We’ve always felt, Andy and I, that we should live each day to its fullest. (That’s partially why we started our journey to begin with.) And while this is a beautiful thought, it doesn’t often happen. The other aspects of life get in the way.

But when we are able, or when we are sure to make the time, we like to experience new things together, to explore.

So, we make every excuse we can to celebrate life with one another. And while we both feel Valentine’s Day is often nothing more than a commercialized holiday invented by Hallmark, we still use it as an excuse to celebrate our relationship, the way so many other couples do.

We’ll go the traditional route, flowers and candy, because I still enjoy receiving the little things.

I thought it was pretty adorable that he bought me hyacinths, as well as cut flowers. Our house in St. Paul was on Hyacinth Avenue, so the thought behind it was cute. Plus, now they’re blooming and our house smells amazing.

But we like to do things a little differently, too.

We don’t like to battle the crowds, so we made a nice dinner together at home. And since V-day landed on a Thursday, we decided to set aside Saturday as our V-Day Date Day.

We woke up earlier than normal to head up to the Wildlife Science Center. I wanted to go on their morning tour. When we got there, we found out they were hosting a Winter Festival and were not doing normal tours. Since we’d driven quite a way, we decided to check it out anyway.

We gave ourselves an unguided tour of the property.

We found out there are more than 100 wolves on the property — that’s a lot of wolves! They housed North American gray wolves, Mexican gray wolves, and red wolves (plus some wyotes and other crosses).  I had never seen a red wolf before, so that was interesting.

There were other animals there, too.

The bears were not out, and we didn’t see the mountain lions. I’d really like to go back when they are doing normal tours, and I wish I’d paid closer attention to their website when I was looking at tour times. It would’ve been nice to have everything explained to us — what they do there, why the animals are there, etc. We spoke with a woman for a little while, but we’d like to learn more.

Since they were doing a winter festival, there were dogsleds going. And we decided this would be a fun thing to try out!

It was pretty thrilling when we got going, but we did get dumped in the snow once. I’d love to try it in northern Minnesota with a larger team of dogs.

We eventually said our goodbyes.

Then we headed to Forest Lake Pets to check out what they had going on. We stopped off for lunch, and we hit up a new brewery.

Our day wasn’t over yet! We headed to a different fish store closer to home.

And this is where we found our new tank additions, who we named Bic, Blue, and Liger.

After a busy day, we topped it off with a sunset walk on the lake with the dogs.

And the next day, yesterday, we were back at it again, busy doing fun things with our weekend.

We found some ski boots for sale online that fit me (from a girl I graduated with — it was fun to see her), and headed out to the lake.

After a busy weekend, we were exhausted from all the fun.

We’re making some changes coming up, and I’m looking forward to more fun in the future!