"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, butit 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.

Mountain Biking in Moab

I know, it has been while since I last wrote anything... I tell this amazing story of how I got engaged to the love my life, and then I just left you hanging! So I thought that I would give a little up date on how we are doing thus far. We keep pretty busy throughout the week with school and work, and of course planning our wedding. It is crazy to think that we only have about a year left before we graduate from BYU! Wow, how time flies, I really feel like just yesterday I was a little freshman moving into my dorm room in good ol' Heritage Halls... anwyays, sorry about that trip down memory lane. In addition to enjoying school and being engaged, we are both excited because the weather is starting to warm up and Provo is beginning to thaw out.. I am so excited for warm weather! Seriously, I think most of you remember when it snowed last week, what the heck?! It is March for crying outloud! Before the snow came back though, we were able to take a fun trip downto Moab with some of friends and go camping and mountain biking!

The weather was absolutely perfect while we were there, in fact I think a couple of us got a little bit sunburned. We rode up Klondikes pass and I am not going to lie, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be... but it was all definitely worth it! It took us about three and half hours or so to ride to the top of the mountain and then we got off our bikes and hiked to the very end of the trail; the view from the top was breathtaking. Some of Heavenly Father's creations are so incredible!
The view from here was so amazing!

Look at the awesome shapes and colors of those rocks behind us! Also, look at how cute my fiance is, I am seriously so excited to get married to that boy.. as of today we only have 56 days left!!!!! But who is counting???
After spending about an hour of there we hiked back down and were climbing back onto our bikes and realized how badly our bums were hurting! This was not good, because now we had a long, bump ride back down to mountain to where our car was parked... it was the ultimate "test of manhood" getting back on our bikes to ride down. I am almost certain that my bum did not touch my bike seat the whole way down. Despite our sore bums, the ride down was really fun, we all got to be going at a pretty fast pace, but that quickly changed after Dante hit a bump wrong and flipped over his handle bars! Not to worry though, besides a few scratches and scrapes he was ok...what a tough man! It didn't take neaerly as long to get down the mountain, which I am definitely grateful for because my toosh was seriously starting to ache, but we all made it back to the car safely. We biked about 10 miles all together and it was so fun! We even were able to see some fosssilized dinosaur tracks!

So besides our throbbing bums, some cut up legs and arms, and a serious need for a nap, it was an amazing trip!!!

Mr.& Mrs. Valenzuela

As most of our family and friends know, Dante and I just got engaged this past Friday! At the beginning of the semester we were pretty sure that we were going to be getting married and decided that it was probably a good idea that we meet each others families before we decided to make anything official. In January we flew up to Portland and I was able to introduce Dante to my younger brothers, friends, and big daddy Reed. Luckily enough, he passed the numerous interrogations of my home ward members and family and everyone loved him!
Once we returned from Portland, and he had talked to my dad, I knew that it was free game for him to pop the question! I hoped we would be engaged before I met his family, but as our next three day weekend approached I was still lacking any sort of bling on my left ring finger, I figured he wanted to wait until after I met his family to propose, but little did I know that my sweetheart was already two steps ahead of me.
Late Thursday night, after my basketball game, we began our trek to the sunny weather of El Paso Texas. We laughed and talked and danced to music to help keep us awake until about three o'clock in the morning hit... I seriously thought my bladder was going to explode! So of course I made Dante pull over and find a gas station for me to use the bathroom. So after letting me use the bathroom and strechting our legs a bit, we were back on the road. Not five minutes later though, Dante mentioned that he should've used the bathroom because now he had to go! Luckily there was a rest area only a 1/4 mile away, but to my spurise he totally passed the rest area and just kept drivin! When I asked him why he didn't stop he claimed he didn't like to use rest areas because they were gross and that he would rather just go outside... maybe its a guy thing, but I would much rather use a toliet. Anyways, so we had just barely gotten outside of Moab when we saw a graveled area to the right side of the road and Dante pulled off. He got out really fast and went to the back of the car to find some "toilet paper"... apparently this was going to be a longer pit stop then I thought. After about two minutes of waiting in the car Dante ran back and told me that I HAD to get out of the car to see something in the sky. It was 3:30 in the morning, freezing, and I was way tired, but after a little coaxing I got out of the car and started to scan the sky for whatever it was Dante was trying to show me. It was a clear night and you could see almost every star, the moon was bright and was relecting off of the snow capped mountains, but besides that I really couldn't see what Dante was trying to point to me, and at this point I was really wondering what was going on. I just stood there shivering in his arms until he told me to look down and I saw him holding a round Orange box. I think I felt my heart skip like 4 beats at this point... but I opened the box only to find another box within that one and realized that each box had a different word on it. There were six boxes all together and the message ran together to read: I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY and when I opened the last box there was a HEART shaped pillow with a goreous ring tied to it! I don't know if it was because I was freezing or because I was so suprised, but my hands were shaking so badly that I couldn't even untie the ring from the pillow. But after help from Dante he took my hand, got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of eternity with him... and of course I said yes! I was so excited I couldn't stop smiling or looking at my ring... lets be honest, I still can't stop smiling or looking at my ring. And eventhough it was 4 am I definitely called my mom and roommates to share the amazing news with them!
We are getting married for time and all eternity May 9th, at 1 pm in the Portland, Oregon temple. I love this man so much and can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him!