Cause for celebration!

So this past Monday (the 9th) was our 6 month anniversary!....aw, i know. so sweet. Wipe away that tear from your eye. Chad got me some beautiful flowers - gerber daisies, spider mums, daisies, carnations, etc. all bundled together. Gorgeous. HE IS SO SWEET! We decided to celebrate and go out to eat! Thanks to a certain Christmas present from an aunt of mine (you know who you are) we were able to go to Red Lobster and it was great! Its always fun just hanging out and talking over dinner, relaxing when you get home. Half a year. Its flown by but it seems like we've been together forever. I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful teammate by my side. Let me just take a second to tell you why i feel so blessed.... He is able to do ANYTHING! Ladies out there saying 'i wish i could find a guy who ____' you missed him because that is my man. He is a strong spiritual leader for me, He helps around the house without complaining, he cooks, he talks, he listens, he loves, he supports, etc etc. AND he's not afraid to go after things he believes in. He makes me laugh like no one else and he is my best friend in the entire world. OK. enough bragging, sorry about that. Hope i didn't embarrass him too much :)

This past weekend my parents had some friends fly in from Houston that came to our church to give a presentation about Mission Lazarus which is a mission program in Honduras. SO thursday and friday Chad spent the day at the parents house painting and helping out with some projects and Friday Chad went to a hockey game in huntsville and I went over to help finish up a few things. We had roly poly....i got the chicken pesto and i am writing this in here to remind myself not to get it again. OK. Moving on.

Saturday was valentines day! Its our first v-day as a married couple....aw another tear. We slept in late, layed in bed and talked, got up and made coffee, hung out, did NOTHING. It was wonderful. Chad had already gotten me flowers and I said that I had a gift for him. I got this Monopoly game that was a Cardinals 2006 World Series version (we had talked about how we wanted to get monopoly....this wasn't just a random idea) Ok...now the story behind it....SEVERAL weeks ago I was randomly looking on Ebay and saw this game on there and thought wow, how perfect, we just talked about monopoly. I'll bid on it....so i bid, time goes on, my car breaks and we have to get it fixed, money is getting tighter, i completely forget about the game. Of course. SO i get an email saying "Congratulations! You've won this item" and I was like oh, wow I don't even remember that. Anyways so I won by chance and that became a surprise valentines/partial birthday gift...yay!
That night we WERE going to make pasta (mom gave me a pasta maker she had never used) but we decided that was going to take to long to make, dry, bake, etc. SO we went to walmart and got a few things. I really wanted to FINALLY use my new mixer and we had just gotten some great potatoes from some in-laws of mine ;) and so we decided to make mashed potatoes and green beans. For the main course i was looking around online and found this GREAT (because its easy) recipe for salmon and thought that would be perfect. We got the salmon and i put lemon juice, lemon circles, and rosemary on the bottom, then the fish, and topped it with lemon circles, rosemary, salt, and olive oil. Put it in foil and cooked it for 20 minutes. It was so good!! I was so happy it turned out because I was a little nervous, but it did! (and yes...i took pictures, those will be up later because I don't have my camera with me right now). Chad was doing the potatoes. He had never peeled potatoes before so I said 'today's the day' and he went to work. He did great! Peeled them, chopped them, and then boiled them. The only problem is neither one of us has done mashed potatoes on our own before. (shocking, i know) SO we did 6 potatoes (and let me tell you they aren't normal sized, they are huge) and got them all cooked and put them in the mixer with the milk and butter. Started to mix and potatoes were falling out, pieces were flinging to the counter and faces because we had obviously made waaaay too many. Chad did a great job containing them all in the bowl though and we sat down and had a very romantic valentines dinner. Salmon, potatoes, green beans, and bread. Sounds good right? Hope you've eaten so my culinary skills don't tempt you to snack. SO we're putting everything away and let me just say, even AFTER Chad and I were done eating, the potatoes left could literally feed the rest of both of our families. I had to pull out my biggest Tupperware that i've never used before it was so much food. Call me if you want some.

So this week...what's ahead. HOPEFULLY no more huge posts catching everyone up on months. Tonight there is a free concert at a place down the street from us so we may be going to that. I'll let you know how it is. I promise. And yes, many empty promises has been made in this blog, and i am sincerely sorry for that. I am. Don't give up on me.

--pictures soon!