But who's counting?

95 days! 95 days! 95 days until graduate school (for me at least) is over!  Not that I'm counting or anything but I am so close to the 3 months left mark!  Though, I'm just excited to be in the double digits, especially since the countdown started at 395 days so it seems a lot closer now!  Although, it could be this unnaturally warm March weather that is making it seem so close too.  Now that it's super warm outside, it seems like the end of the school year is much closer than it actually is.

Since its been getting warm out, I have started to make a mental list of what I'm going to do this summer and I thought I would share it with you!  Not that it's that special or anything but more because I like to blog and I like to think about summer so why not do both?  Then, at the end of the summer we'll see how much I actually accomplished!

Lyndsey's Summer To Do List

-GET A TEACHING JOB!!

-Do lots of jewelry shows now since I will have more time to play with the buisness!

-seriously clean the apartment (it has been neglected a lot in the past 10 months)

- get back into playing my saxophone (good to do during the day when no one else is here)

-clean out and organize the mountains of papers I have been collecting for school

-clean out and organize our closet

-work more with Riley and her skillz

-take our broken TV to the dump so that it can be properly disposed of 

- train Riley how to run next to a bike so we can get more exercise/tire her out

-go to DC with the sister-in-law so we can play with our cameras

-hang out with friends and family (of course!  that's a no brainer)

-bake and bake and bake!

-try out new recipes! (our dinners is another thing that has been neglected in the past 10 months...sorry Ben!)
-read The Hunger Games series 

What are your plans for the summer?  I know it's super early to think about but it is so hard not to with the beautiful weather we have been experiencing!  Honestly, if I can accomplish the first one on the list, especially if it is at the beginning of the summer rather than the end, then it will be a good summer.

Benjamin's 25th

On March 9th and 10th, we celebrated Ben's 25th birthday!  He's concerned he's getting old....especially since we all kept telling him he was now a quarter of a century old!  On the 9th, his actual birthday, my parents came up and we had pizza and cheesecake to celebrate.  They had to come to 1) give him their present and 2) bring up my present to him!  I got Ben some awesome Redskins cornhole boards!  They are awesome and we can't wait to use them!  Right now we're trying to figure out where to store them since they're so big.

Saturday, we went trap shooting with Ben's family.  It was my first time and I was actually able to hit some of the clay pigeons!  I'd definitely go again.  We all had a great time and I think Ben enjoyed getting to do one of his favorite hobbies as a family!  After shooting, we went back to their house for dinner (yummy steaks!) and more cheesecake!  This time the cheesecake was the chocolate tuxedo one from the Cheesecake Factory.  It's one of Ben's favorite!  I ordered a side slice of the dutch caramel apple streusel since I'm not a chocolate fan.  Then we ended the evening by watching Hugo.  I thought it was really good but about 20 minutes too long.  But worth seeing!

Check out some pictures from our birthday celebration!

Ben unveiling his present from me

 Riley enjoying her grandparents

 Isn't she adorable!

 Mass Effect 3 from the siblings

 Ben's birthday cheesecake

Chessie, Kevin, and Ben posing at the range!

A Sweet Sixteen

About 12 days ago, Ben and I got to share in the celebration of his sister's 16th birthday!  We celebrated by hanging out at the house with her and the rest of the family.  We ate lots of yummy pizza and then feasted on cake and cookies!  Chessie got a sweet camera!  Which means she and I are going to do a lot of trips into  DC this summer to play around with our cameras!  Can't wait!  Here are a few pictures from her birthday celebration!

Chessie's awesome camera!

 Riley got to celebrate too!

 Opening her tripod from us.

 Kevin showing her one of two choices for her first car.  A red Pontiac Firebird!

 Choice #2...a silver Porsche Boxster

 Carefully weighing her options.

 Chessie's cute birthday cake! (Just pretend there are 10 more candles!)

 Singing to the birthday girl

 Ben and Kevin were enjoying the cars more than Chessie was.

 Riley love <3

Wow, way behind!!!

Okay, so in the last post, I said that hopefully it wouldn't be too long in between posts...I lied! Sorry about that! Here are some updates on our life and I am hoping to keep updating over the next few days ( I just learned that it is blog etiquette to only post once a day so I'm going to try to stick with that!). I will also hopefully be changing up the background and all since it is in the 70's here in sunny March Maryland and I don't think we need the snowflake background anymore! Here are the updates....stay tuned for (hopefully) more posts over the next few days to get us all caught up!

Ben

-just had his midterm for his class (which I'm sure he aced!)

-turned 25 last week! More words and pictures to come on that

- working hard and staying super busy at work!

Lyndsey

-just finished 5 out of 6 weeks of takeover!! Yippee!!!

-applied to three counties and have started the interview process

-working on the research aspect of the grad program

-working on the online portfolio aspect of the program

-eagerly counting down the days till spring break (13!!!) and the days till the program is over (103!!!!)

-also eagerly making a list of things she wants to do this summer (read, visit DC with the sister in law, more jewelry parties, etc)

Riley

-still being good company as Lyndsey does school work

-still running around the apartment like crazy and further proving her point she needs a backyard

-enjoying the Daylight Savings Time because now she can go on more walks

-being a star in Lyndsey's 2nd grade class....they love her!

Ben+Lyndsey

-having some friends over for dinner, dessert, and movies/games

-celebrating Valentines Day a few days early

-celebrating Chessie's 16th birthday

-celebrating Ben's 25th birthday

-getting better at going to the gym more regularly

-playing with crazy Riley

That's about it for now! I'll be working on more posts and updating the blog background over the next few days in between planning and grading and all that other good stuff.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!