Liar Liar...

Remember how in my last post I said I didn't feel like I needed a summer. Well I lied! I am soooo ready for summer break. :)

And we call ourselves grown-ups?

The grown-up part of our life is going well. Ben is hard at work studying and getting good grades. He has just one more week of school and then he can say he is a 2nd year med student! I have about a month left until I can say it is summer for me. This year it hasn't felt like I have as much work to do (no lesson plans and grading papers) so I am excited for summer but I don't feel like I NEED summer like I usually do. Haha...never thought I would say that!

Other than that we have been playing!!! Ben is still obsessed with frisbee golf...I think it is what makes him keep up on studying. It seems to be the way he rewards himself for studying when he should. I go with him sometimes and usually just watch. In the winter I NEVER wanted to go along but now that the weather is AWESOME and everything is green I am more willing :)

See the GREEN!


Last weekend our friend Lara threw a party. She is most definitely the BEST host and always shows us a way good time. We had an end of the year bash and played Bunko with the first year med students. It got crazy and LOUD.

The party didn't stop with Bunko...We stayed until after 1 AM! Our friend Dane said he had a game we could play. We trusted him and I don't think I have seen so many grown-ups literally on the floor laughing and not able to continue before. (The acronym ROFL suddenly made sense to me) He needed us to think of 5 farm animals. He wrote down 2 of each animal we named and put them in a bowl. We each picked an animal, got on our knees, and were in a circle. He told us to close our eyes and make the sound of the animal on the piece of paper. We had to listen and try to find the other person in the room making the same animal sound as us. Once we found them we had to stand up and whoever was first won. These pictures are a result of that game!

The beginning.

Ben holding another woman's arm!

Paige unable to stop laughing. I'm pretty sure my hair is covering my laugh.

What a fun night! Thanks Lara!!!

Here are some pictures from when we went to see Glenn Beck in April. (Thanks again Dane and Cassidy) We finally got our picture with him back and I stole some pictures from our friend Kayli's blog.

Color coordinated and everything!
My smile/glare looks a bit scary to me but Cassidy and Kayli look amazing as always!

Don't know what you got till it's gone

We had our anniversary! We can finally say we've been married for a year when people ask instead of saying, "Uhhhh, I think like...2 months, 3 months, 4 months," and so on. 1 solid year people!

We decided to head to DC to go to the temple. We thought that we started out our year together in the temple so it would be nice to start another year that way. It was a good day and we enjoyed spending time together.


After the temple we headed to Cafe Rio. I found out last week that there was a brand new Cafe Rio 10 miles from the temple. Ben and I were excited because we haven't had it since Utah. I knew I liked Cafe Rio but I didn't know how much I LOVED it until we moved to Virginia and no longer had it. When we got there it was Mormon central. It was funny to see that many people I could tell were Mormon in a place other than church. Ben even saw some people he knew from home.

This Florida Girl Still Has a Thing or Two to Learn

My week has been....AMAZING, FUN, PRODUCTIVE, and DELIGHTFUL and the best part is it isn't over yet! I'm having a semi-LAZY day so I figured I would get some blogging in.

Recap of last weekend: I organized my whole closet of teacher stuff and decided I wanted my spring break to be at least a little productive. Guess what...it definitely was!

I woke up Monday morning refreshed and ready to work. I cleaned my entire house from 9:30 - 5:30 (minus a break to run errands for about an hour). I decided that was the big thing I needed to do for the week so that I could play the rest of the time. Ben was impressed so he made us dinner AND baked some muffins.



Tuesday I woke up EARLY and worked on mother's day presents for my mom and Lori. I quite like how they have turned out and I am super excited to send them! I also got to spend some time with some friends I don't normally get to see during the day because I am working.

Wednesday I went to the beach with some friends from work. It was so much fun and the perfect day to be out. You would think that me being from Florida and growing up going to the beach would mean I know how to correctly apply sunscreen. Well, that would be an incorrect assumption! Look at just one of the many spots I missed!

I really enjoyed this beach. I didn't dare go into the water though!
My feet couldn't even handle it! Definitely isn't the Gulf :(

Thursday I headed to Buena Vista to visit my friend Nina. We grew up together in Sarasota and she is living only 2 hours away. She is going to school at Southern Virginia University. I was shocked at how small the school was. She said they have about 700 students and I am used to walking around a campus with over 30 thousand students. Nina showed me Buena Vista and her school. Then we met up with her boyfriend Jordan who I got to meet for the first time! We went to lunch at a nice sandwich place and then we explored Lexington. We went to many little shops, saw Washington and Lee University, walked through Virginia Military Institute, and last we went to the cemetery where Stonewall Jackson is buried.

Nina and Me: Behind us is the main hall of SVU

Nina and Jordan: Behind them is a church on Washington and Lee University campus

Behind me is the barracks on Virginia Military Institute.

Here lies Stonewall Jackson. Apparently he loved lemons so people threw
lemons on his grave. We saw quite a few on the ground.

The drive to see Nina was 2 hours each way but I didn't mind because most of the time I was driving through this. I hadn't seen mountains since Utah. (These mountains don't compare to Utah's, BUT it was beautiful and green and I JUST LOVED IT)

By now you might be asking why this whole blog was about me...and no Ben. Well, the only thing I can say Ben did this whole entire week was STUDY. He studied like crazy. He is taking two tests today so I will get my husband back soon.

Being Productive!

We got to see Glenn Beck last Monday! We scored awesome friends and they scored awesome tickets to see Glenn Beck. We got to be Gold VIP ticket holders and went to a special meet and greet before the show where we got to shake his hand and take a picture with him. We don't have pictures with him yet but they'll come soon!



Another fun event of the week is our ward had a softball game. All the husbands played while the wives socialized. It was fun but I had a terrifying experience. I thought I left my camera at the park! I went back to look and it wasn't there. I thought I had done a thorough search of the car but in reality I had not and found it between the drivers seat and the console. PHEW!


Saturday I was very productive hence the title of my blog. My SPRING BREAK has begun and I am hoping I am able to continue to be productive through the break! When we were moving I packed up all my teaching things into boxes. During the move the boxes were ruined but we shoved them in the closet with my things anyway. I cleaned out the closet and put my teaching things in tubs and good boxes so they don't get ruined. I wish I had taken a before picture so you could have seen my stuff but I got an after picture. The during picture would have been interesting too!!



**I have to give a talk today in church :( I am not a fan of giving them at all! The talk is on President Uchtdorf's October 2010 Conference talk, "Of Things That Matter Most". It was nice to go back and read this talk again because it was one of my favorites from that Conference. Lesson learned was...Keep life simple and focus on the things that are really important. Those things are the relationships with God, your family, your fellowmen, and yourself.

Wondering if Ben will EVER blog?

Sometimes I wish Ben would do a quick update now and then so I am not the only one who looks like a slacker!

*I'll start with what I left out in our last blog. We went on a date! We go on dates often but this one we had to dress up for. We went to the Med Ball back in FEBRUARY!


*Ben had Spring Break starting the week after my mom came to visit. He was assigned 20 hours of community service this year for school so he decided to come and volunteer at school with me. When he walked in with me the kids were shocked at his size and couldn't believe he was my husband. It didn't surprise me because my 2nd grade class last year called him BIG Ben. They kept asking him to touch the ceiling or things attached to the ceiling. He helped by tutoring the kids, helping Miss Patterson with work she needed done, and teaching them about where boogers come from (not really, he taught a lesson on how to stay healthy and somehow boogers were brought up).


* Another big thing here was VCU made it to the Final Four in basketball. I went to Applebees with my coworkers to watch the game. There I received my first piece of VCU apparel in a raffle. Do you think it will fit? Definitely way too big for me and way to small for Ben...


Other things to mention are:

• I've had some interviews with school districts and am on the search for a full time teaching job. Wish me luck!
• Ben is still obsessed with Frisbee golf. He's so obsessed that we went and ended up getting hailed on last weekend!
  
• Ben is studying his days away and has made it through some pretty hard tests lately.
• My Spring Break is in just 5 school days from today!
• Ben and I have almost been married for a whole year!
  

Short and Sweet

My mom came to visit and we were happy to have her! She got here Thursday and will leave EARLY tomorrow morning.

*Thursday we took her to a very delicious Japanese restaurant called Sticky Rice. After a yummy dinner, we went shopping for another yummy dinner we were planning for the following evening. We wanted to make Cafe Rio pork!

*Friday Ben stayed home and studied for school while my mom and I went and did some must do's in Richmond. We went to the Holocaust Museum which we loved. After that, we went to Moe's which has become my Cafe Rio/Bajios substitute. Then, we went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. By the time we got home our Pork in the crock pot smelled so good and it was almost time for dinner! The Andersons came over to join us and we had salads and burritos. To end the evening off right, we played some games!


*Saturday Ben joined us for our Richmond must do's. We went to Meadow Farm Museum which we all really enjoyed. The house on the farm was built in 1860 and the museum showed us what it was like to live in the 19th century. The area around the farm was great and we really enjoyed the view. Then we went over to Maymont Park which had an even better view! I took a ton of pictures there. We took a tour of a mansion built in the 1890's. After all the walking around and exploring we did during the day we were ready for a good dinner so we headed over to Cheesecake Factory. We got some really good cheesecakes for dessert and are perfectly content with ourselves :)

Meadow Farm Museum

Ben was a GIANT in this house!

This was in the Japanese Garden at Maymont.