Valentine’s Day 2003
September 18, 2009
Rob and I have known each other for almost 9 years now. Today I reminisce the day he went all out, in an attempt (which he TOTALLY succeeded) to get my attention, I shall say, and to show that he didn’t just like me as a friend. Come to think of it, I now wonder why I haven’t written this post ages ago. Better late than never I suppose.
Okay…it’s story time! :dream:
In 2003, I was in my second semester of the first year of university. A few days before Valentine’s Day, I received messages from Rob asking me if I was going to be home on Friday. Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday that year and I didn’t have class on Fridays for that semester so I always went home on Thursday nights.Â
We were “friends” at the time, albeit we were already flirting with each other a bit. ;))
Okay, “a bit” may be an understatement.
I enjoyed chatting with him online. I found him to be funny and sweet. I’m pretty sure at the time sparks were flying all over cyberspace between the two of us. So Rob and I made plans to spend some time chatting on Valentine’s Day. He told me he had planned something for me involving a series of ecards so I should be sitting in front of the computer to receive them right away. I found that interesting so I promised him I would be home all day.
I was never prepared for the events that were to happen on that fateful day.
At about 8.30am the Friday of Valentine’s Day, I was awaken from deep slumber by a phone call from the courier services. Apparently they were going to deliver something to the house. I was confused, who would send me a package? Fifteen or so minutes later, I hear a honk outside the house.
There was a van and a man stepped out of the van with a bouquet of roses. Wait a minute, I thought. That’s the courier man? Holy crap, those are a lot of roses! I sign for the flowers, trying to figure out who they were from and at the same time a series of “OHMYGOD!” went through my head.
There was a card. It said:
 “Shin, you are a wonderful girl, with beautiful eyes and a lovely voice. You are a blessing to this world and a miracle in my life. I adore you sunshine.”
My heart melted for a split second but excitement overtook me. Never in my life have I received flowers of that magnitude! I rushed up to my room, to the laptop and started messaging Rob like crazy. My messages consisted of mostly “OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!”
On the other side of the world (I was later told), Rob was talking with his friend over dinner when his phone started to beep and vibrate like crazy. He flipped open his phone to find messages from me going absolutely insane and he smiled with pure satisfaction. His friend was laughing at the rate of messages that were coming in to his phone. After we exchanged messages back and forth for a bit (I was the one sending most of the messages) I calmed down a little bit.
Less than an hour after the roses arrived, I hear another honk outside. I rushed to see who it was and again there was van! A man stepped out of the car with a package in hand asking for me. Shocked, I sign for the package and went into the house. The sender; Rob! I opened the package to find two toy ladybugs facing each other, touching at the lips. My first instinct was to pull both apart with my hands. A string formed between them as I pull them further apart.
I let go and suddenly, smooching sounds! The ladybugs started moving towards each other, all the while making smooching sounds, and saying “I love you”. It went like this; “*kiss*kiss*kiss* I love you *kiss*kiss*kiss* I love you” over and over again until their lips touched. I was laughing so hard at this point because it was just the cutest thing ever.
I rushed back upstairs once more and messaged Rob like crazy, again. At this rate his phone would’ve exploded from the heat of the vibrations, if that gives you some indication of how many messages I sent him. The messages included, “How did you do it???”, “When did you plan all this???”, “You are a sneaky monkey!”, “OMG!!!! You are sneaky!!!”, “How the heck did you plan all this???” etc. I’m sure you get the picture.
He then messaged me back, saying that’s about it and I believed him!
Little did I know. 😐
At about 3pm, while we were already chatting online, someone was honking outside. Another van! Delivery man handed me another package and I rushed back to my laptop so fast, even I was amazed. I haven’t even opened the package at this point and I was excitedly screaming to Rob, calling him a sneaky monkey. He asked me to open the package first. Lo and behold, looking up at me from the box was a stuffed monkey. I laughed.
Then I noticed a card. I opened it up and read it.
“Thank you for being a part of my life. No one has touched my life as you have. Your kindness inspired me to believe in wonderful things. My spirit cherishes you in all ways. Monkey loves you.”
He loves me.
My heart melted.
No guy has ever said that to me (Well, there was a guy who said “I love you” to me in high school but I think he said it just to impress me or something so it doesn’t count) and meant it. Somehow I knew he meant it and I believed him with all my heart.
Valentine’s Day 2003 was one of the best days of my life.
Thank you for being the best part of my life Robbie.
I’ve never been happier.
I love you 😡 :-*
Chicago Botanic Garden
June 17, 2009
Visiting the Chicago Botanic Garden during the summer was a lot different compared to the winter time. Seeing as I went crazy taking pictures there during the winter time, I thought it would be a great idea to visit again during summer when flowers are blooming and everything is purty. Don’t get me wrong the Chicago Botanic Garden was beautiful in the winter time but I HAD to see it during the warm weather.
We were supposed to borrow Rob’s brother’s DSLR but at the last minute something came up so we had to make do with the two digital cameras. But hey, that didn’t stop me. I went absolutely INSANE taking pictures of that place. It was a totally different view altogether and I loved it. I can’t wait to go back there again, perhaps during fall. 😀
I sorted through the pictures I took and I think it’s better I break up the post about the garden into two. I think overall there are around 100 pictures. This post should have about 50 or so pictures. Maybe it’s best you go pee or something first.
All you gotta do is pay an entrance and parking fee and you could stay however long you wanted. We spent over 8 hours there and still couldn’t finish exploring the place. It was HUGE. Anyway I’m just going to let the pictures do most of the talking.
Rob taking a picture of me taking a picture of him
Grapes! I was so tempted to ask Rob to pluck me some to eat.
Rainbow formed in the pond/lake whatever you want to call it, the wonders of nature.
I love the sunflowers. They were ALL over the place. (Well DUH it was summer after all.)
This is next picture is my favourite picture and one I am very proud of. I had to be very quiet and still while taking it. I have to say it came out really nice (albeit after a lot of tries ) considering it was taken with just a point-and-shoot digital camera.
Now moving on to the lilies. Oh the beautiful lilies….and they smell so GOOD!
Water lilies in the pond…
More pictures
Grasshopper staring back at me
In the midst of walking around going crazy taking pictures, we took a turn somewhere and came upon bushes with cute little maroon colored flowers.
Then I saw this sign..
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I started rubbing the leaves and flowers and sniffing my fingers. It’s true. They do smell like chocolate! I was hungry at the time and the smell made me crave chocolates so much. So what did I do? I rubbed more and sniffed my fingers like some disgusting socio-path.
Rob tried to coax me to keep moving but I was just insanely into sniffing my fingers. Eventually, we moved on and came across some ducks and started snapping pictures.
Then we saw this sculpture thing by the pond where the ducks were hanging out. Apparently I decided to “be” a flapping duck…
See any similarities? QUACK!
Part 2 coming up soon. I need time to resize and upload another batch of 50.