David and I generally take a pretty casual attitude towards Valentine’s Day.  It’s a fun holiday to me, but we don’t feel overly obligated to celebrate it every year.  Some years we exchange gifts and some years we don’t, depending on what all we have going on at the time.  I know he loves me to the ends of the earth, whether we’re dining out by candlelight in a four-star restaurant or if we’re sitting on the couch in our pajamas eating Little Caesar’s $5 hot-n-ready pizza, hehe.  Either way, we’re pretty content with it all.

We decided early on not to make a huge event out of Valentine’s Day this year.  Our cruise is just around the corner, and we still have to make decisions (and pay for) whatever shore excursions we decide to try.  We also still need to do some clothes shopping for our trip, especially me!  (I’ll talk about that some more another time.)

(Plus, David ended up giving me a great gift this year without even knowing it.  One of our goals for 2012 was to close out our storage unit and then purge what we could from what was in there in order to fit all of it in our garage.  (We have some shelving units in there with a surprising amount of space.)  I figured it would be quite a bit later in the year before we were able to get all our stuff moved out of the storage unit, but David surprised me by getting all of the boxes out of there and the unit closed out this month!  That is really great.  Now we can save a bit of money and start deleting some of the “stuff” that we have been carrying along with us all this time.  The fact that he was able to get this done so quickly was nice in itself, but when you consider the fact that he also used one of his coveted days off from work only to spend all day in the garage on one of the grossest, coldest, wettest days we’ve had lately….that is love!)

Anyway, regardless of our Valentine plans, or lack thereof, we never miss an opportunity to incorporate one of our favorite SNL “commercials” into life: the commercial about a bear holding a heart.

We saw this commercial years ago and it immediately became part of our lexicon.  It’s so true!  What gift could ever be more original than a bear holding a heart!

A lot of our conversations this time of year are consumed by the topic:

Me: Turn your cart around now.  You’re getting too close to the bin of bears holding hearts.

David: Guess what I saw today?  I saw a bear holding TWO hearts!

Me: CVS is now officially out of bears holding hearts.  I think we need to just give up and close the store down.

David: Walmart is a total zoo right now with people buying junk for Valentine’s day.      Me: Oh gosh, please don’t tell me…..they aren’t out of bears holding hearts ARE THEY????!

So it was not a huge surprise to David when we were discussing what we wanted to do for Valentine’s Day and my answer was this:  “You know….we’ve been together all these Valentine’s Days….years and years now….and you know what?  I’ve never gotten the ONE THING I’ve always wanted.  A bear holding a heart!!”

We laughed together and moved onto other topics, and I truly just about forgot the entire conversation as soon as it was over.

David had to go to Beeville for a week of training last week, and about midway through he called me to say, “Guess what?  I just got you a present!”  I had no idea what in the world he had gotten me, but as soon as he got home, lo and behold:

Hehehe silly!  He was only too proud to confess that he had gotten it at HEB, of all places.  Oh, HEB, the pinnacle of romantic gifts!!

Another life goal of mine: conquered.  I now own a bear holding a heart, hehe.  Good for me!

And now, I am moving on to bigger aspirations.  For Valentine’s day this year CVS had this: a cheap, generic Valentine’s day mug….and inside this mug?  A bear holding a heart!  Bears, hearts, AND mugs.  Stand back world.  I have a new goal!

;)