April!!

Well, April is winding down and that means our wedding is creeping closer.  Though if you ask some people it is not so much creeping as racing closer like a runaway freight train.  We're making our way through our list of things that need to happen before this summer and getting closer to finishing up the school year as well.  There's a lot going on right now but we're still managing to find time to enjoy the sunshine and relax a little bit.

To that end we spent our spring break a couple of weeks ago camping in a couple of different places around Northern California.  We spent the first half of that week with a couple of friends exploring the Napa Valley wine country on our bikes.

We spent the second half of the week surfing in Santa Cruz and we both saw big improvements in our ability to ride a wave, it was  a great couple of days playing in the water, and a great way to finish out our week of play.

With that week as our rejuvenating break we're back to the grind of finishing the semester and the excitement of planning the wedding.

We've also had some big and important news and happenings going on.  Valerie and I found out that we'll be spending our next school year on internship in the Phoenix, Arizona area.  That news came after a lot of apprehension about how internship was going to look for us but we got some pretty good news about it and are excited to spend the year in a place with such great weather, fun things to do, and exciting churches.  (I'm also very excited that the Rockies will now be spending their spring training in Phoenix, so I'll be watching plenty of baseball and am quite happy about it.)

This past weekend we enjoyed a visit from my parents and along with some more wine tasting and a visit to the San Francisco farmers' market, we got to see Valerie perform, and perform brilliantly, in the play that she's been working hard on all semester.  She was fantastic and, were it not for the whole call to ministry and desire to become a pastor, would have a definite future in dramatic performance.  On top of supporting Valerie in her play my parents were also very helpful in contributing to our wedding planning and we've got a full head of steam as we head into the month of May and the 3 months to go mark.

Happy Birthday to Me!!

The rumors are true, this past Sunday I turned all of 27.  This was my first and (with any luck) last birthday as a fiancé and it was a great one.  Valerie and I took the opportunity of a weekend without many commitments and the occasion of my birthday to organize a little two day ski trip to Heavenly Ski Resort right on the Southern shores of Lake Tahoe.  To be fair, Valerie did all of the organizing and she did a wonderful job.  She rounded up a group of friends and booked us all a great little condo in the town of South Lake Tahoe for Friday night and bought me two days of skiing at Heavenly. (Friday and Saturday)

Friday was a beautiful and sunny day full of blue skies and nice soft snow.  My friend, and future groomsman, Nick and I spent the day exploring the resort.  It was great to get back on skis after a long time away from the sport and we had a great day crisscrossing the California/Nevada border and seeing how many trees we could dodge and rocks we could jump off of.  It was also nice to experience a run called ‘Hully Gully’ which was marked as ‘super expert.’  That was the first time I’ve ever seen that classification on a run before and I guess my skiing has gone to a new level.  Valerie doesn’t know it yet but from now on I’m going to insist on being addressed as “Super Expert DC” at all times; we’ll see how that goes over….

While Nick and I were skiing Valerie enjoyed her first snowshoeing experience with a nice hike around Fallen Leaf Lake.  She went with Jess, Nick’s wife, and the two of them seemed to have a great time enjoying the same sunny blue skies and snow that Nick and I were playing in.

After we had all played in the snow for long enough we met back up and found our Condo for a night of good beer, good friends, and great kabobs.  It was a really fun birthday celebration but it wouldn’t have been complete without the rocketship party decorations.

The next morning came a little too early and not nearly as sunny as the day before but we got up and got ready to go back out on the slopes.  This time there were a few more of us to ski for the day including my beloved Valerie.  Valerie had never really skied before so she was a little intimidated but I committed to stay with her and teach her until she felt more like a skier and less like a really confused person with two long boards strapped to her feet.  Valerie was a great student and definitely a faster learner than most, if not all, of the adults I ever taught in Colorado.  By her third run she was already making parallel turns, linking her turns, and smoothly dodging the strewn and scattered other beginner skiers and snowboarders who weren’t quite as adept as she was.  She and I were both feeling quite confident in her abilities so I left to go take a few runs higher up the mountain.  After a few more runs on the bunny hill Valerie decided that she was going to try and find some more challenging terrain.  Well… long story short the next hour or so featured a bad piece of advice from a Heavenly staff person, a very slow and scared run down a steep and icy, windy, blue run, a freaked out voicemail on my phone, a much faster and slightly panicked run down that same blue run, and one very relieved reunion at the bottom of the hill.  Valerie was no worse for the wear, except for some very cute snow crystals that were clinging to her hat and hair, and I was able to forgive myself for leaving her to go ski higher on the mountain.

                Soon after our reunion at the bottom of the hill we packed up our gear and headed back to Berkeley.  We got back sometime in the late evening and just barely got our stuff put away before we collapsed from the exhaustion of such a big weekend.  Sunday, my actual birthday, broke with patches of sun and fog that framed our trip to church in the morning (Yes, I still had commitments to fulfill on my birthday) but by the time we got back home the fog was mostly gone and we enjoyed a nice quite day hanging out with friends in the courtyard of our school’s apartment complex.  In the evening we went with some friends for Salvadoran Food (Yum!) and then returned to spend the remaining hours of a fantastic birthday weekend playing Nintendo and enjoying the company of good friends.

All in all, as you can see, it was a very busy but also really great birthday weekend.  I’m so lucky to have such a loving woman in my life to plan such a great trip.  Seriously, this weekend took some serious coordination and Valerie pulled it off smoothly and brilliantly.  I’m almost embarrassed about how perfect my birthday was this year and even though the rain is falling on our roofs now, there is a little piece of me that is still warm and happy from all the love that surrounded me on the occasion of the celebration of my birth.  Thank you, Valerie, and thank you everyone else that wished me happy birthday from near or far!  It wouldn’t have been the same without any of you.

Our engagement story... :)

This is the story of the day that we got engaged.... enjoy!



DC:  Valerie and I spent this summer in separate places which, while also being terrible and lonely, made it hard to plan a good proposal.  Fortunately, I got lucky and Valerie booked a quick trip to Denver to visit me for a weekend. I already had the ring at that point so it became a whole lot easier to plan a proposal for that weekend.  


The week before the event I took my Sister-in-Law to scout out a good location, which we found in Gem Lake near Estes Park. I told Valerie that we would be hiking with my brother and his wife.   So she arrived knowing part, not all, of the plan. 


Our hike day arrived beautiful and sunny, so we drove up from Denver to pick-up Brian and Marisa and headed for the trail.  We arrived there to a mostly empty parking lot (YAY!) and cool weather. We packed up and set-out for the 1.7 mile hike to the lake.  That 1.7 miles wasn’t the best hiking I’ve ever done.  I was pretty weighed down with nervous excitement which, along with the tuxedo in my backpack ( ;) ) was quite a load.  Thankfully, Marisa was distracting Valerie so that I could be a nervous wreck in the back.


When we got to the lake my brother went to the other side of the lake to the spot I had picked out to ‘explore’. A few minutes later I left Valerie and told her that I was going to climb the rocks with my brother and that she ‘probably wanted’ to stay with Marisa. I was trying very hard to communicate that she ‘should’ stay with Marisa


Valerie:  “There we were enjoying an intimate, lovely little moment by the lake, with my head on his shoulder, holding hands, when he stood up and said basically, ‘I’m going to go climb on the rocks with my brother, you stay here’”


DC: I realized that Valerie wasn’t going to be very happy about that, but I figured that what I had planned would make up for it.  I went to the other side of the lake behind some boulders, opened my backpack and pulled out two things:  a stack of pictures that I had attached to pieces of construction paper and a tuxedo. The pictures were all pictures of Valerie and me from various points in our dating life with meaningful song lyrics written on them attached to pieces of string.  I had my brother hang them from the trees and rocks that stood on either side of the path that led from where Valerie and Marisa were to where I would be waiting.


 Meanwhile, I changed into my Dad’s tuxedo, in the pocket of which was one very special piece of jewelry.  When this was done we called over to the ladies and waited.  


Valerie:  When DC radioed over that there was something we should see I got excited and we started down the trail towards them. The trail was only wide enough to walk single file and looking back now, I realize that Marisa made sure I was first.  It was important that I be first to the tree because it was ornamented with pictures of DC and me. When I saw the beautiful decorations on the tree I began to suspect that this was not JUST a delightful little hike in the mountains.


I definitely expected that the pictures would be a mix of DC and me and Brian and Marisa--I thought they were surprising us both, so I tried to hang back a bit so Marisa could find her pictures too. As I looked at them and read the familiar lyrics, however, it became apparent that all of the colorful little delights were from DC to me. After looking at the six on the tree, I noticed that one more was attached to a rock across the path so I headed over to look at it. In doing so, I walked right past the the alcove in which DC was waiting for me. I didn't even look up, I was so focused on the pictures. After admiring the last picture, I looked up and saw him standing there, 50 feet away...IN A TUXEDO!


It occurred to me that he might be proposing, but I could hardly let myself think about it because it was too exciting. So instead of thinking, I raced over to him and threw my arms around his tuxedo-ed body, whispered, "I love you" and kissed him.


DC: At this point it gets to be a bit of a blur for me. My heart was racing from the excitement and nerves and the edges were getting a little blurry. Nevertheless I wasn't going to let the moment slip by so I whispered in Valerie's ear that I had already talked to her Dad, something she had been very adamant that I do before proposing, and then reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring. With the ring in my hand I got down on my knee, and looked up at Valerie as I opened the box.


It was kind of a strange feeling to notice myself there in that position, I don't think I had quite taken the time to imagine what it would be like and then there I was about to ask this incredible woman to spend the rest of her life with me. And she seemed to be no better prepared for the moment, with her hands over her mouth and eyes watering up. But the thing about being in love and being in this kind of moment is that you don't need to be prepared and you don't need to be able to think about how you're supposed to act, it just happens, and it happens exactly the way it's supposed to.  And the way this one happened was that Valerie looked down at me, I asked her if she would marry me, and somewhere in the flurry of kisses and hugs she said "Of Course!"


It should be noted that I never heard that "Of Course!" She swears she said it right away but it must have gotten lost in the moment because I was still waiting for an answer and she was waiting for me to put the ring on her finger, but before I really had a chance to start panicking, she repeated her answer, this time as a resounding, "YES!" and I put the ring on her finger with my shaking hands. We had a few minutes to bask in the glow of engagement before the backpacker in me started to notice the dimming light and thickening clouds. So after I changed back out of the tux (because who wants to hike in a tux?), we began our hike back down the trail, hand in hand and blissfully happy, taking pictures with Brian and Marisa, and laughing about the surprise and joy of it all.


And now here we are planning a wedding and getting more excited by the minute to share our day with all of our friends and family.  Thanks for being a part of it!  And if you have any questions or want to hear more stories just drop us a line and we'll see what we can do.

We're Up( or off) and Running

Yay!
So it turns out that a free wedding website doesn't offer all that much space to talk about our story and other essential details, something about storage space limitations or something.  Fortunately, a free blog offers a whole lot more space for random information.... and so here we are.  We've started this blog as a way of centralizing information leading up to our wedding.  It may morph into something else after that, or not.  But at least for now it will be a good way of sharing information, like our engagement story, that won't fit on the other website.  We'll also use it to talk about logistics and other things that will be useful for all of our family and friends as we get ready for our celebration.  So for now welcome to our blog, have a look around, leave a comment or two, and have a wonderful day.