Life as we know it... and loving it!

Gosh, I really need to set a time aside each month to update our blog... you know kind of like writing in your journal?? ANYWAYS..... Just to update on our currnet status is life.... Dante and I are both still at BYU and really are enjoying our time here =) We spend a lot of our time apart between school and work, so we try to take advantage of the time we do have together!! I have been trying to find new recipes lately, and Dante acutally found one on his friend's blog for french bread pizza!!! It was so easy to make and it was yummy! All it took was:

- A loaf of French Bread

- Spagetti Sauce with some added Italian seasoning

- Shredded pepper jack cheese

- Pepperoni

- and whatever else you want on top!!!

- cook at 375 for about 8-10 mins

On a random note, one night we decided to have omlets for dinner and this is how it turned out... looking like the states! hahaha

Anyways... a couple of weeks ago Dante and I had our co-ed basketball game and it was getting pretty competitive... and I ended up getting elbowed in the mouth which split my lip almost the whole way through and chipped my tooth!

I didn't want to pay the fee at the ER since BYU insurance doens't cover very much there... so lame by the way, if the BYU health center is going to close at 6pm, they should have a better policy.. Seriously... do they think that people don't get hurt after their closing hours?!?!?! anways, so I went and played in my flag football game... which we won by 5 touchdowns =), went home at showered and was in bed and finally decided that since the cut was on my face that I should probably bite the bullet and go to the ER... we ended up staying there until about 2 am and I come home with a fat lip and 4 stitches.. it was a very exciting adventure. I just want to give a shout out to my amazing husband for putting up with my stubborness and staying with me in the ER all night when I finally decided to go, I love you baby.

4 days after the injury Dante and I flew home for Mitchells farewell talk!! I can't believe that he leaves TOMORROW to go to Brazil... he is sooooo ready though, and he did an amazing job on his talk. He is going to be an amazing missionary, I am really looking forward to his upcoming letters =) We loved going home!! It consisted of a lot of naps, some amazing eating thanks to my mom's amazing cooking, we went to Devon's football game on Friday night, and Dylans football game on Sautrday night. It was a blast and we both wished that we could've stayed longer!! It was really hard to try to get back into the swing of things after we came home!

In the spirit of Halloween I had a work party which helped, and we carved pumpkins!! It was really fun.. for some reason we have carved a lot of pumpkins this year, but I think our latest one is the one I like the most!! It is of Jack the pumpking king from the Nightmare Before Christmas !!

After the work party we came home and studied for awhile and then at 1 am we went to the parking lot across from the football stadium and camped out for the ESPN college game day that came to Provo!! In case you were wondering... yes it was raining while we set up our tent, yes it was freeeeeezing (despite what Dante says), yes it was loud... ALL NIGHT LONG, and yes we did get in line early enough to actually get inside the barriers for the college game day set up! If we wouldn't have gotten in I probably would've counted this as one of our worst experiences together... but since we were able to make it in we did have a lot of fun despite being sleep deprived and cold!! PS... please excuse how gross I look in these pictures... but given the circumstances I guess that was about as good as it was going to get!! However, we both are now sick... haha but how often is EPSN college game day goign to come to Provo?! GO COUGS!!!

Our latest adventures

I know, I am lame.. it has been over a MONTH since I last blogged... totally unexceptable. I guess I will just pick up where I left off. Dante and I left Maryland the 22nd of August, but before we left we did get to do a couple of fun things...

We went to a Red Sox game against the Orioles and it was a blast.. especially since the Red Sox won... Dante would NOT have been happy if they would have lost!

The game was in downtown Baltimore and it was soooooo crowded!! After the game we walked around the harbor area and went to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.. I am pretty sure they make the best milkshakes ever there... anyways...

We also decided to one day do a puzzle... seems simple enough, right?? Wrongo bongo...

So you may be asking why we decided to do this puzzle... I will admit that it is kind of ghetto, and I really have no idea why we picked this one because it is pretty ugly..but we were up for the challenge...

This is pretty much how our kitchen table looked for a couple weeks...and we found a couple of pieces in there that were the EXACT same puzzle piece!! So needless to say we weren't able to finish our ghetto fab puzzle before we left, but we were both felt find about not finishing it! One thing we were very excited about though was the day we packed up our car and drove all the way back to Utah! We tried to organize our car in an orderly fashion...









but lets be hoenst, between all of mine and Dantes stuff ( he is pretty high maintnance... just kidding sweetie), the car was pack pretty tightly, but we were happy to be heading back to Provo!





However.. after being in the car for 12 hours and having to drive 24more hours we slowly began to lose our enthusiasum for being in the car. We drove from Baltimore to Chicago and stayed the night there and woke up for the 24 hour drive ahead of us. I took a picture on our GPS of when were suppose to be arriving in Utah....

I took this picture at 9:30 in the morning after sleeping in Chicago... if you look closely in the bottom left hand corner it says that will will arrive in utah.. 7:19 AM, the next day. ew.





We did have some movies that we brought with us that we watched on our lap top which made the trip go by a lot faster because it was a VERY boring drive...this is basically what we looked at the WHOLE DRIVE HOME......















Corn fields and bug guts.... talk about boring.






















We ended up driving the whole rest of the 24 hours striaght through!! We stopped for gas at about 4:00am and played frisbee for awhile, and then at about 5:30 am decided to take a nap before we both got too tired to drive. We ended up pulling into our drive way at about 10:30 in the morning... it was AWESOME getting out of the car and unloading everything into our new duplex =)

We are both in school right now and are having a blast being here at BYU!!! I will admit since we have been married we do go to bed before 11:30 every night, but that is definitely a new habit in my life that I don't mind having. =)

"Daycations"

Since Dante has to work Monday through Saturday ALL DAY LONG, we don't really have a huge window of space to go do things together.... so we have really been trying to take advantage of our time together by taking a "daycation" on Sundays since that is Dante's only day off! Recently we went and visited the National history museum in Washington DC, and it was really cool! They had a whole exhibit dedicated to Abe Lincoln, and another of all of the major wars our country has gone through.... it was really fun to walk through!

Last weekend we also had the chance to go up to New York city with some of our friends, and it was a blast!! After figuring out how to work the subway system, we made it to ground zero, the statue of liberty, the NBA store (Dante loved it there.. and lets be honest, so did I!) and Times Square! Since we were only limited to a being there for a day we didn't get to see everything that we wanted to, but it was still a blast!! It is so fun being married and being able to do all of these things with my cute husband =)

Impulsive decision???? I think so!

A couple of months before I got married I really wanted to cut my hair, but of course I didn't so I could have long blonde locks to go along with my beautiful wedding dress. However, lately these impulses to cut my hair have been slowly re-entering my train of thought... Yesterday my friend showed me a cut she thought would look cute on me and without thinking about it twice I called up a hair salon and schedulled an appointment to chop all of my hair off!! Did I think about it all day today? Yes. Did I feel like I was going to throw up when I sat down in the salon chair? Yes. Do I love my new hair cut? YES YES YES!!!! Have I told Dante that I was cutting my hair? NO, we'll if he is suprised when he gets home in about an hour! It will definitely be something to get used to... but it is a fun change and I am sure Dante won't mind the lack of my long blonde hair all over everything now.

BEFORE

AFTER

July 4th in DC

Ok, I know that this a little bit late, but it is definitely still worthy of blogging about! The guys only had to work a half day on the 4th of July, so me and one of the other wives packed up snacks and games and rode the metro to Washington DC to save spots watch the fireworks! We left at 3:30 and got there by 5:30 and it was already packed with people. There were a bunch of festivities going on and music playing and it was really fun. So we hiked through all the crowds of people over to the lawn in front of the Washington Monument and layed out blankets and then waited... and waited... and waited some more until Dante and some other guys that he works with showed up just in time to see the firework show! It was truely amazing to be at our nations captiol celebrating out country's independence day. They put on an amazing firework show right behind the Lincoln Memorial, so we had prime seating! The only downer to the night was how long it took us to get home... and riding the metro on the way back was a disaster. We were all smashed together
like a can of sardins, but it was totally worth it!

Baltimore!

Can I just say that I LOVE summer! There are so many fun things to do and it is warm and it is so nice to just have a break from school and all the snow of Utah. As most of you know Dante and I moved all the way out to Baltimore for the summer and it has definitely been an adventure! We had a couple day honeymoon out in Lincoln city, drove to Texas afterward for the open house there, and then drove all the way out to Maryland. We spend apporximatley a whole week in a car driving coast to coast... not something I would recommend to anyone! Baltimore is pretty cool though, it actually reminds me a lot of Oregon in how green it is here... but it is like 20 times more humid here, but we like it for the most part. We are also living in such nice apartments right now, they are brand new with a washer and dryer, a hugh master bedroom, granite counter tops, and a swimming pool and weight room. It's a really nice set up, but I think that we will have a little bit of a wake up call when we head back to Provo and realize that we won't be living like royalty anymore!

Dante is selling alarm systems for Platinum secruity Mon-Sat 12-10pm, so it is a pretty demanding schedule.. but since we have been out here we have been able to do some really fun things. One of our first weekends out here we went to Gettysburg! It was so amazing to be able to see the battlefields and cemetary in person after learning so much about all of this in school.

The following weekend we went down to the harbor area of Baltimore and it is such a fun area! There was an old power plant there that they had turned into a ESPN Zone (Dante loved that part), a Hard Rock Cafe, and other fun restaurants and stores right a long the dock. We rented a paddle boat and were able to float around the Marine Museum they had right here in the harbor which was pretty neat, and I finally got to touch the Atlantic ocean! They also have a huge aquarium there that we are both looking forward to going to some day soon =) As we were leaving and walking to our car we also walked past a Holacuast Memorial. The statue in the middle was kind of creepy, but overall it was a pretty sweet memorial!

This past weekend we decided to make the trek out to Washington DC, and it was totally worth it! I absolutley loved the area out there. There is soooo much to do, you could spend a whole week there and have something to do every day! We started out in the Air and Space museum at the Smithsonian and it was way cool... the museum showed how airplanes worked, and the development of space shuttles like Apollo 13. After hanging out there for awhile we walked up to the Capitol building and it was so amazing! It felt really surreal to be there. The buidling was beautiful though, and on top of the building is a statue of Lady Liberty. We then walked to the Washtington Monument, and the walk there was soo cool. All of the building have the most amazing architecture! However, when we got to the Washington Monument it was even more incredible, not only because of the Washington Monument, but because from there you could see the Capitol in one direciton, the World War II memorial/Lincoln Mermorial in another direction, and the White House in another direction. Talk about AWESOME!!! After we walked around the Washington Monument we walked through the World War II memorial to the Lincold memorial and it was seriously my favorite part of the day. Honest Abe was such an inspiring man, and it was such a neat opportunity to be able to visit his memorial.

Like I said though, you could spend a whole week there and

















have plenty of things to do, and by the time we were done at the Lincoln Memorial it was almsot ten, so we just drove by the white house, but I am sure we'l be back there soon enough to acutally walk by it!

Time to UPDATE!!

Holy cow, it has been quite some time since I last got on here... so I am just going to give ya a general update on the major things that have happened the past couple of months.
In March we had our friend Marybeth take our engagement pictures!! It was sooooo fun, and marybeth did an AMAZING job. We took them at the Riverwoods and had a blast taking them.. even though Dante said he didn't really enjoy taking pictures for an hour, I know deep down that he was loving it.. I mean who doesn't love having pictures taken on themselves???

April was a craZZy month to say the least... between studying like mad for upcoming finals, planning a wedding, and trying to work out all the time to shed those extra pounds before the big day, every day was a whirl wind. We were both definitely happy the day finals ended allowing us to spend more time together before I left to Oregon to finish up things while Dante stayed in Utah and worked before we got married. Needless to say, I was glad when the month of April was over!!! I don't think I would've made it if I didn't have my mom helping me as much as she did, thanks momma Fawnbug, I love you!!

When May hit it was pretty exciting because it was crunch time.. we were getting married!! Those last two weeks at home were so fun spending some time with the family before all the company started arriving. Most of my family and a lot of Dante's family were able to come up for the wedding, and let me tell you, it was a party! A bunch of my cute roommates came up and helped out a ton. The Tuesday before we got married I was able to go through the temple for the firs time and it was AMAZING. I am so grateful for how close I have lived to a temple for the most part of my life, what a blessing. On Friday Rachael Wight took us downtown with me in my wedding dress and Dante in his tux and we took so many fun pictures! Since this was the day before our wedding, my roommies came a long and made sure that my dress didn't touch anything dirty (which ps, Katie, my wonderful sister in law let me wear her dress.. it was beautiful and so fun to wear it, thanks KT).. that seemed like a pretty difficult task in downtown Portland, but they did a great job! We also had the wedding dinner on Friday, and it went really well.. not only was the food was delicious, but it was so fun to have all of our close friends and family in one room to share this exciting time in our lives. Later that night my friends that were there threw me a bacholorette party which consisted of eating Bazookies (a fried cookie dough, ice cream and caramel sauce piece of heaven) watching Grey's Anatomy and staying up way to late.. I did have a little freak out moment that night, but after talking with my parents for a bit they helped calm my nerves, I love my mom and dad.. they are the best!
Despite staying up for a large portion of the night, I woke up at 6:45a.m. took a shower and started getting ready for the big day! My lovely friend Lauren did my hair and make up and she did a great job! Within three hours and 87 bobbypins later I was ready to go! Dante and I
showed up at the temple an hour early to take pictures with the photographer, got married at one, took more pictures with family afterwards and headed home for awhile. It all was a blur now that I think back to it... we came home for about an hour after being at the temple and ate some food and touched up a little bit and headed to the stake center for the reception. Although we had to stand in a line for a couple of hours, it was really fun. So many of my close friends that I have grown up with were able to come and meet my new husband and wish us congratulations. After standing in the line we cut the cake, danced our dance together, threw the bouquet and garder, had a dance party and ate some of the fun food that was out there and at about 10:00 we took off to begin our new life together! As we walked out of the stake center to leave everyone was holding sparklers and cheering as we left.. it was sooo fun! Of course we were a bit delayed when we got to the car because our friends had decorated it... but May 9th was the happeist day of my life! I love Dante so much and am so glad that we are married now =) He is such an amazing man and I am so excited to spend my forever with him.