Valentine’s Day & Throwbacks

Happy Valentine’s Day! Sam and I have never celebrated Valentine’s Day in any big ways throughout our relationship, my family was never big on the holiday either. I do however, like the idea of the day.. which is celebrating love, in every form. There are so many ways to show someone you care for them any day of the year without the extravagant gifts or pressure society holds over us to fulfill someone else’s needs. Even though our morning didn’t involve roses or scavenger hunts or breakfast in bed.. (although there’s nothing wrong with those things!!) we woke up and simply said I love you to each other, like every other morning. Because we do, love each other each and every day (even the bad days because there are still plenty of those!) and we don’t put the pressure on ourselves to do anything but live another day with each other and our families. Except, I mean, I will be baking something with chocolate today… duh.

Full disclosure: I didn’t have the best week leading up to today. I’ve been feeling down in the dumps, putting way too much pressure on myself, and overall just flooding my head with negative thoughts, and lack of motivation. I know this normal- everyone says it’s normal. But when you’re in that moment of negativity, your mind doesn’t seem to think so. Why is there so much pressure in everything that we do? Why does social media stare down at us and remind us of everything we’re NOT doing? Why do we measure our success based on how much money we make and not how we make someone else feel? I love my life, I love my husband, I love my family, I love our home, I love my faith, I love the connections I’ve made within this blog space, and when you put that in to perspective, you realize the negative thoughts are outweighed.

So, I thought I’d take the morning to reminisce through old photos. Isn’t it funny how you can see a picture and remember everything that happened before and after that moment? Like when Sam proposed to me, all day I totally knew something was up. He reached in his bag to “pretend” like he was getting sunglasses out (which he already had on) but I just thought it was another normal Sam thing.. till he popped the question right then and there! No idea anything was coming… 😉

For everyone reading, I hope you know that it’s OK if you’re Valentine’s Day doesn’t include anything at all. Maybe you want to show yourself some love today, or give an extra hug on your way out the door, or just plop in front of the TV to watch a show.. just know there are so many ways love manifests in our life without having a holiday to tell us so (like maybe eating rice krispie treats?!) just an idea…

Here’s some old photos of Sam and I over the years that I found on my computer if you’re interested. Oh boy do they make me smile!

I have to stop here- this photo makes me totally laugh out loud. Sam and I had just received a GoPro camera for Christmas that year and this was our first outing where we put it to the test. I can say that it took about 54 photos before this one to get a shot where our faces weren’t blurred. We kept saying “how do people take pictures with this thing?!” and “ok if we just stay still and keep smiling it won’t be blurry” This is the one and only photo we got on that bridge. The camera has been sitting in our closet ever since….