Romance, then and now

Todd has always been a romantic. I used to think it was so embarrassing, though it was always sweet and tasteful. Trouble was he was playing to me, a serious unromantic. 

Sometimes his romance was showing up at my basketball games with roses. Other times it was bringing me Starburst candy at work. Still other times it was planning out a birthday scavenger hunt or picking up Olive Garden dinners and taking them to the park for a quiet picnic or drawing me cartoons or comic strips of us and leaving them in places for me to find :) 

Of course, this says nothing of our countless walks or trips to Sonic for slushes (he actually proposed on one of our many Sonic dates). Not every date can be original and extravagant. But he tried to do things that I would find special or fun, and he was good at it. 

I might have thought his romantic side was silly sometimes, but looking back, it was so incredibly sweet. I wouldn’t want it any other way. 

Fast forward oh, say, three years. He hasn’t surprised me with an Olive Garden picnic in ages. I haven’t had a single birthday scavenger hunt since I turned 17, and who knows when I found the last cartoon drawing. 

But despite what appears to be a serious decline, he’s still the most romantic thing! Let me just tell you…

Now instead of asking me out on fancy dates he says things like, “why don’t you just leave the dishes? I’ll do them for you tomorrow.” Now he doesn’t stop by work with candy; instead he buys me a mister system to hook up to the patio awning because y’all, it’s HOT in my air condition-less South African home and this sweaty prego is about to keel over! 

As my life has changed, so has my perspective on romance. I still enjoy going out to dinner or a movie, and we still do those things often. But who knew that I’d think him volunteering to do the chores was on par with buying me pearls? Who would have guessed that I’d consider his installing a glorified sprinkler system heroic and heart-throbby?  

I might get fewer roses these days, but that’s really a credit to him. He knows me well enough to know that I’ve changed. And he’s changed his style so I can keep thinking he’s super romantic. That alone is pretty sweet, right? 

Oh, in case you weren’t getting a visual in your mind of what a mister system is, here's a picture of the box. I would have taken one of our own gloriously cool and refreshing set-up, but it's really hard to get a good picture of mist. Ahhh...so nice :) 

And here's Mr. Romantic himself ❤︎