A Valentine's Date

In the beginning, Matt and I celebrated Valentine's Day early out of necessity. The holiday fell during the week, which was sort of inconvenient for a long-distance couple, so we'd have "our" Valentine's Day a weekend or two before the real deal. That worked out so well -- less crowded restaurants, more intimate settings -- that we've kept our pre-Valentine's date up ever since. And now that we're together on the real day, too, we've added a simpler celebration at home complete with waffles and strawberries and sparkling cider. We love it.

This year, Matt took me to Tuscany for our pre-Valentine's Day date. It's my favorite restaurant in Salt Lake but Matt had never been, so this outing was long overdue. We dropped Jake off at Grandma's, ran a bunch of errands (oh, the romance!), and then pulled up to the complimentary valet in front of Tuscany. It's such a beautiful restaurant and has such beautiful grounds, and I especially love it at night when it's all lit up with thousands of twinkling lights. We treated ourselves to a five-course meal, all of which was beyond delicious. The best treat of all, though, was getting to sit down and focus on each other for a couple hours. I'm still falling deeper and deeper in love with that boy, and it's so fun to slow down enough to feel those butterflies all over again. And on that note, I suppose it's easy to say that our Valentine's celebration was a success.

This picture came from Open Table (which explains the daytime and horrible resolution), but isn't it pretty inside?

And guess what? With this post, I'm all caught up on the blog! Hip, hip, hooray! I'm excited to finally blog in real-time-ish again.