Valentine’s Day and Snowmageddon
April // February 24th, 2010 // No Comments »
Valentine’s Day has been an eventful and fun-filled “holiday” for us since we started dating. In 2008, just two months into our relationship, we spent the week in Lake Tahoe on vacation with friends. Last year, my brother and his girlfriend (now fiancee) came to Dallas for the weekend and we celebrated by going to see He’s Just Not That Into You and having dinner at Patrizio’s in Highland Park Village. Well, 2010 did not disappoint, thanks to the always-full-of-surprises Texas weather! Apparently Punxatawney Phil was dead-on when he predicted six more weeks of winter. In fact, we had almost as much snow this Valentine’s Day weekend as we did for our first one together.
The forecast early in the week called for a “dusting” of snow, the next day it was up to an inch, and by Tuesday night, the weatherman said it looked like all of the moisture would be gone before the temps dropped below freezing. I’m convinced he stumbled straight over to the news studio from the bar when he made this prediction, because by midnight on Wednesday, we were under a Winter Storm Warning. When I woke up Thursday morning, I peeked out the window to see if the snow had started falling yet, and much to my surprise, not only was it snowing, but there was already a good inch on the ground! By the time I left for school, everything was completely white and it was snowing steadily.
Well, it did not stop, and only became heavier throughout the day. It snowed, and snowed, and snowed some more, and by the time I left school that afternoon, there was so much snow on my car that I could not see out of the front or back windshields – and it was still snowing. Not realizing we were in the midst of a blizzard when I left for school, I did not bring mittens or anything to protect my hands as I was scraping snow off the car. Thankfully, the teacher in the car next to me had a snow scraper and let me borrow it so I didn’t get frostbite! By the time I got home, there were HUGE, beautiful snowflakes falling, but it was just too cold to play in. I decided to make a quick trip to Panera to grab soup for dinner and prepared for an evening indoors. Joe came home with a beautiful bouquet of English roses (our wedding flowers and my absolute favorite…they are GORGEOUS!), built a fire, and we watched TV all evening.
At 11pm, the snow was still falling and once it FINALLY stopped a few hours later, there was a record 12.5 inches of snow on the ground in the metroplex. Friday morning, we bundled up and headed out to play in it. We created what I thought was an impressive snowman that Joe named “Jimmy”, but Jimmy was not good enough. Joe was determined to build the largest snowman in the city…”Jimmy X’s 2″. Well, that didn’t work out so well and he finally gave up. After about an hour of fun, Joe headed off to work and I made the most of my day off from school to do a little shopping.
Friday night, we celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early with dinner at Celebration before making our way over to NorthPark to see the movie Valentine’s Day. We had purchased our tickets earlier in the week, knowing it would be packed on opening night, and we got to the theater an hour early to be sure to get good seats. At 9:45, we were finally let in ten minutes before the movie started. I believe it was approximately 10:05 when I dozed off for the first time, and proceeded to do this off and on for the remainder of the movie. In my opinion, it was AWFUL. So, so ridiculous and a complete waste of two hours and $20. Joe, the harsher movie critic of the two of us, was speechless when we left. I’m pretty sure this put an end to the “dinner followed by a chick-flick” V-Day date tradition we continued from last year, and I will be grounded from picking movies for a while.
We spent Saturday running errands and shopping. Saturday night, we attended an engagement cocktail party for Joe’s cousin, Charlie, and his fiancee in Highland Park, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I had about three too many glasses of wine and champagne and paid the price with a nasty headache Sunday morning. We lounged most of the day before wrapping up the eventful weekend with mass and dinner with Joe’s parents. By Sunday night, most of the snow had melted, but there was still some on the rooftops and grassy areas.
Needless to say, one thing we will always remember about our engagement is the frigid weather. Between our White Christmas, the lake at our apartment complex freezing over for days when the temperatures fell into the single digits with sub-freezing wind chills in early January, and the February blizzard, winter 2009-2010 will not be forgotten…or missed!
