What is love?

Today is Valentine's Day, the official day of LOVE!

Another day officially brought to you by Christianity. Something I had no clue about until I decided to expand this post past how many ways my unromantic yet very romantic husband @shai-hulud surprises on days that never start with Valentine's. Don't worry that is still to come for those quirky yet hopeless romantics.

Valentine's Day, also known as The Feast of Saint Valentine or Saint Valentine's Day as history has it is, was so named after a saint Valentinus, who if you can believe everything you read was actually not only sent to prison but executed for performing unsanctioned wedding ceremonies for soldiers. It wasn’t until the 14th century that it became associated with romance and the 18th century before it was connected with gifts, most notably flowers, greeting cards and confectionary.

It is interesting to note that while it does hold a significant cultural and religious, not to mention commercial value to many countries around the world, no country has a public holiday to celebrate it. It’s up to each individual to celebrate or not in their own way.

This brings me to my awesome sauce husband @shai-hulud, he is not the romantic type and hates when people buy him gifts, most of all his family and close friends. _{Weird, I know right?.} He will not acknowledge today as something to celebrate and there is a 99% chance _{Never say never!} I will not receive anything different today then I would any other day. But any other day there is a chance I will receive something more than I would today, generally at random and almost never for a particular reason, other than it was there and he thought of me.

He only recently in the last year started to thinking of saving gifts for future events like Christmas & birthdays. My birthday is four days after Christmas so it’s a busy time of year for someone that hates gifts for specific occasions. I think years of combined gifts and forgotten birthdays left me a bit jaded, and I have become a little more demanding in my age about separate gifts not that I expect colossal gifts, it really is the thought that counts.

As a trade-off for him putting in an effort for my birthday, I am to put in very little, none if he got his complete way, for his birthday and Christmas gifts. So he gets what he wants and I get what I want, by doing the opposite of what we would have normally done for each other. It only took a few years of communication to work this out. That and The Five Love Languages, a great book I highly recommend everyone read to help maintain healthy relationships, as the way people feel loved is not always the way you do which can put you at odds, this goes for all relationship types, not just romantic.

Below are just some of the ways I know I am loved and don’t need to rely on the traditional means of flowers and cards. If you are interested in how we met, I can't promise you won't laugh and/or cry check out this post:
Love isn’t always shit free.

This is just one of the many cards he has repurposed for himself, if he has indeed brought a card, it had never had the original sentiment untarnished.
But in all honestly who wants to ROCK someone's boat when they can FLOAT it.

Awesome Husband is Awesome!

When I came home from an interstate conference he was waiting at the terminal gate with this sign. It was so cute my colleagues were super impressed with him, even if it was written of the side of a box he tore out of the bin on the way out the door.

This is a mural we did together, I love the tree of life, so he surprised me by researching how to project one onto our bedroom wall so we could trace and paint it, and if that wasn't cute enough he then engraved our initials into our tree. The rope in the right top corner is from our hand fasting event, more images can be found HERE

EG 4 PG = Easy Peasy (translation - very cruisy relationship)

Notes to Self

This is one cute note he wrote himself to remind me how beautiful, amazing, sexy and smart I am.

Cute hearts he has made for me out of random things, melting ice above and confetti while he was cleaning up after a NYE event, I came out to pick up rubbish and instead I find most of it gone and the floor swept into a heart.

Grow my own luck - what more could a woman want!

I have a thing for four leave clovers and we have been unable to find one in our local area so the internet to the rescue, so far I haven't had much luck as I killed this lot, but he brought me two boxes just in case that happened so we will wait until its not 40 degrees Celsius outside haha...

Adopregnant

This one still brings a tear to my eye, it took just over a year to get approved for adoption, the next day he presented me with this. We have been waiting just over two years now and have approx. another two to wait. Its like a double elephant pregnancy.

Last but not least the painting he painted (above) is a representation of a short animation (below) he made me back when we were still dating. Talented and loving, what more could a girl want!