In an attempt to save money, hubby and I agreed to keep this Valentine’s Day cheap.

I came home from work tonight to a box of chocolates (YUM), flowers, a bottle of wine, dinner cooked, and a clean house. (love – and all fairly inexpensive) One thing I love about Bryan is his willingness and ability to clean. Well, except for one thing:

This is how he puts the silverware away

I guess you can’t have everything.

We started to have dinner outside. We prayed. We said thank you for the food and our time together. And while I’ve been mulling and praying about it silently for the last several days, at the end I threw in some guidance to decide what our next step should be. Bryan asked for a sign. Almost immediately, it started to rain. Weird. Except I have NO idea what that might represent – other than rain.

Anyway, back to the gift:

Bryan loves to  play this game with me that I HATE. He makes stupid bets with me (I bet the mail is out there right now) and whoever loses owes the other x number of minutes of “slavery”.

The concept is cute. I hate it mostly because I hate to lose. And because I’m not always a very good sport when he cashes his time in.

So this year I made 4 “tickets”, each representing one hour of slavery and each with 4 hearts representing 15 minutes.

He wasted no time telling me I was not allowed to complain when he decided to use one.

Barely 5 minutes after I gave them to him, he went into the living room and started to make a list.

Oh boy.

Sorry the picture is kinda cruddy. It says 15 minutes brush Chance and give him a pill, 15 minutes trim the plant, 30 minutes shampoo upstairs carpet. Not bad, could be much worse, but there are still 3 hours left.

During dinner I can see the wheels in his head turning. At one point he asked “if you’re mad at me for something, am I allowed to use 15 minutes to send you to the corner?”

Perhaps I should have included rules.

All in all though Bryan loved it, and it didn’t cost me anything.

Except maybe some future dignity.