Happy Valentine's Day!

Today our apartment office had a contest among residents to tell their most funny, awkward or memorable Valentine's Day story, and it made me reminisce on Jared and my first Valentine's Day together 8 years ago...

(Disclaimer: I got Jared's permission to tell this story)

We had just started seeing eachother casually the previous summer, and had started to get a little more serious after the holidays, so I was beyond excited for this Valentine's Day to get a reality check on how Jared really felt about me and our relationship. He had asked me to dinner and a movie, and when he arrived to pick me up and we exchanged gifts I was thrilled with my bag of goodies. He had literally gotten me anything a girl could ever want for Valentine's Day: flowers, a bracelet, a cute stuffed animal, chocolates, a candle, and other small items. But I was most excited about the HOME MADE card he made me. It was beyond adorable, and contained the most poetic, heartfelt message that told me exactly what I wanted to hear...

The Card (insert "awww" here)

V-Day 2004

Well, flash forward to 4 months later, and I had just moved into a house with 4 other girlfriends off the UST campus. One evening I was hanging out in my roommate's room when I looked up at her bulletin board and started to admire the STORE BOUGHT card her boyfriend gave her for Valentine's Day that year. To my surprise....it contained the EXACT SAME MESSAGE that Jared had written to me in his handmade card that year! But how could that be??...

BUSTED: HE RIPPED OFF HALLMARK!!

Needless to say, I kept him around anyway, and I knew it was still the thought and effort in his gesture that counted most. But how funny is that, and how ironic that he chose the same card as my roommate's boyfriend??

I could have only dreamed that 8 years later we would be married, expecting our first baby and celebrating our love over a fabulous steak dinner in Charlotte, NC...