OUR BIG DAY

Well we are freshly returned from our graduation trip to Cancun and I can't wait to share some pictures! But first I need to document our actual big day, May 15, 2009: the day Joe became Dr. Dastrup and I became a J.D.!!

The day began with my alarm going off at 5:30 and then leaving the house at 6:40 to grab seats for Joe's dental school hooding ceremony at the Hippodrome in downtown Baltimore. The crew included me, Joe, my parents, Joe's parents, and Nate & Lori. We got there just in time to get good seats and then I went with Joe to get him ready, take some pictures with his friends, and wait for the ceremony to begin.

During the ceremony I had a special seat on the front left part of the auditorium where the "hooders" sat. I didn't know much about hoods until that day, but here's the deal: people receiving advanced degrees are "hooded" with a long decrative hood displaying the school's colors. Normally faculty members do the hooding, but for the dental school's ceremony the students had the chance to choose any person to hood them that held an equivalent or higher degree. And I got to hood Joe!!! My mom thought it was terrific and I guess it was pretty cool. Lots of students had Dads or Grandpas hooding them but I only noticed one other dental student being hooded by his wife!
I tried to watch the first few students being hooded to figure out what I was supposed to do. What a moment!

I can barely remember the program anymore (I think Cancun wiped my brain clean) except that it was very nice. The senior class president gave a thoughtful speech and the hygiene students and those graduating from specialty programs were also recognized. On the way out Joe gave us a triumphant fist-pump. Go Dr. D!

I was super excited to greet Joe afterward since he had accidentally ignored me after I hooded him and beelined it back to his seat instead. I thought maybe I had messed up on the hooding or something?? Turns out he was just in the zone and thought I had turned back the other way instead of following him off stage.

Me and Gina (Joe's mom) with the good-looking Dr.

Us with Joe's parents ....

Us with my parents ... It was so fun to have such an occasion to have both sets of parents in town together! We had a lot of fun.

And of course with Nate & Lori! Lori did a fabuous job helping to document the day. Thanks for taking a day off just for us! :)

And here's Joe with the majority of his fellow LDS dental school buddies. He knew 4 of them (2 not in this picture) before dental school and they were a great group.

Us with our close friends the Austins! Two days later they headed to Tennessee for an oral surgery program and we are going to miss them like crazy.

And with our close friends the Skinners. They are headed to AZ and we are excited for them and are glad we'll hopefully get to see lots of them in the future.

Group picture with the wives ... yes we all should be congratulated for successfully getting through these tough 4 years!

Just the wives (well some of them) ...

After the picture taking we hurried over to the law school a block away and caught the tail end of a brunch that had been going on all morning. We had just enough time to quickly eat some eggs, potatoes and french toast before the family had to get back to the Hippodrome to get seats for my hooding ceremony and I had to be to Westminster Hall to get lined up.

The law students and faculty then processioned to the Hipprodrome which was exciting. It was really happening! I got to ever-so-briefly say hi to a few of my professors on the way into the building and then the program began. The law school and dental school programs were quite different. The day class president giving the speech was a friend of mine and she did a great job. We also heard from Congressman Elijah Cummings who had a lot of great thoughts, but his style was a little intense for my taste (think Baptist preacher). Then there were the hoodings ... unfortunately I didn't get to pick my hooder and was hooded by two professors I didn't know.

After that the graduates walked back to the law school where I met up with my family. For the next few minutes I had a bit of a hard time since I realized the day was not going how I wanted and had envisioned. Because of the way it was set up, the time to see friends and professors was during the brunch (which we missed), and after the ceremony everyone just scattered and I couldn't find anyone. It's hard to explain why I was so bummed but I just was. Several of my professors have meant a lot to me over these 3 years. I respected them greatly and learned so much from them and I know they thought highly of me as well, and I was excited to have them meet my husband and family, to say thank you, and hear words of congratulations which would have been more meaningful than most since they actually knew how hard I'd worked. Anyway, that didn't work out and it's okay. But it did put a damper on things for a few minutes which I why I don't look so ecstatic in these pictures (and why they aren't very many of them). :)

I was happy that we got to see Brigham and Kristen. We have been in the same ward for the past 3 years and Brigham and I were the only two LDS students in the law school. Funnily enough, we ended up being in the same "small section" first year and had lots of classes together. They have been great friends and we'll miss them but wish them the best of luck in Salt Lake!

Joe and me ... walking off the campus as graudates. I still can hardly believe it!

After that we took a trip to the Bookstore for some t-shirts and made short stop in Columbia on the way home (more on that in the next post). By the time we got back we were completely exhausted and had dinner reservations in not too long ... but we stopped to take some pictures with both Joe and me in our gowns since we knew we'd never get around to doing it another other day. Here they are!

Displaying the hoods - I love this picture.

Pretty sweet jumping picture.

Don't know what this is supposed to be ...

Gotta throw the hats!!

Oh yeah ... can't forget this one. :)

That's it! We are not students anymore!!

My Ode to Law School

Wow it has really been a crazy 3 years. I still can hardly believe it's over. Let's back up a bit though ..... I have wanted to go to law school since before the third grade. Ever since I made up my little 8-year-old mind so long ago, I honestly don't think I ever doubted or wavered with what I wanted to do. I knew I had to find a smart, driven, and extremely tolerant guy to support me through this dream of mine and luckily I found this one:

We got married right before moving to Maryland where I took the LSAT and applied to school, so he's been with me through all of it. And by "it" I mean a completely intense, exhausting, fantastic, exhilerating, frustrating, fanatical, and extremely challenging 3 yrs. But there's next to nothing I would change about it. I was stretched to my absolute limit, but as a result I have learned and gained so much. I feel amazing! However, I don't think I could have done it without the constant support of my incredible Joe, my wonderful family and friends, and a lot of answered prayers. I'm a lucky girl.

So last Thursday night, the day before graduation, I was invited to an awards reception at the law school. I had a pretty good idea of the award I thought I'd be receiving. I have been #1 in my class throughout my 3 law school years and although I hadn't received my official rank following this last semester, my grades basically couldn't have been better so I went to the receiption feeling confident. :) Here I am with my good study-buddy waiting for the awards to begin!

That night there were close to a dozen awards being given out relating to leadership and scholarship. Finally we got to the point where the #2 and #1 students would be announced. I listened as the Dean announced the name of the #2 student and as I heard her say "Lindsey Dastrup" my underlying fear became a reality. In shock, I walked up the stairs to the podium with a my jaw clenched and head down and then pasted the biggest smile I could come up with across my face just in time to greet the Dean and turn around to face the audience. I was later told I hid any disappointment or dismay very well, but when I look at this picture I can see it loud and clear. I didn't even think to look at my family. As I walked down the stairs I remember thinking "well this is going to be embarrassing as my mom already took the liberty of posting that I was #1 on her blog." My next thought as I sat back down was: "well who the heck IS #1??"

What happened next is .... the Dean of Student Affairs approached the podium and she and the Dean had a little pow-wow. A couple minutes later the Dean announced that there had been a mistake and that "Lindsey Dastrup is actually #1 in the class." All I could think was: relief, relief, relief, relief!!! Yes ... I know deep down that being #1 vs. #2 makes absolutely NO difference for who I am and for what is important. But I also have had this goal for a long time and it would have been a bit of a blow. So I didn't get my "moment" (smiling from head to toe, finally knowing that this crazy goal I've had has actually happened) captured on camera since I was back in my seat. But I did go up again later as they announced and took pictures of the top 5 people and top 10% (around 24 people ... there were 247 people in my graduating class).
And my happiness was captured as I got to greet Joey. It sure has been a long road and he has put up with so much!

We all continued to be a little surprised by what had just transpired (here's Joe reenacting his reaction). My Dad said he was praying hard that I would hold it together and Joe was just hoping I'd be okay with the outcome. We laughed about it for the rest of the night and I really do think it makes a good story. :)

Here's Dean Cobb (the Dean who corrected things) explaining to us how the mistake was made (something about an earlier draft where she accidentally typed the #1 name first instead of second). I told her not to worry about it ... no major harm done.

Here I am with the pleased parents (who make it clear that they really don't care whether I graduate with an award or not). It was so funny because my dad had been bugging me the last couple of days to make sure I wouldn't fall apart if it turned out I was #2 (even though I wasn't even close ....). He teased me that he had to pay the Dean money to get her to do that to me.

And the happy in-laws. It was so good to have them there!

Afterward we had a little reception with drinks and hors d'oeuvres and I got to chat with a few of my favorite professors.

And we enjoyed some time in the lovely law school courtyard.

Then we had to hurry home and iron our dresses and robes for graduation the next day (I got up at 5:30 and we left the house at 6:40!). The celebrations were officially underway.

The Day Has Finally Come ...

Ok so Lori may have used this post title to announce her pregnancy (YAY!!!) but in this context it means something quite different: I am DONE with law school!! After three long, crazy years I am done. All the exams and papers that have been the focus of my life for so long are now in the past. I don't know who is happier for me to be done, me or Joe. Did we really ever think we'd actually be here???!? It is hard to believe. I finished on Wednesday night and the past few days have been wonderful! We've had a lot of things planned so there hasn't been a lot of sitting around time but it just feels so good for my mind to be free to think about normal, everyday things (like what to wear to graduation!) instead of being constantly forced to focus, focus, focus. Ok so now to the other news: Joe is DONE with dental school!! What a relief for him. He has worked crazy hard as well and we are both so excited to be finishing together. In case you want to actually see our excitement I've got this to prove it: Lori found us these crazy 2009 sunglasses in honor of our upcoming big day (and said we should probably take a picture for the blog since it has been neglected for months). Yes it definitely has and I am so happy to say I am BAAAAACKK!!!

Here is a picture of me and my darling prego sister-in-law. I'm excited I get my life back in time to start helping her get ready for this new baby girl!! (Ok it's not really getting my life "back" but more like allowing myself to have a life outside of school. I'll definitely admit I'm the one who chose to devote myself to school all the time. But I love law school and sadly I just don't know another way to do it!)

Although I don't have many pictures of all the fun we've been having so far (going out to a celebration lunch, hitting up an awesome birthday party, spending time with great friends who will be moving away soon, playing soccer, and washing the car) I have a few random pictures taken on today's beautiful Sunday afternoon walk. We were playing a friendly game of catch which suddently seemed to get a little rough .... I think this picture is hilarious because Joe is coming at me full speed and the look on my face is like I'm terrified out of my mind or something - maybe about to break down into tears.

Evidently he didn't really have violent intentions because here I am smiling.

Then Caitlin (my sister-in-law-in-law, or something like that) came in for the tackle. Don't worry I got her back later on.

And last of all here we are looking tough. Maybe?

Ahhhhh it is so nice to sit on the couch and blog again. I am already starting to block out the sheer craziness that has been my life for the past few months and will be ready to go at it again in a few weeks!! Good thing because although I've just about got my J.D., I still have to pass the BAR in order to add "Esquire" to the end of my name. Oh joy! But I'm not worrying about that at all, I'm just thinking about these next couple of weeks and how fabulous they are going to be! I can't WAIT to hang out with my parents and in-laws who are coming into town soon. This kind of occasion calls for some serious party time!!!!! Life is great!

I can't believe it happened to me

So I had basically given up on the blog, thinking I'd stay away until after this insanity is over and I had good news to report. Unfortunately we're still a ways away from that. But, today something happened that was, uh, interesting and short enough to make the blog.

It happened while Joe and I were walking through Lexington Market on the way to the ghettro around 4:30 this afternoon. The sun had finally come out and although we were both exhausted and not in the greatest moods in the world, we were happy to be going home (even if for me it was just to keep studying). Then ... I felt something like a big raindrop on my head. I shrieked and said, "Joe something just fell on my head!" By the look on his face I knew it wasn't good. Yeah, you guessed it:

PIGEON POOP
Oh how I thank my lucky stars I was wearing a hat today!!!!! Can you even imagine how things would have gone down if I weren't??!? Yeah me neither. I don't wear a hat to school that often ... maybe once every few weeks. But I am terribly glad that I was unable to drag myself out of bed this morning with enough time to do my hair and thus decided to stick a hat on my head. We'll just leave it at that and not dwell on the alternative.

My initial reaction to the pigeon poop was shock, not even anger or disgust. I can't believe this happened to me!! But then our moods just seemed to go down hill from there. Lexington Market is disgusting. Everyone hanging around there has a constant cigarette in one hand and greasy chicken bone in the other, and the sickening smell of urine just puts it over the top. The ghettro is not much better. Why does Baltimore have to be so nasty sometimes?? I might sound like a brat but seriously, after 3 years of B-more, my guess is you'd feel the same.

I'm pretty happy that after May 8, I'm done with that place (the rest of Baltimore is nice, I promise!). But you might want to spare a little pity for Joe, who will be spending a fifth year dealing with it all. Poor guy.

We're still here ...

I just really haven't been feeling the blog thing lately. Life has been both pretty busy and fairly unexciting, and unfortunately we've been letting all the stress get to us. We're probably not the only ones! Unfortunately things aren't going to lighten up any time soon. But even though we have a lot on our plates, life is good. I've made a little list to fill you in on the major happenings of the past few weeks ...

1. Probably the most exciting thing that happened was spending our MLK 3 day weekend (seems like so long ago now) with houseguests! My wonderful friend Rachel and her husband Ryan flew down from "the Buff" (Buffalo, NY) to spend the weekend with us in Baltimore. We had such a great time!!! Lots of laughing and sharing stories, eating good food, and trying to stay warm despite frigid temperatures. We spent Saturday in D.C., going to the Holocaust museum and checking out the scene set up for inauguration a couple days later. On Sunday we cooked up a fabulous Cafe Rio feast and on Monday we had a "snow day" - we stayed in our PJs all day eating hot homemade bread, playing scrabble, and hanging out. We are SO glad they came!! Seriously, we had a fantastic time. I can't wait to head up to the Buff once the weather gets nice ...

2. On the less exciting side of things, we've been getting more than enough time on the metro (ghettro if you will). I was getting used to having one day a week without classes to stay home and catch up on studying ... but not this semester - I am back to being on that thing with Joe every day. Several of you have probably heard the story of us getting "busted" for not using our passes ... yeah it was a little intimidating getting yelled at for 90 seconds in the middle of rush hour at Lexington market station. Oh, Lexington market, that is a post for another day. All I can say is that the cigarette companies seem to be doing well and my lungs are slowly but surely getting blacker ... thanks for that.

In addition, last month while I was having to buy my passes everyday I lucked out one day and won the lottery! I put a $10 into the machine and got back $8.60 in NICKELS. Yes that is 172 nickels that took about 4 minutes to clank down into the machine and for me to gather up in a plastic bag I happened to have. Needless to say I missed the metro, had to wait in the cold for the next one, and wasn't too happy about it. I mean what can you do with nickels?? I'm pretty sure someone isn't going to be very happy about counting out 100 nickels the next time I buy a sandwich ...

3. Another exciting event was watching the AZ Cardinals play in the SUPERBOWL! What a dream come true for Joey. Obviously we were disappointed by the loss, but it was fun to have an exciting game. We had great company, great food, and watched some great football. What more could you ask for?

4. One other thing to note is the startling amount of no-sugar-added hot chocolate being consumed around here. It is one of my staple items (along with cheese crisps, cereal, and fruit), and a day rarely goes by without us both having a cup to warm up in the evening. And, I wanted to show Mom and Katie that I absolutely love using the color-me-mine mugs they made me a long time ago, and Chad and Emily that we get good use out of the cute mugs they gave us for Christmas a few years back. Hot chocolate makes me happy.

5. Other than that, basically my life has been tax, tax, and more TAX. I guess this is just the beginning though, right? In case anyone hasn't heard, at the end of last summer I decided I wanted to be a tax attorney, and I accepted a job in the tax group in the Baltimore office of DLA Piper, to begin this fall (as long as I don't become another victim to big firm layoffs). But this semester I am getting into the advanced tax courses for the first time and it is freaking HARD. The number of hours I spend preparing for a single class is slightly out of control. Challenge is one of the things I like about it, but it still makes my head hurt! So in case you are ever wondering what I am up to, there's a good chance I have my nose in one of these:
Not as thick as the usual batch but much more dense. Someday I will be an expert! Ha.

6. As for Joe? He is as busy as ever - drilling teeth, laying flaps, shaving bone, cementing crowns, filling, cleaning, sewing, and hopefully not "perfing." Not to mention searching 4 floors to find supplies and dealing with occasionally unhelpful professors and other unexpected delays such as inconsiderate patients. Honestly, I would not want to experience a day in the life of a dental student ... I hear it's not all bad but any talk of slicing gums and laying flaps just makes me shudder. On our quiet 8:00 p.m. metro rides home (2 days a week) Joe will sometimes take out some paper and try to sketch out his most interesting procedure of the day. Here's a root canal for you (no, he did not draw this).

I think I can safely say that's about it for what we've been up to. Oh, and today is our 4 year engagement anniversary. Now there's excitement for you!

The End of Vacation

Sadly, Christmas vacation feels like so long ago. But even though vacation is so over, it really was a great one, and I need just one more post to fill in a little of what went on during my Utah trip. I only have pictures of a few of the things I did ... the rest of the time I was just having way too much fun to think about it.

I flew in the night of January 5. It was snowing when I got there (to add to what was already plenty of snow on the ground) and I'm pretty sure the snow didn't stop for a full 30 hours. Although it was fun to be in a winter wonderland, it got a little ridiculous! But it did keep my younger brother down in Orem another day (he lives in SLC) so it wasn't all bad.

(For you Orem people, I took this while driving past the public library on Orem Center.) In the midst of all this snow, my Dad and I, along with my grandparents, made it out to see the Cougars take on Western Oregon in basketball. Although we won by a big margin in the end, we started out the game without scoring for what seemed like the longest time, and we definitely had some ground to make up. I totally miss BYU sports so it was a great time.

Another highlight was going to my brother and sister-in-law's house in Lehi and getting to see my little niece Bella. My last trip to Utah was a year ago, and the time between 4 mos. and 16 mos. definitely involves some big changes! We brought over Cafe Rio and had a great night talking, laughing, and setting up Bella's Christmas present from my parents - a cute little table and chair set perfect for having tea parties.

Bella seemed to enjoy stepping on and off the chair bottoms so much we questioned why we were even putting the thing together ...
But she got pretty into the assembly part as well. You just had to make sure not to tell her "no" (even in the nicest voice possible) or her eyes would well with tears.

The orange chair was the first one ready to try out and seemed to be the favorite.

The green chair was fun for a while ...
But after tipping off of it, that was the end of that.

Other things I got to do while I was there included shopping, meeting up with several of my close friends (no pictures! sad!), going twice to the physical therapist, going to see Valkyrie with my parents, and going out to Sushi with my Dad (and we even got Mom to try some too). I also got to see a house in their neighborhood burn to the ground (we were kind of scared at first and then figured out that it was an old house being burned down on purpose as a training exercise).

My sister Kate was pretty busy during the week with homework (I helped her a little bit, but not much) so on Friday we had a date night. We went out on the town for a while and then came back and watched Mamma Mia and had a dance party. Who-hoo!!

On Saturday my mom, sister, and I went skiing at the Canyons. We had a GREAT day. After the first run I wasn't sure my legs were going to make it the entire day, but after a couple of runs they were used to it (it had been about 4 years). I was willing to go on some double blues but Katie had to do the blacks on her own.

It was FREEZING at the top of the mountain! Although I'm afraid it didn't feel much different than it felt like walking to school here in Maryland a week ago.

When we got home, we were treated to some of my Dad's homemade soup and we situated ourselves in front of the fire to work on our puzzle while cousins and other family members stopped by. And I got to see more of cute little Belle.

And then we had to stay up half the night working on a 1,000 piece puzzle I'd convinced my family to start earlier in the week.
We got semi-close to finishing (right!) but my mom got me to go to bed by promising that she would finish it after I left, and not just put it away. My dad was a great sport and with his skills (though previously rarely shown off) they were able to get it done! I'm so glad.

And then I was on my way back to Baltimore, just in time to start the semester (which has been kinda rough so far, by the way!). It was a fantastic trip ... although always a little bitter-sweet, because the missing each other gets a little stronger after spending time together. But I guess I am used to it by now. Thanks for the fantastic time! Can't WAIT to see you in May.

Inauguration 2009

[By the way, this post is from Joe...]

I didn't vote for Barack Obama, but I am proud to be an American and respect the democracy that we live in. Therefore, instead of talking negatively about what a train wreck is going to occur, or being critical of a huge inauguration celebration to crown a new king in the wake of an economic depression, or saying how something bad has happened to the country like I've heard others say in recent weeks, I will give my support to our new president and remain optimistic that the changes he promises will make this country stronger and help rescue it from struggles that we find ourselves in. Certainly, I am worried about what may happen in the next few years, but at this point I feel like it is my duty to support the new president. Many republicans are already so anti-Obama before he's even spent an entire day in the white house. How much different is this than all the now anti-Bush people who forgot they voted for him twice, forgot they were among the majority in supporting the war in Iraq, blame him for all of todays economic troubles, and now desire to accuse him of criminal action?

But now to the reason for this blog. Today is an historic day with an African-American becoming president of the United States. It hasn't been very many decades since African-Americans were segregated and oppressed. Most African-Americans never dreamed of this day, and living in Baltimore I've been able to see how much this means to many people. You can understand that they have great reason to celebrate. Mormons would have celebrated had Mitt Romney won the nomination, and although perhaps the nation isn't and never will be ready for a Mormon president, I am proud that Americans were ready for a black president. Even with this monumental step, racial tension is still very strong today. I sometimes question from what direction the tension comes. It seems that some don't really want improvement and continue to be play the victim, i.e. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Reverend Wright, and my new guy today Joseph Lowery. He's the guy that gave the inauguration benediction today. All four of these men are religious ministers, presumed men of God who are supposed to bring peace and love to earth. Here is portion of Joseph Lowery's prayer today:

"We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxtnvvyYp8

I know he was trying to be cute and funny, but how is this acceptable? This is a down right racist comment in a prayer on a day when America was supposed to be taking a huge step forward showing that color of skin wouldn't limit a person from becoming president. In my opinion, racism is only fueled by these words. Praying for a day when white will embrace what is right? Praying for a day when black will not be asked to get back? Since when has that happened? Yellow to be mellow? Yellow as in Asian? He just put people in five different groups based on the color of their skin. Not the best start to what is supposed to finally help put racism to rest and allow us to live as people unified in cause. God bless this nation.