Valentine's Day 2025

 Valentine's Day 2025 was the best one in years by far!

I wore my heart sweater. It was the perfect day for it!

David (that's my boyfriend; I don't think I've "introduced" him by name on the blog here yet, so now I have!) made me this big heart-shaped cookie that said "Bee mine" and dropped it off in the morning before he went to work. The "bee" is bee-cause (ha ha) he does beekeeping as a hobby. He's also a good baker, and this cookie was delicious! It was such a sweet (literally) gift.

He brought me a dozen roses too. It's so fun to having a great boyfriend and romance in my life again. That's the main reason why it was the best Valentine's Day in years.

That afternoon I went to a delicious Galentine's lunch at Meredith's.

My ministering sisters Jenny and Anna gave me this beautiful bouquet of flowers and some treats.

There were chocolate caramel owls! My friends know me well!

And finally, that evening I went over to my friend Vera's house with our friend Jen for a Galentine's dinner with the three of us and two of Vera's kids. 

Vera's husband is my good friend Kevin from high school (we were in the same ward growing up), and her son from her first marriage is one of John's best friends. Vera, Jen, and I got together on V-Day for dinner because Kevin was traveling, I'm still single (these plans had been made before David really came into my life), and Jen is almost divorced. All three of us have been divorced, so we are our own special little tribe.

That's heart-shaped pasta in case you couldn't tell!

Between David and good friends, and literally from morning to afternoon to evening, it was a lovely Valentine's Day that was full of love, affection, friendship, and things and people who I love. 💖

The Month of Love

 February is known as the month of love, and for me, it really was the month of love! Without oversharing, I went on a date with someone in January, it went well, and it has continued to go well after that. February was a very distracting time for me! But it was all good, and so nice after a nearly complete lack of romance and affection in my life for the last six years. I was very happy. A little bewildered and unfocused, but happy!

These pictures are a combination of random Valentine's-type of things (mostly from around the house), and one or two "new boyfriend things" scattered in (but there are many things I'm leaving out; I need to have some discretion even though I write my life out for all to see on this blog 😅). I'll do a separate post tomorrow about Valentine's Day.

Cute V-Day owls that I got years ago at Kohl's

It's fun to be able to use these "Date Night" stickers in my planner again. It's been awhile!

Chocolate mousse cake is one of my favorite desserts. This one is from Trader Joe's.

This applies to more than just romantic love, but it definitely applies there, too.

A big brownie heart that my mom made

Que romantica! Stargazing is lovely.

Tomorrow: Valentine's Day and Galentine's Day!

Goodbye to Guatemala!

 This is my final Guatemala post, at least for this trip. I hope there will be another one in the future! It was an amazing trip, and I loved it so much. It was even worth the two weeks of digestive upset that I experienced when I came back!

The clouds around the volcano that afternoon were misty and cool to look at.

This was a nice swimming hole, though I did not indulge.

This cute dog cuddled up nearby on a towel. 

We went in these natural hot springs that were fed by veins from the volcano. There really were some very hot spots. I'm a big fan of warm baths and hot tubs, so I loved it!

This batch of pictures is from the morning we left to return home.

I would have much preferred to be back out on the water paddleboarding while watching the sun come up rather than seeing it come up as I was preparing to leave!

I made a really good friend named Kelli who lives a couple hours away from me in Massachusetts. She felt like a kindred spirit. We hit it off from the first day and our rooms ended up being right across from each other. I was so grateful to have met her. We had a lot of fun talking and hanging out together all week. We've stayed in touch, and I hope we'll get together again in the future. Probably in Massachusetts, not Guatemala. 😄

This guy who worked at the retreat center asked to take a picture with us.

This was down at the dock after going down those hundreds of steps for the last time, waiting to get on the boat that would take us to the vans that would take us on the two-hour winding drive to the airport.

Nancy is a professor and I liked her a lot. As I've said in previous posts, she's my model for aging well.

I liked Linda too, another good example of aging beautifully. She's a yoga teacher. 

I liked everyone! We were a good group.

A cool wall of stickers at the Guatemala City airport before going through security.

I'm really glad that I decided last summer to do this trip. As the first picture in this post alludes to, it took me out of my comfort zone, and I loved it so much. I feel that it was a well-deserved reward for the difficult years I went through from 2018-2023 with the divorce and everything related to it. I emerged from those hard times better and stronger than ever before. I'm thankful for the beautiful, faith-promoting things that help us to enjoy and appreciate life despite the difficulties that come with it. They are blessings and reminders of God's constant love and mindfulness of us. That is what Guatemala meant to me. 💛

Learning to Weave in Guatemala

 One of the cultural excursions I did in Guatemala was to go to a cooperative employed by local women who teach skills like weaving, cooking, and jewelry making, and they also make things to sell in the shop there (I bought a pretty bracelet). It was an enjoyable experience, even though I wasn't very good at weaving. 😅 But I think with time and practice, it would be something I'd enjoy. It really helped me to recognize and appreciate a lot more how much work and effort goes into handmade goods.

The weaving room

Linda and I were paired up with the same weaving worker woman (ah, the alliteration!) because we had chosen the same colors and pattern for our scarf.

Here I am trying to figure out how to weave. 😆

This sweet young woman patiently helped me many times with the same thing I couldn't get right, over and over again!

I'm just not the best at arts and crafts! 😂

My scarf was coming along! One of the weaving women may or may not have had to finish it for me. 

P.S. The headband I'm wearing is a handwoven one that I bought at a market earlier in the week! And the bracelet is the one I mentioned earlier, which I bought at their shop just before the weaving lesson.

The finished product! 

After we were done weaving, we went upstairs to a lovely open-air cafe where we enjoyed a delicious lunch cooked by some of the people in our group who had chosen to do a cooking lesson. It was a lovely lunch and our last one in Guatemala (we left the next morning).

The fruit drinks in Guatemala were refreshing and so tasty!

This chicken dish was so good!

I'd never had a rose made out of a tomato. Very nice!

The surrounding scenery from up on the cafe balcony was a mix of beauty and relative poverty, but I have to say that the people there seem happy and content. This is their way of life, and they seem to be satisfied with it. I know I'm massively overgeneralizing, but that was my impression after spending a week there. And those who live around Lake Atitlan live in such beautiful natural surroundings! In many ways, they are blessed with natural beauty and a simpler, less complicated lifestyle.

While learning to weave wasn't among my top favorite things from my trip, I definitely valued the experience and appreciated what I learned, along with the pretty handwoven scarf that I went home with!