Valentine's Day Approaches

It's hard to appreciate Valentines' Day hype when you're single, and honestly, the whole commercial thing plus facebook significant-other gushing is pretty tasteless and annoying. But it is good to have traditions. The last two years I think what we did for Valentine's dinner was order pizza... which is really pretty special.

One for sure tradition: Adventures in Odyssey! I have fond memories of listening to all the history episodes- Columbus day, St. Patrick's day, Valentines' day- and I want to play them for the appropriate holidays. The episodes about St. Valentine is called The Last "I do":
http://media.focusonthefamily.com/aio/mp3/AIO_562_The_Last_I_Do.mp3

But commercialism aside, any excuse to do something special- now that I finally have a husband- is welcome. Lacking a babysitter, we're looking forward to a nice dinner at home after Baby M goes to sleep. Shrimp. Soup. Fresh bread. Gelato. Yum.

Ahhh, Neighbors

Our neighbors are moving. I'm trying not to be too gleeful, but I am glad. Someone once told me rather gush-ily how wonderful it was to live in a Christian community(being on Seminary campus). Sure, there are good things about it, but we're still in a bad area of town. Things get stolen all the time, cars get broken in to. And even on a Christian campus not everyone is nice to live with- or next to. These particular neighbors always avoid eye contact, always look unhappy, and have three very loud and active children who they sometimes yell at. And I always thought it was kind of mean that the wife worked and the husband stayed home. So I am glad they are moving. We probably won't even get new neighbors until closer to the next semester, so it really will be a little quieter!

They're not the only ones on our block who are moving. Two doors down is a family who's moving out west. They seem nice but we never talk. Their windows are always in disarray, with the screens half hanging out and the blinds crooked and bent. It always looks like a hurricane must have gone through their house, just from looking at the windows. So I'm guessing it will take maintenance a long time to repair their house for the next occupants!

I just hope our new neighbors aren't Korean! We already have seven Korean families living in our square, and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with being Korean, they tend to stick to their own culture group on campus. There are so many of them here that they don't need to have Americans as friends.