Not A Normal Valentine's Day

On our date last Friday night, Curtis talked about having to go to a work conference in Vancouver on Monday and be gone until Wednesday. I reminded him that it means he would be gone on Valentine's Day but I said that's okay because Valentine's is overrated.  Well, he got right on it to do something for me anyway. I knew he was doing something on his phone and didn't know for sure what until a surprise package of flowers and chocolates arrived at our front door on Monday afternoon, the day before Valentine's.

This is the first time I've ever received flowers in a box.

This was an inside joke. The funny thing is, I don't remember what GOAT stands for. Apparently it came up in conversation Friday night at our table but I must not have heard that part. A little corny but cute.

Two bouquets of roses and a box of chocolates.

I won't say no to flowers and chocolate.

I didn't have a vase to put them in so I had to use a tall blue cup. It's a little small but it works!

I only saw Curtis a few minutes on Monday when he rushed home to pack some stuff after work and then just like that he was gone again. Well, on Tuesday I wanted to help him out by trying to clear a spot in the garage for our floor pieces to be delivered. We were told they were being delivered on Wednesday to our house, so there was no time for him to clear the space and our garage is pretty full. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous (felt like spring) and so it was perfect for doing stuff outdoors with the garage. First, I had to start with putting the shelves back together. I only had to call Curtis once to ask him how to stack the shelves together. After figuring that out, I was able to get it. It took a couple of hours and it wasn't easy doing it by myself, but I did it! And it was fun jamming out to 80's music while I worked.

Building the frames first.

Frames are built but I waited until the boys got home from school to help me move them. I also wiped them down with a wet cloth because they were covered in dirt and webs. I have to say, I feel pretty proud of myself!

Originally I was going to put all 3 of the shelves on this side of the garage so I only took a before picture of this side but you can kind of see the other half of the garage in the other pictures with the shelf frames.

It took me awhile to figure out where to start. Finally, I just started clearing an area by the wall where I wanted at least one shelf to go. From there we were able to get a bunch of things off the floor and onto the shelf. All of Curtis's tools on the right side floor needed to stay though because we will need them for our projects on the house for awhile. Well, after getting one shelf filled and clearing a large area, we still needed to put the other two shelves in the garage. I ended up putting them on the other side of the garage. I just couldn't seem to stop myself when I got started. What started out as a project to make just enough space for two pallets of flooring, turned into a lot more!

I was pretty pleased with myself and so was Curtis when I sent him these pictures. I told him this is my gift to him for Valentine's, ha ha.

I love how high I could stack boxes and stuff. 

Garrett and Jack did help some of the time.

It's so nice to have that much space in the garage finally. I can almost park my van in there. Many of those boxes will be able to come inside when we're finished with our house projects, even when we just finish the basement. For now, this is where they will be.

The girls had fun Valentine's parties at school and brought home lots of goodies. Charlotte was more excited though about her Pokémon books that she finally received. They are the books I bought her when we made the deal to read the whole first Spiderwick book and do the reading activity with it.

Just got off the bus with her goodie bag.

Charlotte's goodies were in her backpack because of course she was looking at her new books.

Alice made this Valentine for mom and dad.

After finishing up the garage I came in and made ham and cheese sliders for dinner. I was in such a hurry because I thought it was Wednesday and that the boys had mutual at 7:00pm. It wasn't until I had the sliders in the oven that I realized it was only Tuesday and that I could relax. Whew!

I couldn't believe how much energy I had to do all of this. I was pretty tired by the end of the day but I didn't know just how tired I was until Wednesday morning (yesterday). I woke up feeling utterly exhausted! I was too tired to do anything all day! I laid in bed for at least half the day, trying to get some more rest. My muscles ached and on top of that, I had a little sore throat and sniffles coming on. Oh boy, what did I do to myself? I also learned that Home Depot changed the date the flooring pieces would be delivered to Thursday, so I had a little more time for that than I thought. Well, I'm still glad it's done. Needless to say, I didn't feel like making dinner yesterday so most of us had Cup Noodles (Ramen noodles in a cup) and Jack cooked up some pot stickers.

Curtis got home around 3:00pm from his trip and decided to use that extra time to get more stuff done on the house. He finished off the popcorn ceiling removal in the family room and painted primer afterwards. Then he did some plumbing for the bathtub. I dropped the boys off at mutual and laid down to rest while Curtis worked and the girls took a bath. Pretty soon we heard our doorbell ring several times in a row. We're not used to that sound so Curtis and I both came to look. I knew the youth were going to be heart attacking some people in the ward, but I didn't think we would be one of them! The adults actually wrote all the messages on the hearts last Friday at the Valentine's activity. I thought it would have been funny if we had received hearts that we wrote messages on, but we didn't. The boys didn't even know our house had been done until we got home. They had fun participating in helping to heart attack other people's homes. I think it was real nice that they did it for us. I felt like someone must have known I was having a hard day.

The other half of the family room ceiling after removing popcorn texture and priming. Curtis had extra primer so he painted some of the wall. I had told him not to paint the walls yet because I still need to fill holes but oh well, maybe it will be easier to spot holes on that wall with the white paint. We are just going to paint over those panels like my grandma did in her basement.

Curtis doing some sawdering for plumbing on the tub. 

Pipes all hooked up.

 I feel a little better today but I'm still really tired and have sore muscles everywhere. I was able to clean up the kitchen this morning though and do a load of laundry. It felt good to get something done again.