For the Love of February

February came and went, and so did my mind. It was quite the CRAZY month. Let's start with the 11th.

Since December (I wish I could have had longer...) I decided to take voice lessons. Really it was a fabulous decision, I just should have signed up earlier. I forgot how LONG it's been since I graduated High School, and in those few precious years since then.. I had completely lost a lot of my technical ability to sing. It was really frustrating my first lesson to have her nagging me about my vowels... UGH!!! But, with a lot of hard work it all came back quickly, and to my delight, I was able to prepare an Italian Aria (Pieta Signore) and an Art Song (Silent Noon) to sing for my audition at USU to get into the Music Education program.

The dreaded (and highly anticipated) day finally came. On February 11th, I gave it my best shot and left it ALLLLLL on the floor for the judges to see. ;) My ONLY regret is that I started with my Italian piece. It's 6 pages long, and basically repeats itself twice. I had honestly worked my butt off on contrasting the emotion so that the second time I sang it through would still be interesting. After I was finished, they asked me to sing my second piece but to be aware that they'd cut me short. This, of course, should have been expected. It's just that the second half of my second song was probably my best stuff... emotionally and technically. So I was kind of bummed that I made that mistake. OH well!! I still gave it my all. I had to sight sing, echo... sing.... ha ha, and take a theory test. As I was walking out of the room I literally had my head held high. I was SO proud of myself. Bruce was sneaky and came in to video-tape the audition for me. After I watched it I just started over-analyzing, over-thinking... etc. I was hoping to hear back from them immediately, and after a month of PURE TORTURE, I decided to e-mail them to see what was going on. I found out, I still have to wait til the end of this month to hear if I was accepted or not. Seriously. KILLING ME!! I'm going to post a little "snippet" of my audition video... Be nice... :)



SO!

Having my audition over with was a huge relief and I was able to focus on the upcoming week. Valentine's day.. and DISNEYLAND!! Woo! I was really looking forward to being able to spend V-Day with Bruce this year. We've known each other for 5 YEARS!! (Only dated for 3 of those years...) And we were never able to be together for Valentine's day.... I couldn't wait.

I had spent a lot of money on Christmas, and Bruce's birthday was Jan. 4th. I used the money I got for Christmas to buy his birthday presents...because we're poor...so I didn't want to do anything too expensive for V-Day. I went for simplicity: His favorite candy bars with his favorite movie.

It's funny really when two people come from two completely different families. My parents always give us a Valentine. Bruce's family completely ignores the holiday. So I understood this in advance... and ignoring the advice that men ALWAYS give women (to say what you want to their face, or they're not going to KNOW what you want...) I hinted... when the subject happened to come up... How much I enjoyed seeing the other girls at work get flowers on their birthday... slash.. Valentine's Day... I really honestly thought that Bruce would be thoughtful enough to do something amazing... so I left it at that.

Well, Valentine's Day came. I woke up and Bruce made me breakfast (Which is not out of the norm...) and I went to work. Surprisingly... No surprises... Ha ha I expected to come home to some sort of gift... I didn't even care if it was extraordinary. Well... we ate dinner... The night went on. Finally, I couldn't hold it in any longer and I brought out his gift with a huge smile on my face! I was ok that he didn't do anything BIG for me, but was excited to read the card he got me... Oh wait...

Bruce accepted the gift and expressed his gratitude to me for thinking of him. Then... continued on his way. There was no "I'm so sorry honey, I forgot about you.." or.. "I didn't get you anything! I didn't even think about it!!"

If you're thinking that Bruce really was playing dumb and planned a huge surprise for me, and just made me THINK he forgot... you would be wrong.

I tried not to be upset because really, how stupid is it to be sad that you didn't get a gift? But... it was our FIRST Valentine's Day! I went silent... like I tend to do when I'm mad or sad, but don't want him to know or get his feelings hurt. He didn't even ask what was wrong until like 11:30 pm... right before bed. Where I started crying and told him that it really was ok, I had just gotten my hopes up.

The innocence on his face was real, as was the embarrassment. He truly did not think to get me anything, and did not realize it was important to me... or anyone for that matter! Ha ha ha

The next morning I was completely over it. Bruce had gotten up early to work on some homework and then announced that he was going outside to clean the snow off my car. (This is not unlike him). When I went outside there was a poem taped to the dashboard of my car... It is SO stinking cute.. and hilarious. I'm going to embarrass him by letting you all read it.... *Ahem*

"To My Sweetheart Alyssa"

There's too many reasons why I love you
to ever put into words.
We're two peas in a pod, twins, we're nerds.
You help me understand what is of real value in this life.
Love, compassion, devotion, that's why you are my wife.
Your child-like love is so fun to be near,
I always smile because of how cute
you are when you say, "Oh Dear".
I know I can be myself around you
without being judged.
You always make sure to let me know I am doing something wrong
with a loving nudge....-ed.
You are so affectionate, caring, passionate,
tender, and warm-hearted.
When I was waiting to propose
I was outsmarted.
You have a heart of gold.
I adore your sincerity, and genuine, sweet personality
... I am sold!
Your focus in life is to make others
happy and feel important.
It is a positive influence to everybody
around you and on the world you grant.
You are pure and real
There's nothing about you that's artific..-ial.
You know how to show true love.
That's a gift from up above.
Yes, you are like seven
But, age isn't important in heaven.
You are beautiful, gorgeous, lovely,
radiant, alluring, and stunning.
Being with you makes my heart start running.
You are talented and downright amazing
without measure.
You will forever be my treasure.

I'm pretty sure every time I read that, I can't stop laughing. That is word for word what he wrote, along with the phrasing. LOL! He is truly... talented....

To be fair, we really are super poor. So even if he wanted to do something "grand", I don't know how we would have afforded it. Also, it is in his nature to treat me extra special EVERY DAY! Not just on a holiday. So I really have to give him credit. He is ALWAYS helping me out with chores. Even though I don't need it. (Except for with cooking...) He'll do dishes, make breakfast, do laundry, make the beds, scrub up my puke (we're getting to that...), scrape off my car and MUCH MUCH more.. I love him so. :)

This is becoming a looooong post, but I'll continue.

Disneyland came the next couple days and it was such a NEEDED vacation. Bruce is SO swamped with school and homework that it was really hard to get out of the mindset of doing homework every spare second. He was doing homework in the car, the plane, the bus, the hotel room, and finally... It was time to have fun and forget about life.

Our hotel room was SIMPLY FANTASTIC!!! We stayed at the Paradise Pier Hotel. Disneyland is a SHORT walk. The Hotel is in the resort. :)







This was our room, minus one bed. :)



And THIS was our view... :)

We had an absolute BLAST on this trip. Seriously fantastic. I won't go into too much detail cuz there is SO much to remember. All I can say is, I bought a gorgeous sequence mickey purse, and Bruce and I got Disney shirts for souvenirs. These are just a FEW of my favorite pictures. :)











We just had so much fun with my family and THANKS to Mom and Dad for treating us. We were so glad we could go and spend time with them. It was the perfect vacation!

We flew there early Saturday morning, and spent Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in the parks. We flew home late Tuesday night. So after a day of thrill rides, we had to leave to catch our flight. The last snack I remember eating was mint chocolate popcorn that I bought last minute as we were walking out of the park. When we got to the airport we probably had like 10 minutes to grab food for dinner. We went quickly to McDonald's and got on the plane. Unfortunately there was an abundance of turbulence as we tried to land in stormy Salt Lake City. I SERIOUSLY thought I was going to blow chunks on all the good-natured people around me. Thankfully, I did not. Once we got on solid ground, I thought for sure I was fine. The two-hour car ride home went smoothly, and it was a blessing to walk through our apartment doors to our own bed. It was probably about one in the morning when we finally settled down to sleep. I was still complaining about nausea but thought for sure it'd go away by morning. An hour later, without warning, I was puking over the side of our bed... like 4 HUGE times consecutively. (TMI?) There was no chance of me running to the bathroom. I felt absolutely awful. We were exhausted and Bruce was trying to clean it up, and I kept telling him to go back to bed, and he kept telling me it was ok, and to go clean up myself. I took a shower and we didn't get to bed til 3.

That motion sickness stayed with me for the whole weekend. It was absolutely NUTS!! And because of the vomit-in-the-sinus-age... I got a sinus infection (I guess I could have got it elsewhere, but the doctor had this theory...) and I gave it to Bruce. We just BARELY got over the CRAZINESS of February.. and are in MUCH need of another vacation. ;)

But all is finally back to normal...

Sort of...

More to come.. in March.... :)