Valentine’s Day came early for us this year. My dad and brother are coming to visit this coming weekend, so we celebrated “Allentine’s Day” last weekend with a wonderful evening out at Harvest Vine, a well-renowned Spanish restaurant near our neighborhood.
While I was writing my Valentine’s Day card to Alex I was thinking back to previous Valentine’s Days that we have shared together and realized that this is our tenth Valentine’s Day together! The first Valentine’s Day we spent together was in 2005, we were 18 years old. The weekend of Valentine’s Day that year we had gone back to Illinois to stay with Alex’s parents. We had been dating for about four months at that point and I had only briefly met his parents once or twice.
Aside from a time or two as a very small child I had never been to Chicago before, so I was excited at the thought of getting to know Alex’s parents better and exploring downtown Chicago. We went downtown to the Chicago Auto Show, walked the Madison Mile, saw the bean in Millennium Park and strolled through Navy Pier. That Saturday night, which I don’t even recall if it was actually Valentine’s Day or not, we went out for dinner at Za Za’s, an Italian restaurant in DeKalb, Alex’s hometown.
It has been fun to think back on our first Valentine’s Day and all of the memories that come with that time in our lives.
Happy Valentine’s Day!