Valentines Day!

So this was technically mine and Ethan's first Valentines day together. Ethan had made plans for last year but things got complicated and so that didn't happen, however that's another story that we don't need to go into right now! But anyway, for our first Valentine's day as a married couple we had our trip to Italy (as mentioned in the previous post) which was also a joint Christmas present as we thought that would be far better than spending money on bits and pieces that are never that useful. So because Italy was our Valentines trip we decided we wouldn't spend any money on each other as we'd had our fair share of money spent on food etc.

So I thought that February 14th would be an ordinary day where we show just as much love and appreciation as every other day :) However I was wrong...

I came home from the Young Women's activity on Wednesday evening (13th) to find Ethan sat at the desk busying away with something. Before I could even ask what I was banished away to the bedroom until he had finished in about 10 minutes (which actually turned out to be at least half an hour!). So when Ethan was done I questioned him heavily as I had NO idea what he was doing at all! I definitely didn't think it was anything to do with Valentine's day! Unfortunately I am very impatient when it comes to not knowing something, I hate having to wait, which Ethan knows. So to put me out of my curious misery Ethan gave in and came back from the living room with this! (Photo to come)


52 Reasons Why I Love you! Is he not the sweetest thing you've ever seen! Although he realised that he actually only had 30 stickers to write on so it's actually 30 reasons interspersed with cute photos of us! :) Each of the reasons were written in English and Italian as well which was a lot of fun to read! Ethan's reasoning behind deciding to make it was 'I figured seeing as you don't use the ideas from you Pinterest I would' (however this is not true, I regularly use my Pinterest actually, particularly for baking which Ethan knows! :P). Now, had we have decided that we would make something for each other rather than spend any money on Valentine's day I would have made something too, but this was a complete cute surprise! I felt as though I had neglected my scrummy husband a little so I had a think through as I was going to sleep of ideas to make the next day and came up with this!

I had a very limited amount of time (about 40 minutes between coming home from university and leaving to go to the temple for the youth trip) so it really isn't finish like I'd like it to have been, but the thought is there. It's a little coupon/voucher book of funny things such as entitling Ethan to my Creme Egg, an evening of playing Counter Strike and his favourite dinner etc.

I hope you had a beautiful Valentine's day full of lots of love, affection and appreciation, which is hopefully the same as every other day of the year!

P.S pictures coming soon!

L'arte della buona cucina e ancora viva in Italia

My first post, how exciting! Today I shall tell you of our trip to Italy last weekend!

                          Both of these photos are quite funny...

Ethan served his mission in Milan and is studying Italian at university, so he is fluent and has a massive love for Italy, as do I because of it's amazing food! (And it's beauty etc. but the food there is just so good!) I am in the process of learning Italian which is fun, Ethan has a year abroad next September (six months in Spain, 6 months in Italy) so it makes sense to try and learn before I'm living there.

So we stayed in a 4* hotel that was right next to Lake Como in the north of Italy, it was a lovely hotel! (If you're wondering how we managed to afford a 4* hotel, we booked it though Groupon which has worked a dream the two times we have used Groupon). We also had a hire car included in the price, which proved entertaining...

So we arrived at Milan Malpensa and picked up the hire car, a cute little Fiat 500 and everything had gone very smoothly so far. We decided to drive in to Milan and have a walk round etc so we went to go park by a Chapel that Ethan served in while in Milan. However Italians are CRAZY when it comes to driving and parking, they will park anywhere! So there were lots of people parked on the pavement so we thought, if they're doing it lets do it too. So Ethan went to drive up on to the curb (which are about double the height of UK curbs) and our tyre EXPLODED! It was so unexpected! Thankfully a miracle happened... the Church gate, which we were literally about meters away from happened to be open, which it hadn't been when we had driven past a few minutes earlier so we were able to pull into there to work out what had actually happened to our tyre, and it happened to be missionary transfer day so there were lots of missionaries that were in the car park that offered to change the tyre for us! That was a blessing in itself, however we thought we would have to pay quite a lot to the hire car place because of it, but when we spoke to them we didn't have to pay anything and they gave us a new car! (The tyre the missionaries put on was only a temporary one). So that was an entertaining start to the trip, but with all the help we received we felt so blessed by Heavenly Father because it cold have turned out a lot worse! :) 

The missionaries kindly changing the tyre!

The rest of the trip wasn't as eventful thankfully, we enjoyed a LOT of good Italian food and had a really nice time at the lake and driving to the beautiful Italian villages and towns. I learnt some more Italian, I can count up to 1000, tell you the time, days of the week and lots of little phrases like the post title, which means 'the art of good cooking is still alive in Italy'. The time away from Uni work and everything allowed us to reevaluate how we were doing as a married couple. We realised that we need to spend a bit more quality time together, as we had become a little too addicted to the American TV series 24 and spent FAR too much time watching that rather that spending quality time :) (However 24 is amazing and will not be disappearing from our lives, it has now been banished to weekends only and there is a limit on the number of episodes we can watch in a row instead). It was so nice to be able to enjoy the peace and quite of Lake Como, particularly because it isn't tourist season yet.    

My pizza and Ethan's massive calzone!

On the last day we were there (3 days all together) we went to go have lunch with Ethan's Mission President and his wife which was SO lovely! They are just the loveliest couple you have ever met and Sister Wolfgramm made the most delicious food! We thought we would only be able to stay for about half an hour as they are really busy but we were there for 2 hours in the end! They are the type of people who make you think, I want to be like them! They were just so loving and happy! They were so excited to see Ethan again and meet me, it was just SO lovely! It was the perfect end to a perfect little break! :)

President and Sister Wolfgramm and Ethan and I :)