Valentine's day

 It ain't Valentine's day without a heart-shaped pizza!

Ate pizza and veggies and went out for family ice cream :)

My precious loves:

"reading" to Minnie. I love that Minnie is sitting on the cushion for the doll cradle, haha. So comfy!

Doing a painting craft in the Valentine's gift from mama

sweet cuddles

Doug and I tried out new babysitters (girls of my friend) and we had a Valentine's day breakfast date. 

Tried out Bread & Roses, pretty tasty.

We did have our +1 with us. but she was pretty chill and slept thru the second part of our date at a coffee shop where we relaxed and chatted and looked at our upcoming year together. Seems like it will be another "stay in the US" kind of year, but we have some fun trips planned and are looking forward to what this year holds!

3 years!

Doug and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary last week. It feels good being in a marriage that feels very steady and solid. It was nice to be able to 'get away' for the evening.

I worked on our actual anniversary, but when I came home my mom had babysat and she made us an oatmeal cake (the same one she made for our wedding day!) and Doug had a nice variety of little treats for me in the Hawaiian theme to remind me of our honeymoon (he's even wearing his Hawaii hat).

The 'traditional' gift for 3 years is leather, sometimes we do the traditional gifts, sometimes not. This year I ordered a custom leather bookmark for Doug kinda last minute so it wasn't even here on time, but it said "We are only 3 chapters in, but I love where our story is going." Awwww. What I'm most excited for is this anniversary album that I just ordered, it fits in perfectly with my 5 year journal I keep for myself, and now a mama's 5 year journal I'm writing stuff in about August. I love that one day we will be able to sit down and look back at all our memories together. It just came today so we are going to start filling it out.

Friday night we had Liz and Mark (and Ben) over for dinner, that was fun. I hope our boys love playing together! Ben kept trying to hug August and Liz said the next day he kept asking about him and wanting to hug him more. Sweet.

Turns out he got his wish sooner than expected! Doug's parents were supposed to come watch August Saturday so we could go to a movie and dinner, but his mom got sick so we were babysitter-less. We ended up asking Liz and Mark to watch August (and yes, Liz a true bestie at 9 months pregnant) said yes so we could still go out and celebrate.

She sent me these pics of our boys having dinner while we were at dinner.

We went to this kinda fancy re-done restaurant The White Horse Inn.

We lived it up with appetizers of fried Brussel sprouts with parmesan, fried goat cheese with a raspberry sauce, Doug had the jerk chicken pasta, and I had salmon, and then we had two dessert, a plate of 'world famous' cookies (mine are still better tho), and oatmeal pie which was sadly not very good at all. But we talked about life, marriage, goals, and it was wonderful.

We are trying something new during the weeks of naming a day 'date night' and even if we don't go out, it will mean putting August to bed and sitting down with tea or something and making time together to reconnect and enjoy each other, it's getting too easy to get lost in the parenthood monotony and chores and everything going on. So I think this will be a nice idea to stay strong and connected.

I love you Doug, I can't wait for so many more years together!

my funny valentine

Doug and I had a very nice Valentine's day weekend.

The first half of Saturday we spent on a double date shooting with our friends Brad & Erin.

This is the one we'll probably buy

me & Erin

After the range we all went to Panera and had a late lunch and talked several hours, it was fun. Then Doug and I went home to pack for the surprise weekend he had planned.

my sweetie got me these roses, he started giving me one a day, but then I accidentally found his secret stash while organizing the closet so then he gave me the rest.

We get in the car and start heading towards Detroit, eventually I figured out we were going to a casino hotel. I had once mentioned to Doug I wanted to stay at a fancy hotel so he had booked us a night at the MGM Grand.

Except we get there and they can't find our reservation. So after some investigating we find out that Doug had somehow booked a night at the MGM Grand- Las Vegas. Whoops! The concierge swapped out our reservation and we headed up to our room.

There was a "fireplace" on the tv, fancy Sanders chocolates on the bed, and jazzy music coming from the bathroom. Fancy

Doug had packed some goodies for the evening

We went down and ate dinner at one of the restaurants.

The next morning we slept in and then went out for breakfast. We found this gem Rose's Fine Food and I ordered the "Babe Squad Breakfast" which was wonderful. 2 fried eggs, garlic sauteed greens, housemade beans, and toast with goat cheese and honey. Doug had pancakes with bacon crumbled in the batter.

Doug said he'd take my picture and he gave my camera back with like 20 pics of me chewing, haha

After breakfast we headed back home. We made a stop on the way looking for a new rug, unsuccessful, and then relaxed at home. Later in the evening I made Doug a "heart" shaped pizza.

Yeahhh.... it's no night in a fancy hotel, but he liked it. I gave him a Groupon I found for a flight lesson, and I can come with! So looking forward to that adventure in the spring/summer. For a brief period Doug was considering being a pilot and had some flight lessons, so I thought it would be fun to go again for a bit.

Valentine's day and House Guest

What is Valentine's day with Doug without more frozen flowers!?

Last year Doug surprised me with roses put on my car, and they froze. This year he left the rose in the garage so I wouldn't see it, and it froze.

Also a nice card, m & m's and chocolate covered strawberries.

Doug had a couple surprise places for me, the first this awesome new mediterranean place.

this is an 'I have food in my mouth' smile

We got these $5 humongous chicken shwarma pitas stuffed with veggies, hummus, tahini, and a side of the strongest garlic paste, yum! but my eyes were watering! We ate lunch at 1pm, and were full until 8pm!

Then we went to the new aquarium

It was in one of the local malls and we saw a booth where you can make your own cd, we didn't do it, but had fun taking this pic of rocker Doug. He's was probably belting it out again about food.

Help me please! I want to be free in the sea!!

I don't know how I feel about aquariums, pretty much like I'm sure they'd rather have a free, fulfilling life in the ocean, even if safety not guaranteed versus endless laps in a small pool and people 'petting' them day after day.

Alas.

And then we went out for a late dinner at a delicious Thai place. Mmmmm.

Oh my gosh I wish I could make this.

I did make this for Doug the night before Valentine's

I think he's happier I can make a homemade pizza rather than the delicious curry. He kept saying I can't believe you made this for me :)

Also this weekend we had a house guest

This little Romeo

In typical Becks fashion he was more concentrated on the possibility of dropped food versus any awareness at all of his surroundings. The first night we kept watching September stalk him, it was like, have some care for your own life Becks!!

September was always more curious, she kept approaching him

And eventually they would snuggle on separate sides of us

Good food, library movies, it was a really nice relaxing weekend.

Treasure Hunt

Saturday morning Doug had planned a special date for us. He had told me earlier in the week that he was mailing me something, and not to open it- it was for Saturday. Friday's mail came, and nothing. Saturday he came over for breakfast and couldn't believe it hadn't come. I told him he should not have left our date in the hands of the USPS! So we had breakfast and he suggested I check the mail again. Our mail usually arrives after noon, and it was around 9:30, but I checked and it was there!

And inside the envelope was a treasure map!

We let love lead us and it led to a nature area. We got out of the car and walked down the trail and came to a kayak. And Doug rowed me across a lake to a tiny island.

We got to the island and Doug led me to an area where he had set up some tiki torches and a hammock

He said part of the date involved trust, and he asked me to sit on a blanket and he blindfolded me (I put one in my mouth and made jokes) I could hear all kinds of rustling noises around me and kept asking if he was surrounding me with fritos.

When he took the blindfold off, I was surrounded by, not fritos but, 6 dozen roses and he was kneeling over me. And he said, Anne I took you on a treasure hunt today, but you are the true treasure - will you marry me? And I said yes :)

Next he hands me a shovel and tells me to dig. And I dug up a package he had buried containing 34 pages of our facebook messages from when we started talking again last fall along with a couple love letters. We laid in the hammock and read together

And Doug used his tripod to try to get one of us together. Not so easy to set up the camera, and try to run and hop on a hammock in under 10 seconds!

I felt like the Bachelorette with all my roses

Doug will you accept this rose?

He did. He did.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch and then packed up and headed home to share our good news.

Doug first told his parents that I said "no" and when I called my parents I told them we had gotten married that day. Since he had already talked to them and knew the plan, I felt like they needed to be surprised by something!

Becks was surprised to hear the news

But he soon accepted it

On our first date Doug had given me keys to lockers in our town's skating center which held roses, and letters. And that day he again gave me two locker keys. We attempted to go to the skating center, but it was closed, and missed it again the next day too! I joked to Doug that the locker would become our personal time capsule and we'd return on our 25th anniversary, but the next day the place was open so I went and opened my lockers.

I can't even say how happy I am for how God has moved in my life and blessed me with such a wonderful man to spend the rest of my life with.