{"id":295,"date":"2014-02-16T18:43:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-16T09:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=295"},"modified":"2014-02-16T18:45:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T09:45:04","slug":"my-valentine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=295","title":{"rendered":"My Valentine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First off, thank you for all the sweet comments and emails about my marathon! It was a big accomplishment to me and I can&#8217;t wait to work harder and improve throughout 2014. I signed up for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spacecoastmarathon.com\">Space Coast Marathon<\/a> November 30th. I might do one before then but if not, it will be my first stand-alone marathon (aka, not running a half marathon the day before!).<\/p>\n<p>My Valentine&#8217;s Day was a little lacking (because Dan&#8217;s still in Japan!) but I&#8217;m having a really great weekend anyway! I went to have dinner at Pro Club (the fancy shmancy Microsoft health club with a classy little restaurant where roomie works) where Kelsey served up an awesome meal and cocktails and even snuck me some dessert. I got chocolates and roses too! She really is the bestest. I saw a bunch of familiar faces from when I had a Pro Club membership also, so it was nice seeing old friends. Much better than going straight home after work!<\/p>\n<p>Saturday (today) I woke up and had a mystery Valentine&#8217;s goodie bag on the porch! I was stumped as to who it was from but then learned it was Kelsey&#8217;s mom. So sweet!! Later I made Valentine cookies for friends. I finally got to use my new Kitchen Aid mixer I got for my birthday last summer. I don&#8217;t know how I lived without this beauty!!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/unnamed-13.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"70%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/unnamed-13.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo unnamed-13.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It poured all day so no distance run for me before my half next weekend. It was a general lazy day of cleaning, laundry and organizing. Tomorrow I&#8217;m going to a hasher&#8217;s house for a crafting party! I&#8217;m excited about that, and I can unload some of my Valentine&#8217;s cookies.<\/p>\n<p>Probably the best gift of all though, was that I found my heart necklace. In 2010, when Dan and I had our first Valentine&#8217;s Day together, he surprised me with a beautiful necklace. We had company in town that weekend so I wasn&#8217;t expecting us to do anything romantic or special. It was a beautiful 1\/6 carat diamond in white gold.<br \/>\nDan and I on Valentine&#8217;s Day 2010. Wearing my new necklace!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s2.photobucket.com\/user\/hardcandy627\/media\/26633_658621175918_3211946_n.jpg.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"90%\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.photobucket.com\/albums\/y35\/hardcandy627\/26633_658621175918_3211946_n.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo 26633_658621175918_3211946_n.jpg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I wore it all the time. Then in January 2013 in Portland OR, I went out for a run with my girl friend Amanda and the clasp broke. Luckily I caught it and tucked it away in my pocket. Once back at my car I put it in a pouch in my purse and brought it back to Japan.<\/p>\n<p>At some point, it went missing. I turned the house upside down multiple times looking for my heart. I felt naked without it! This went on all throughout 2013. When I moved out of the Japan apartment last month, a part of me felt like it was hopeless. I made peace with the fact that as beautiful and expensive as it was, it was still an object and not the only way I can see Dan&#8217;s love; losing it isn&#8217;t the end of the world. I&#8217;ve been in Seattle nearly 3 weeks now and I&#8217;m still sorting through boxes and trying to make everything fit in my closet. I got a fresh delivery of boxes last week and started unpacking clothes, shoes, handbags and other random things. I still subconsciously check little pouches and pockets looking for that necklace, and you wouldn&#8217;t believe my shock when my fingers closed around that little heart!! And the day before Valentine&#8217;s Day!<\/p>\n<p>So this year for Valentine&#8217;s Day, I got Dan&#8217;s heart back and wore it proudly. I&#8217;m beyond happy. That&#8217;s my little tale! Hope everyone had a great Valentine&#8217;s Day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First off, thank you for all the sweet comments and emails about my marathon! It was a big accomplishment to me and I can&#8217;t wait to work harder and improve throughout 2014. I signed up for the Space Coast Marathon November 30th. I might do one before then but if not, it will be my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[114,443,427,45,37,444],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baking","tag-friends-kelsey","tag-holiday","tag-kelsey","tag-seattle","tag-valentines-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}