Happy Valentine's Day

We are enjoying another fairly lazy day here at the Helms Homestead -- and one definitely filled with love. Tim and Kate invited us over for a delicious lunch, but other than that and a quick errand out to get some dog food and Valentine's Greenies for Merckx, we have spent the day (after a rough night with Elsa) playing and lazing around.

Jarrett and I will enjoy our annual Valentine celebration this evening -- fast food takeout and a DVD at home. For those of you unaware of the background behind this incredibly romantic tradition, let me take you back to Valentine's Day circa my freshman year of college. I was expecting the Valentine's dinner he had planned out at a nice restaurant to go without a hitch. We got dressed up and got in the car, but I soon realized we were in trouble when it was clear he had not made reservations anywhere. Despite Boone being a small mountain college town, all of the restaurants we stopped at were booked. We finally gave up and ended up driving through the Taco Bell drive-thru, stopping at Blockbuster to pick up a movie, and enjoyed both back in my dorm room. Even though I have never been a terribly huge fan of a day set aside for a once-a-year celebration of our love for one another (this should clearly be celebrated much more frequently), I was still a bit disappointed with the shattered plans. He made it up to me the next year by cooking me a Valentine's dinner and giving me roses, but I believe it was the next year that we decided to forget all of the hype and celebrate our Valentine's disaster from there on out. We stuck with Taco Bell for quite sometime until it was blamed for a post-V-Day foodborne illness. Then we jumped to Wendy's for quite a few years until either the quality of their food seemed to go drastically downhill or our tastes in food just really went up. Since then we have graduated to Taqueria del Sol. However, this wonderful establishment is closed on Sundays, so we splurged and had it last night and now have to decide what it will be for this evening. Hmm... the options.

Us then:



Us now:


As we ponder this, I will leave you with what I know you really want to see -- Elsa. And decked out in heart tights, of course. Happy V-Day to you all!