{my most memorable valentine's day}

Rick and I had been married a couple of years, and we were living in an apartment and going to school. This particular Valentine's day fell on a Saturday, and we were planning to leave really early that morning and travel about 4 hours away to our hometown to visit family and friends for the weekend.

Since the first year we were married, Rick always decorated our apartment late on Valentine's Eve, so I would see it when I got up in the morning. We're talking crepe paper strung from wall to wall, balloons, candy hearts, and always a really funny card. I didn't expect this year, because we were leaving so early in the morning.

Friday night we set our alarm for 6:00am, and then went to bed. For the sake of the story, I have to mention that I am really heavy sleeper. As in I slept through an earthquake that was a 5.9 on the Richter scale--I dreamed that a locomotive was going through my room, and didn't realize it was something more serious until my siblings came in to get me. My dad woke me up almost every morning of my life (even though I set an alarm--I wouldn't hear it for awhile), and then when I got married, Rick would wake me up.
Saturday morning I awakened to hear the alarm clock going off, and the doorbell being rung again, and again, and again. I groggily got up out of bed, and opened the door to find Rick standing on the doorstep! He stumbled inside, and the story unfolded.

He waited until I was asleep Friday night, then headed to Target to buy what he needed to decorate the apartment. When he left, the locked the bottom lock from the inside, then the top lock from the outside. The weird thing about our door was that each lock took a different key. When he got home, he realized, much to his dismay, that he didn't have the key to the bottom lock, which he had locked from the inside. He was locked out. He knocked and knocked on the door, rang the doorbell a million times, and finally went around the back of the apartment (we were on the ground floor) to look in our bedroom window. He could see me sleeping away through the holes in the blinds, and knocked time and time again on our window. No response. It was really cold outside, and he finally started to see the futility of his actions. His only option was to go back to the car and wait the night out. He turned on the car and the heater for about 15 minutes, then turned it off and tried to sleep for a little while. He repeated that process all through the night, until 6:00am, when he knew our alarm clock would be going off. It took me a few minutes to finally come to the door, but not as long as he feared.

So, the moral of the story is...don't forget your keys if you are married to me! :) He has still continued to decorate each year, and I absolutely love it. It's better than flowers, candy, or any other present he could possibly buy.

I love you babe---

Happy Valentine's Day