Valentine's Weekend

I'm a little bit behind on my blogging so this one is a little lengthy. Lots of pictures, though, so I think you'll enjoy it :).
On Friday afternoon, Danielle and I met Mom and Grandma in Sioux Falls at Coffea. Upon Danielle's recommendation, Mom and I both ordered the Latte Mystica. It tasted awesome, and it looked like a masterpiece! We thought the barista dude might've been sending a message through his latte art. Sorry, taken :).

We sat and talked for about an hour before Danielle decided we had better hit the trail.

We took a few picture before departing.

Mom had a little Valentine's package for Danielle and me. Since when do we get presents for Valentine's day? :) Heck, I could get used to this. This is what the contents consisted of.

V-day napkins, dishcloth, heart pin, quote thingy, chocolates, and Women's Health & Runners' World magazines (not pictured).

These babies were delicious! There were also two chocolate covered toffee chocolates included, but they were devoured before I had a chance to take a picture. Haha! Danielle and I lack willpower when it comes to chocolate. I wonder who we got that from? :)

After leaving Sioux Falls, Danielle and I made our way to Sioux Center, IA for an indoor track meet at Dordt College. We only got lost once, which added about 15-20 minutes to our trip. Luckily, Danielle still had plenty of time to warm up.

She ran the 800 in 2:31 and finished second in her heat. Pretty impressive for her first 800 since high school!

We left Sioux Center at about 10:00, and the fog was like pea soup! Needless to say, our drive back was slow. I fell asleep for the second half--sorry Danielle!

The next day it was super snowy in Brookings. That didn't stop us from gettin' out and about, though. Schade Vineyard was having an open house so we went out there for a bit. I think I tried about 10 different wines. Get this, they even had beet wine! It wasn't too bad either :). In addition to all the wine, they also had goodies galore. So Danielle was able to partake in that :).

After the winery, we went to Cover to Cover.

We snapped a picture right outside the store because the snowflakes were huge, and it was so picturesque.

The purpose of going to Cover to Cover was so Danielle could fill out a job application for the summer, but we got a little distracted.

We were really tempted to buy these headbands, but we couldn't justify spending money on ourselves. Danielle suggested we buy them as V-day gifts for each other. Haha!

Afterwards, we made a quick stop at Hy-Vee. Ok, yeah right, grocery shopping is never quick with us, but compared to normal, it was pretty quick :). We got baking supplies for V-day goodies. Then we came home and started right in on things.

We used our new mixer, which worked amazing!

That's red velvet cake batter we were licking off of the beaters. So good!

Danielle made lemon-burst cake cookies.

They were sinfully delicious. Thank goodness lent starts in a couple days :).

I made red velvet cake balls.

I covered them with vanilla almond bark and then drizzled chocolate almond bark over top. The little guys on the left side are chocolate covered raisins (I had a little extra chocolate to use up). :)

Chocolate on chocolate--They were acky! :)

Taber came over on Saturday night and us three just hung out at our apartment--pretty low key, but it was nice.

After church on Sunday, Taber had this waiting for me in the lobby :).

All the girls were jealous :).

That afternoon, Danielle made "Better than Almost Anything Cake". To make us feel a little better, we went to the Wellness Center and Danielle did 6 miles and I did 7. It felt really good after all the baking and taste-testing we had been doing :).

Taber and I went out for supper at Quadalajara's. We stuffed ourselves, but luckily, we were able to eat a piece of Danielle's cake after a couple hours of burrito gestation :).Around 11:00, a bunch of the track team came over to our apartment, and we all watched Dirty Dancing while eating cake. After the movie, Taber and I went downtown to pick up Tiede and Chad from the bars. We came back and played Catch Phrase 'til about 3:30 in the morning. It was a great time. Tiede and Chad were off the wall so it was hilarious just listening to them!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention...my V-day gift to Taber was a container of the Red Velvet Cake Balls (plus a few chocolate-covered raisins), a hackey sack (he loves to hackey), a little sketchpad (he's a doodler), a homemade tissue-paper rose, and a nice heartfelt card :). He liked it so it was a success :).