Valentine's Day...finally

On Valentine's Day eve Andrew invited me to go on a mystery date with him on Saturday, for Valentine's Day. He put "date with the most beautiful woman in the world" on the calendar and he wouldn't tell me what the date was...for about an hour...before he caved and told me because he can't keep secrets.

His parents went on a date to see Jon Schmidt the weekend before Valentine's Day—Karen bought the tickets and successfully kept it a secret from Reid until they were on the way there. One of Andrew's greatest ambitions in life is to be as good of a gift giver as his mother. He is definitely the better gift giver in this relationship, though in my defense all I asked for for Christmas was a new hair brush (since my hairbrush of 13 years had been hidden in the fireplace by a sneaky baby a few months prior to Christmas and I was forced to share a hairbrush (that was abandoned in Egypt by a friend and somehow made its way to America with us) with my two girls—it was a tough couple of weeks). His wish list includes an iPhone and a new laptop and a scooter. It's a real wish list. My wish was at least practical and fulfillable and so he got me the hairbrush...and a few other things.

I wrapped up some books that he'd ordered for himself on Amazon.

Anyway, Reid and Karen almost ended up not going to the Jon Schmidt concert because they were both so sick from the cold that my girls gave to them (which they got from me—and in case you're counting, I got sick on December 23rd so we've been sick at our house for a while). Karen told us that we might have to be ready to go on the date in their place (and that they'd stay home and watch the girls) unless they started feeling better.

As nice as that would have been for us I can only imagine how disappointing it would have been for them (or at least for Karen). I believe my exact words to Andrew were, "Uhhh...I hope they're feeling up to it because otherwise they'd really be getting the raw end of the deal."

They were feeling up to it, fortunately.

Andrew and I had our date tonight—he got tickets for the BYU Philharmonic—he was excited because they're playing Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), which has never been played by a university orchestra in Utah before and he likes that piece...tone poem. They also played Beethoven's overture to Egmont, which Andrew played when he was a BYU student (and which most anyone in any orchestra has played; it's a popular piece), as well as Mendelssohn's overture to Die schöne Melusine (The Fair Melusine).


"And Die schöne...something," he told me (when he was telling me what they'd be playing). "Or The Fair...something."

Melusine—a beautiful woman, half fish, half human, popular in European folklore.

I had to look it up. So did Andrew.


"I'm sorry I can't keep a secret," he apologized later that night, when he was busy wishing he could be a little more like his mother.

I told him not to feel bad. "After all," I told him, "We have so much that we're anticipating right now that we don't exactly need to invent more things to anticipate."

He agreed with me that that's true. With grad school acceptances rolling in (or crawling in...because we really haven't heard back from anywhere else besides Duke yet) and with our 20 week ultrasound right around the corner we're just about comfortable with the number of unknowns in our life.

The date was lovely.

Our seats were just right—close, but not too close. The orchestra played beautifully. We got to talk and hold hands. President Uchtdorf was sitting a few rows behind us (true story).

At intermission Andrew said, "I'll hold your program if you need to go potty."

"Seriously?" I said. "We're on a date. We can use the proper words for things. We don't have to cater to the little people."

"Well, then. If you'd like to excuse yourself to urinate I will gladly hold your program for you."

"Yeah...that's not exactly what I meant," I said, stepping over him.

Sometimes he can be a little obnoxious (like how he kept checking through the whole second half of the program to see if President Uchtdorf was still there; eventually I told him to stop turning around) but in an endearing way.

So, that's what he gave me for Valentine's Day—a trip to the symphony.

What did I give him?

Well, I cut his hair and did a decent job of it, if I do say so, myself.

I also coloured a valentine for him while Rachel was working on her valentines for preschool and Miriam was working on the valentines that she didn't want to give away to anyone. On the back of his valentine I wrote a little note telling him things that I like about him.

Rachel was slaving away writing her classmates names (all five of them) in the "to" spot and her name in the "from" spot and glanced over at what I was working on.

"What are you doing?" she asked with a really worried look on her face.

"Oh, I'm just writing a note to your dad, telling him all the things I like about him."

"Do I have to do that on my valentines?"

I told her she didn't and she was visibly relieved. Then she said, "Do you know what you should add to your list? That he's really good at building with legos."

"He is, isn't he?" I said. But I didn't add that to my list because, frankly, I love him in spite of his affinity to lego and not because of it—though I did luck out in this department since I know a couple of gals whose husbands spend hours playing with lego. When Andrew became a man he put away those childish things and now spends most of his "free time" doing statistics homework. But he's not afraid to bust out his creativity when he's playing lego with our girls.

So I guess I do love that he's really good at building with legos.

But I love a lot of other things about him, too. Mostly just that he makes me happy and that he still makes me laugh every day.