A Valentine's Reintroduction of My Loves!

Happy Valentine's Day, sweet readers & cherished friends!  I interrupt my regular Trip Report Tuesdays to bring you a special Valentine's Day post!  Today's blog is dedicated to my Valentines, my handsome hubby, Jason, and our beautiful daughters, "Princess" and "Little One". 

The Love Story of My Life

Jason and I met in his rock star days. ;)  He was lead guitar and vocals for a band that often played with some friends of mine whose concerts I never missed.  We dated for two and a half months before getting engaged on the 4th of July, 1998 at the age of 19.  When talking wedding dates he said, "November is a good month." and so it is!  We were married four months later, mid-November, and three Novembers after that we welcomed our first baby girl.  Three calendars later, this time in the month of October, we welcomed one more baby girl and our family of four was complete!  Jason and our two precious girlies will forever be my Valentines, the loves of my life!  Today I'd like to introduce (or to those of you who have been around here for a while, re-introduce) them to you.  I'll run with any excuse to gush over my favorite people on the planet!

Jason
My husband, very best friend, partner in all things, great and small, the one who I love the most and best of all!

He lives to glorify God, loves his family, and enjoys motorcycling, water sports, and with an xbox controller in hand, a fun game of Battlefield.  Together we're raising two gaming girls after his own heart.  We realize that our time with them in our home and care is brief, so one of our top priorities is creating family memories that will last a lifetime. To this end, while others may have multiple brand new vehicles and a home twice the size of ours, we instead opt to invest in things like Disney Vacation Club and adventures on our travel wish lists.  The magical memories we enjoy making together we preserve and share on our family YouTube channel, Eat, Sleep, Dis, Repeat, and typically here in my Trip Report Tuesday blogging series.  However, today is no typical Tuesday.  It's Valentine's Day!  So, for those of you interested, I'd love to share a handful of terrific tidbits that have made Jason the man I adore and admire so much!

Let's begin with a talent that God used to bring us together!  As mentioned in our "how we met" story, he is a musician, and an incredibly talented one at that!  He sings, plays guitar, mandolin, trumpet, drums, and can pick up basically any instrument and play!  He's also a skilled writer of music.  Long before writing music for his band, he composed music, writing parts for each instrument of his high school band.  He then conducted their performance of his piece in concert, all at the age of 17!  The girls and I still occasionally watch it on an old VHS tape and I swoon to no end.  While his band days concluded when I was pregnant with our first child, he still enjoys playing with the band at our church.  I love seeing and hearing him use the talent God has blessed him with all to the glory of the Lord!

He grew up in the country.  His first job involved strenuous farm work.  This taught him an excellent work ethic and gave him an understanding of the value of a hard day's work.  Summers that followed he was a lifeguard, which suits his personality perfectly!  I call him my "water boy" as he loves all things water related, jet skiing, boating, swimming, you name it.  It was also a fitting job for him as he's a natural protector.  Our first summer together I witnessed him rescuing a small child who fell from a dock into the lake.  So many reasons he's my hero!

Jason is our family's personal handy man.  He cares for us and our home in every way imaginable!  My man is not afraid to roll up his sleeves, get his hands dirty, and learn new skills as needed.  He does all the upkeep and auto repairs our car needs himself.  If there's a dreaded plumbing issue, he tackles it.  All of this saves us so much money and fills my heart with pride continually!

He's adventurous and loves being active.  His hobbies include riding his motorcycle, water sports, hiking, bicycling, and running, to name a few.  The added benefit to his love of adventure is his desire to add things that are a bit out of the ordinary and often challenging to our vacations. (Read this as:  things I'd never personally plan, but I am always happy I did afterward!)  One example is of this happened during our 2011 couple trip to Disney World.  He surprised me one early morning with a Segway tour in Epcot's World Showcase.  I'm not the most coordinated, so this is not something I would've signed up for.  Surprisingly it's now one of my favorite Disney memories!  He also planned the EPIC mountain hike we completed at Yosemite featured in last week's trip report!  That will likely be one of the best birthdays of my life, all thanks to him!  He's fantastic at adding dashes of fun and adventure to our life.  For those of you who stop by for my typical Trip Report Tuesday posts, those vacations are a beautiful result of his tireless research efforts and endless spreadsheets all in effort to plan us adventures of a lifetime.  Let me tell you, there's no one I'd rather go adventuring with!  Parenting is a pretty wonderful adventure as well.  Now, I'd like to (re)introduce you to our beautiful children...

Princess

The sweet girl who made me a mama!

She's always been one of the easiest, most well behaved children I've ever known!  I honestly can't think of even a handful of times we've had to discipline her in her entire life.  She's always been mature for her age, makes thoughtful decisions, thinking of others before herself at every given opportunity.  She's tenderhearted, caring, and incredibly generous.  I find new reasons to be proud of her every single day of her life!

Princess is incredibly talented in so many areas!  She's a skilled artist.  Patient with all of her creations, she spends hours on each piece, pouring so much care into each pencil stroke and shade.  Her care and attention to detail shines through in all her work!  Like her daddy, she also loves playing music.  She's currently learning piano and guitar.  On holidays she plans concerts for us, which is always a highlight for her proud parents!

A lover of languages, she is learning multiple languages just for the fun of it!  She's growing more proficient in Spanish daily, enjoys playing around with new words in Italian, and is picking up some German as well!

She is very organized, tidy, and loves to plan.  She's a list maker and task tackler!  The only thing we ever really have to get after her about it not parenting her younger sister.  She's going to be a fantastic one, Lord willing, when she has her own children one day ...way, waaay down the road!  I'm loving having her in my care for the time being.  Raising her has been and truly is such a delight!  She adds such brightness to each day that I'm blessed to share with her! 

Little One

She completes our family and adds such joy and unexpected fun to all our days!

This little girl of mine is a bundle of energy, a barrel of laughs, and a heart-melter!  Her nickname comes from her adorable size.  However, make no mistake about it, she may be small but she is mighty and packs quite a big personality!  She's earned a black belt in taekwondo and is often the life of the party!  There's much more than meets the eye with this little sweetie pie!

When she was really small she always aspired to be a toy maker when she grows up, now not even into her teens, she is one!  She's created countless toys for herself and as gifts for neighbors and friends!  She designs her own patterns and hand stitches her own adorable plush characters.  My eyes still light up when I see and hear the reactions from the recipients and their parents when they realize that she made these toys with her own little hands along with much love!

Speaking of her creativity and craftiness, her favorite store in the world is Hobby Lobby.  She could spend all day long there!  Cute side story here, when both of my girls were very little they used to imagine their own "lands".  Little One named hers her first name+glowia.  I'll never forget one day, walking the floral aisle there, she looked up at the flowers towering above her and proclaimed, "This is exactly what ___glowia looks like!"  Don't you wish we could visit this magical land today?  From what I've heard and seen of its likeness, it is incredibly picturesque!

When she's not crafting she enjoys creating behind the monitor of our Mac.  She's quite the graphic artist and designs her own short videos, animating from scratch, bringing them to life with her own voice overs!  She dreams of starting her own YouTube channel.  We've told her she can when she's a bit older.  Meanwhile, she's getting plenty of practice in.  Lots of creativity to come from talented little girl!  Her creations continue to blow me away!

So, there you have it, a little more about the sweet ones you've read so much about here at Chatting Over Chocolate.  I am forever blessed to have them as my family!  

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Wishing you and those dearest to you the Happiest Heart Day!  

Linking up with Andrea today for

... If you're a blogger swinging by from the link party, please be sure to say "Hello" in the comments section below!  I'd love to pop by your post and meet your loves as well!

Hope you'll be back again next Tuesday when my Trip Report Tuesday blogging series resumes with a recap of our beautiful first day in San Francisco! 

Join me in the adventures to come!

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