopped off for Beautiful Lengths while Jon was at class. Clearly, Valentine's Day is not that big of a deal to us!
This year, Jon got up bright and early to go grocery shopping while I got a head start on packing. He came home with more than just groceries. Just look at this beautiful bouquet of a dozen and a half yellow roses, my favorite color!
As romantic as the start of our day was, we then spent the next eight or so hours visiting Ikea, clearing out cabinets and closets and packing moving boxes. I honestly had no idea how much stuff we have until I actually had to start packing it. Thankfully, clearing these little things out now is going to make the move a lot easier once we sell. And our place? It looks gorgeous! The photographer is coming on Wednesday morning to take the photos for our condo's website (yes, it gets it's own website!) so I'll be sure to post them once they're up.
Finally, around 6:00 PM, we had both had enough so we called it a day and sat down to a delicious assortment of appetizers (Asiago cheese filone, olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar, black olive tapenade and bruschetta). And we popped open a bottle of wine that we got while in Europe last May. It was so good!!
About an hour later, Jon got started making the main course, Penne a la Vodka, my favorite pasta dish. He used a recipe that I pulled off of The Pioneer Woman's cooking site several weeks ago. It was so delicious that I forgot to get a picture of the final product, but here's one of the garlic and onions simmering in a lot of olive oil and butter. Mmmm....
As a final course, Jon whipped out an incredible Margarita Pie that he made at some point in the day while I was packing the linen closet. The crust was to die for...it was a sinful mixture of crumbled pretzels, sugar and butter. It's making my mouth water just to think of it! The filling tasted almost like key lime pie, one of my favorites. I'm definitely going to request that he make this again!
And the cherry on top of this wonderfully romantic and unexpected Valentine's Day? Jon showed he was paying attention and bought me a cookbook that I've been itching to add to my collection, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. It's a fantastic collection of Southern recipes and anecdotes from the author and I just adore it!
It was back to reality on Sunday as we drove two truckloads of boxes and furniture to my parent's house. I was quite nervous as I drove my Dad's pick-up truck all by myself with furniture in the back and I thought for sure that something would fall out. I had to drive on both 495 and 95 where 90 mph is not uncommon, but I just stayed in the far right lane and kept my speed at a modest 60 mph. Yes, people were flying by me, but I didn't lose any cargo! Sadly, we were also dropping Lola off at her temporary home with Gram and Pop. Once our condo lists, people can come by with their realtors all day and we just don't want to subject Lola to strange people coming in and out. She's wary of people anyway, so I don't want to upset her. I miss her so much already, but Jon is humoring me by letting me pet his belly when I'm feeling especially lonesome without her. Such a good husband!
