"It's okay, I just sneezed my soul out." - Brittany

Sorry, everyone!!! We didn't get our blog done last week because we were just so darn busy. But this blog will cover 2 weeks, so you won't miss out on anything.

First order of business:

HOORAY, TODAY IS OUR HALF ANNIVERSARY!!!! We've been married for 6 months! And it's gone amazingly well so far. We've gotten frustrated at each other and definitely had disagreements, but we haven't ever raised our voices at each other; we're trying to establish good habits and learn how to solve disagreements effectively. It's working really well. :) We owe it all to the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray (which we read together and discussed while we were dating). Seriously, it's helped us understand so much more about each other- why on earth would she ever do this, what in the world possessed him to do that.... it's great. I highly recommend it.

Now Christian will write about last week, and then I will write about this week.

Ok Ok. I know I fail. Torch and pitchforks; shame shame on me. I'm SORRY! Excuse me for practicing so much to get an A on my juries!

Hanyway, on the 2nd I had my final concert of the semester. It went really well, even though most of the winds didn't even play for half the concert. We had some guest artists on piano, and so we played Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens. If you don't know the song, you probably do. :p Click HERE for a link to the finale. It's pretty awesome, but it was basically for strings and piano with a little flute, clarinet and percussion thrown in every now and then. It was fun anyway.

On Saturday the 5th I performed in TubaChristmas as part of my brass workshop class. This is an international even held every year in different areas. People come from all over to perform Christmas songs in a tuba/euphonium ensemble. It sounded great for only doing a 2 hour rehearsal that morning and then a performance at noon. I had to leave from the concert early because the Cougars had a basketball game against San Francisco State up in Salt Lake City. Why we played there, I don't even know. Anyway, it was awesome. We beat 'em to bring our record to 8-1 (we lost to USU a couple days earlier; and it is now 10-1). I play at one more game on Thursday, and then I'm done with that for the semester, but the team plays a couple games during the Holidays.

We had our first snow last Sunday! It was lots of fun to see 4 inches of snow on the ground! It was interesting driving around for the first time in it too. I may or may not have had a few times where I turned the steering wheel, and the car didn't follow it. No accidents though. Here's some pictures of our first snow, and the Christmas decorations Mama M sent us in a Christmas package!!! :) :)

This is a house that Brittany thought looked adorable. I think

her exact words were "AWWWWWWW!"

This is our street.

Our mailbox

Brittany in front of Aspenwood

Me in front of Aspenwood

:)

Me after walking home from the bus stop.

Don't you like the hair?

The Christmas Corner

We love our tiny tree :)

The window above our Christmas corner.

Over the past few weeks I've had a hard time trying to put together a piece for the ward Christmas program. I've sort of doubted my abilities and all that in leading a group. I'm not used to having all the responsibility be on me. I've also come to realize what a struggle to find times for rehearsals that work, and get people to come. We have such a musically talented ward (even though most of them are closet musicians), and it was hard to see only 5-8 people show up each week.

Last week at choir, though, it looked like a normal rehearsal with only a few people, but as a little time went by people started trickling in and we ended up having about 15 people at rehearsal! It was such a pleasant surprise, and it made conducting a lot easier. To help us out, the bishop authorized a "music appreciation class" during Sunday School this week. Basically it was a way to do choir rehearsal during church since 1) we have church at 8am and 2) there are, I think, 8-10 wards that meet in our building so finding rehearsal space and time is crazy hard. But there, we had probably 25ish people. Then at the performance during sacrament meeting, as will commonly happen, a few people jumped up and sang even though they hadn't rehearsed. But it was so much fun to be there and see a group perform from a conductor's standpoint.

Anyway, here's Brittany now for this week.

Last Monday late morning I was walking on the packed-down slippery melting snow. My feet slipped out from under me and I fell hard, flat on my butt on the sidewalk in the middle of BYU campus. I guess I bruised my tailbone. Since then, it's hurt to run, bend down normally, and sit up straight from a lying-down position. You don't realize what parts of your body you use all the time until you hurt them. I've learned how to be creative with my bending down and sitting up so it doesn't have to hurt. I look kind of stupid when I do it, but as long as it doesn't hurt it's fine with me. It's been getting better, though. The only times I've noticed it at all are when I'm sitting up from lying down on the bed, and when I'm shoveling snow. And even then it doesn't hurt half as bad as it did on Monday.

We ordered our Christmas presents for each other early this year, because we wanted/really needed them before Christmas. My laptop was running really slow, so we got some RAM for it. And Christian wanted some more room on his hard drive so he could play more games on it. So we got each other computer memory! Awwwww, how romantic! We knew it wasn't really a necessity, so we couldn't justifiably buy it and factor it into our budget, but we figured it was a great idea for Christmas presents.

A while ago Christian registered in the "lottery" drawing for tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. We were lucky enough to get four tickets! So this last Friday night we planned on going on a double date with Christian's friend Chris Williams and a girl named Sabrina, to the Motab Christmas concert. We left Provo around 6:15 and we were supposed to be in our seats (in the Conference Center in Salt Lake) by 7 or else they'd give our seats away. We figured if we drove fast we could get there on time. But we didn't count on the entirety of the state of Utah also going to Salt Lake that night. Traffic was horrible. So we didn't end up getting there until about 8. Obviously, we couldn't go to the concert. So we walked around looking at the lights and cute little multicultural nativities on Temple Square. Then we got really cold so we went into the Vistors' Center to look at the Christus. It was beautiful. After that we went to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and watched the film showing at 9:00 (the last one of the day- we got lucky!), which was "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration". We all really enjoyed it, and there were a few tears. It was really powerful and the Spirit was really strong. The movie did a fantastic job of portraying the life of Joseph Smith and the truth of the Gospel. We had a really great time even though we never got to go to the concert.

Yesterday I worked with Devyn (the 7-year-old autistic boy I do ABA therapy with). Randomly while he was taking one of his breaks from therapy and I was taking notes, he wrote a note for me on a little orange sticky note and came and delivered it to me. Here's a picture of it. How cute!!!

Recipe for this week, courtesy of the Youtube series "Depression Cooking With Clara". Clara is a 94-year-old woman who grew up during the Depression and has a "show" where she teaches you how to cook all the dirt cheap but yummy meals her dad made during the Depression and she tells funny stories from the Depression while she cooks, it's way cute.

Poor Man’s Meal
3 small-to-medium potatoes peeled & cubed
1 onion, chopped
oil
hot dogs, cut up
couple tablespoons salsa or spaghetti sauce (we used salsa)
some water

Mix potatoes and onion, fry in oil until potatoes are brown. Put in cut up hot dogs and heat up. Add a tiny bit of water to soften potatoes and make a little sauce. Add spaghetti sauce or salsa and cook just until heated. Season to taste.

We thought it was very good considering the price. Overall to make it, it cost us about 86 cents. That's 43 cents a person if they eat like us. We ate it all and it filled both of us up perfectly. But we can usually eat about 2 "servings" each. Even if you have to buy everything in the recipe in its original package, and don't have any of these ingredients (except oil and water; everyone has oil and water), it will cost you about $4 if you get the really cheap brands like we do. And we're not dead yet. :)

Our Very First Thanksgiving!

Hello all!

This week we had our very first Thanksgiving as a married couple! Since a lot of family was out of town, and since both Christian and I had friends who didn't have anywhere to go, we made our own Thanksgiving dinner and invited our friends! It was an adventure. We made (almost) all the required fixin's: turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato balls, pumpkin pie, Bavarian strawberry dessert, and more. Christian was disgusted by the thought of giblets in his gravy, and both of us think cranberry sauce is revolting, so we went without those. I made the sweet potato balls, the strawberry dessert, and some of the green bean casserole, but Christian and his friend Chris made everything else. Chris slept over at our place the night before to help make pies and other stuff. Pretty much everything turned out great! Thanskgiving morning we went to Chris's apartment (much bigger than ours and a lot more room to cook in) to cook our turkey. We followed a recipe on Allrecipes.com for our turkey. Here's a picture of it cooking in the oven after we took off the foil.

Christian got to make the first slice in the turkey. :) My hero. Here's the picture to document it:

Sadly, when we started carving the turkey, we discovered that it was all done to perfection except the legs, which were still bloody. Which was weird, considering that the meat thermometer had been in the leg and it got up to 180 degrees. We tried to nuke it in the microwave, but the only microwave we had access to was probably made around the time of the Vietnam War, so the nuking didn't work out too well. We just threw them away and dealt with only having white meat. I think we took off the foil too late, and that's why the legs didn't get cooked and it didn't all get very browned. Oh well.

This is the amazing pumpkin pie that Christian and Chris made all by themselves at 5:00 am the day of Thanksgiving! It was delicious to the taste, and very desirable. :D And yes, it's homemade (except the crust, which was too daunting of a task for us to try our hand at). I'm proud of them.

After dinner, we all played games. Guesstures was especially amusing. Here's a video of Chris trying to convey the word "flirt" to Sarah (my roommate who came for dinner). Sorry it's so dark; I don't know how to fix it. And sadly, my little point-and-shoot digital camera doesn't record sound. So all we have is the video.

We have lots more pictures from the day, too. Most of them will be on my Facebook, since we don't want to fill up our entire post with pictures. Feel free to go look and comment. http://www.facebook.com/bfroggy326?ref=profile The day was great :)

On Saturday, while Christian was at the BYU/Utah football game, I went with Mary (my sister) and Derek (her fiance) and my aunt Laura to do a live session at the Salt Lake temple. It was fun to be able to spend time with them. I can't believe they're getting married in less than a month!!! Wow.

I will now let Christian write about how BYU OWNED UTAH at the football game on Saturday:

ZOMG it was such a great game! Utah brought out a quick lead with two field goals in the first quarter, and shut us down until we came back in the second quarter with a field goal of our own, and to everyone's love and adoration a touchdown. Then 4 seconds before halftime, we scored another field goal bringing it to 1 3-6 at the half. The bands then took the field and we each performed separately, and then following a 30-some-odd year tradition the bands shared the field to create the Red, White, and Blue band, and performed a patriotic song with a huge American flag that was unfurled in the middle of the song. It was awesome. The third quarter was slow, but BYU scored another touchdown bringing it to 20-6. In the fourth quarter I guess we got a little cocky, because we let two field goals and touchdown with a 2-pt conversion go through, bring it to 20-20. OVERTIME!!!!! Oh the crowd was going SO crazy. It was intense. On the first overtime, the Utes went first, and were able to crack out a field goal, much to our pleasure. All we needed was to score somehow to win, or tie it up again. So our quarterback, on the final down, passes it right up the middle to the tight end. Two Utes dive for him, and nab him. We're about to get ready for the next down, when he BREAKS THE TACKLE and all that's left is a clear field ahead of him. TOUCHDOWN COUGARS!!!!! As soon as he passed the goal line, the fans started clearing the stands. An almost literal sea of blue covered the field. The fans were picking up the players and started crowd-surfing them. At the peak there were probably 20k people on the field just crowding everywhere! It was so intense and the roar was so loud! It took probably 30 minutes to clear enough field so that they could do some senior recognition thing at the end. The band didn't really like that, because we had to perform as everyone was leaving after that 30 minutes. But oh well. Totally worth it to see such an awesome game. Vegas here we come! ~CM

The new joy of our life: a space heater! Aunt Laura gave us a spare one she had and it's been SOOOO AWESOME. We don't have to wear sweatshirts around the house anymore!!! It's AWESOME. WE LOVE IT.

Sorry, no recipe this week; we haven't really tried anything new. We were Thanksgiving-ed out. We are trying a new "Lasagna Roll-Ups" recipe in a few days, so look forward to that in our next exciting installment! Same Bat time, same Bat channel. :D

"I meant the first two, but the second one I didn't mean."

Yo, word up dawg. This be C-dizzle fo rizzle. How ya bizzle? lol ANYWAY. I'm done. The quote for the title was by me. We were reading for our Marriage and Family class, and it was talking about how I should say to Brittany "I love you" "You're beautiful" and "I'm sorry." So I said them. All in a row. It made her laugh because it seemed random. Anywho, I came back with my quote about how i meant the first two, but the second one I didn't mean (yet). Kinda confusing no? Whatever, my brain was hurting. Yay homework.

So the 13th, and last Tuesday BYU had our first Men's basketball games. I'm in the pep band, so I got the opportunity to go and cheer on the cougars! It was lots of fun and we won both of those games. I haven't paid any attention to away games, so I don't know their record, but apparently we've always done really well each year. We'll see how well they do this year! Hopefully we'll get a nice long trip for NCAA playoffs.

We played Air Force in football yesterday. It was a brutal beginning as BYU totally dominated, but later on there were some horrible calls and Air Force got some points on the board. But we won. The Air Force Drum and Bugle Corp came and performed at the game as well. It was fun to see them perform, as we don't really get the chance to watch any other bands perform ever. They played Brazil by Frank Sinatra (I think. They had some trouble playing over the percussion, as there was a small front ensemble consisting of an electric bass, electric drum set, and a couple of other electric drums.) Good game.

Friday, we went and helped a family move out of their house into a new apartment that's still in the ward. We have been trying to do service each week and this was our opportunity this week. As we were helping them load up their stuff, we realized how much stuff it's possible to live without. They had tons of just random chairs, sports equipment (including snowboards, golf clubs, lacrosse rackets (or whatever you call them), etc etc), tv, a California king bed with head and foot boards, a ginormous couch, lots and lots of lamps, a treadmill, a ping pong table. We are very very grateful for how easy we've been able to forget about so many luxuries that we could have. We have a tiny apartment with not a whole lot of stuff in it, but we are extremely happy and we always can find things to do together that don't cost money, and don't need much room for.

Tonight, we got invited over by our home teachers for dinner, along with the other couple they home taught. We had burritos/nachos. It was very delicious and lots of fun to hang out with some families from the ward. For our lesson this month we watched "From the Mouth of Babes"; a movie asking questions to kids about the gospel. Our favorite quote from it was "Q: Where do good people go? A: Heaven Q: What happens to bad people? A: They get spanked!" lol such a cute movie with so many cute little kids.

We got a package from Mama M this week full of stuff to prepare for our first homemade Thanksgiving feast this Thursday! She even included ingredients for gumdrop turkeys (of which Brittany ate one before she knew what they were for, but that's ok!). It's my favorite time of year from now til December because of so many family traditions that I remember. I look forward to creating new ones, and combining old ones with Brittany and discovering what our family enjoys. So many new things to look forward to being married.

Today was the second rehearsal of the BYU 93rd Ward Choir under the direction of yours truly. This week went much better, as we actually had a piece that was written for SATB. The women appreciated that. Still working on getting people out to sing, but I'm planning on emailing the ward. There's also rumors of callings going out to folks to be in the choir. I think I'm starting to feel more comfortable as I get to know the capabilities of those in the ward. For our Christmas program we'll be singing While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks arranged by Sally DeFord, and The First Noel/Jesus Once of Humble Birth arranged by David A. Zabriskie. I wanted to sing a quartet that I sang years ago in Stake Youth Fireside called "Mary's Joseph" but apparently that sacrament meeting is going to be full of other people singing and talking. Apparently though, we go do service at an old folk's home that they said we could sing at, but there's no piano there. We'll see how everything works out.

Anyway, life's good. 'SGood. Recipe from this week is homemade chicken nuggets. We got this recipe out of Mary's gift to Brittany. We really enjoyed it, and it was super easy. Love yall

~Chris and Brittany

5 chicken breasts, boned and skinned

2 cu dry bread crumbs (we used Italian flavored)

1 1/2 tsp paprika (we used seasoning salt)

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

1/2 cu milk

2 tsp butter or oil (really, just enough to fry the chicken in)

Cut up the chicken breasts into bite size pieces. Mix the dry ingredients in a ziploc and set aside. Beat the egg in another bowl and add the milk to it. Dip the chicken into the egg, and then put it in the ziploc and cover with the breading. Heat the oil in the frying pan and fry the chicken until it's done.

The chicken came out really juicy. We used only 3 chicken breasts, and that along with some steamed broccoli filled the two of us up, though I ate a little too much. lol It was really good!

kbye

"You're fun to go shopping with. I LOVE hazelnuts!"

This quote is by me, while Christian and I were driving to the store. Yes, these two sentences did come immediately following each other. Sometimes I say things that seem relevant to the conversation according to me, and then later from the confused looks on people's faces, realize that they seemed completely irrelevant to everyone else. This was one of those times. I promise it seemed relevant at the time.

The weather was SOOO nice this week (up until the weekend). It averaged about 65 degrees, and we had a slight breeze. There were very entertaining crisp autumn leaves all over the sidewalks all over town. I decided autumn is my second-favorite season (spring is my favorite). Simply because I have a thing about leaves. It's so incredibly satisfying to see an especially big, crisp, crunchy one ahead of you on the sidewalk, then step on it and hear it crack and crumble underneath your foot. It makes me happy. Or, even better, a huge PILE of the crisp crackly leaves that you can trudge through and kick.

This weekend, though, we got our first real snow of the season! We didn't get much more than icicles on the car and a little bit of snow on the ground in Provo, but in American Fork where I was working that afternoon, they got about an inch! It was really exciting! We were going to drive up to where there was snow and take pictures, but we didn't get around to it... so if it snows later this week we'll try our hardest to take pictures. :) Late on Sunday night temperature dropped to I think the lowest it's been all year (at least that we've been out in): 25 degrees. It was crazy!

On Saturday I went to take my second midterm exam for Statistics for Psychology- deemed to be the hardest exam of the year. I was pretty confident, but I came out and saw a 96 next to my number on the Testing Center screen! 96!!!!! I hadn't been THAT confident! I was super proud of myself.

Sunday we had stake conference in the Provo Tabernacle: a welcome opportunity, because it started at 10 and we usually have church at 8. Christian and I are in the stake choir, and we performed two beautiful pieces at stake conference. It was really cool to sing in the Provo Tabernacle because we got to sit up on the second story choir seats and look down on the congregation. We were also the only ones in the congregation who got padded chairs; hooray for being in choir!

This week we received our 4 tickets that we'd ordered for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert on December 11! We're super excited and looking for another couple who'd like to go with us on a double date to it. It should be really fun!

A Christmasy song to amuse you this week: "You Will Behave Like Gentlemen", to the tune of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen". It's about a mom and dad and their two little sons who are going to Grandma's house for the holidays, and the dad is lecturing them about how they should behave at Grandma's house. Christian and I heard this song on the radio last year around Christmastime and thought it was hilarious, but haven't been able to find it until now! Go to this link http://kxoj.com/morningblog/?p=1946&cpage=3 and click on "You Will Behave Like Gentlemen".

Recipe for this week: Herbed Potato Soup. We tried this because it had so many great raving reviews, and we decided we're definitely adding it to our family cookbook. It's delicious!

Herbed Potato Soup

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced

2 cups water

1 large onion, chopped

1/4 cup butter, cubed

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp dried rosemary, crushed

1/4 tsp pepper

1 1/2 cups milk

Directions

1. Place potatoes and water in a large saucepan; cook over medium heat until tender.

2. Meanwhile, in another saucepan, saute onion in butter until tender.

3. Stir in the flour, salt, thyme, rosemary, and pepper.

4. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes.

5. Add potatoes with cooking liquid; heat through.

Serves 2 very hungry adults (recipe originally said it served 6... I guess that's how much we can eat).

Notes

We put in 1/2 tsp oregano instead of thyme, and it turned out delicious! Christian also sprinkled his soup with cheddar cheese and said it tasted great, like a baked potato. I liked mine just the way it was. It's super easy and relatively quick, and delicious!

We hope everyone is doing well! Love you all!

"I'll run in and yell like an elephant, but I might do a duck"

The quote from this week is from Who's Line is it Anyway? How are these girls even alive? I mean really!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSs7NCWp6kA

Sorry mom! It's all my fault, AGAIN, that it's so late this week. Epic failure. *sigh* Anyway, this week was pretty busy. Lots of fun things went on. I registered for my winter classes on Sunday night. I even got into all the classes I had planned because Brittany had registered for some to save a spot for me. I'm so lucky to have her :). So I got registered for the 10 classes that I'm taking. Total of 15.5 credits. Isn't it awesome being a music major? Hopefully it won't be too much of an overload. I look forward to next semester, because after that I'll be able to apply for the actual music ed program instead of being a "pre-music" major. Woot!

I've finally picked out a piece for my juries (it's like a final in private lesson class). If anyone cares to know it's Villanelle by Paul Dukas. Here's a youtube link if you want to listen to it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8jmxtUGBw0. The performer is Steve Park, the professor at Utah State. Brittany has agreed to play piano for me, the sweet woman that she is. It's hard for her to find practice time, but she's so awesome in being willing to put in the effort. We'll see how things turn out.

Friday, Brittany and I went to the Bean Museum on campus for a biology assignment for me, and biology extra credit for Brittany. There was a show on invertebrates. It was kinda cool. They showed off all kinds of bugs and mollusks and other such things. They had this huge hairy tarantula that freaked out a bunch of people there, and a Madagascar hissing cockroach (you know, the ones that they made the people eat all the time on Fear Factor), and millipedes and centipedes. After that, the presenter decided that the bugs weren't cool enough, so she brought out a California king snake that she showed off. I got to hold it and Brittany touched it at least lol. There was a girl there that was absolutely terrified of all of the specimens. Thanks Brittany for not being like that girl.

Saturday, I went to St. George with the band. We were invited to perform in the high school Bands of America super-regional competition as the exhibition band. Imagine, nine hours on a bus for an eight minute performance. lol It was lots of fun though. The band performed phenomenally, and the crowd was way into it. It made things so much better. Brittany was home all day long by herself, unfortunately. I'll let her blog about what she did then. (Insert Brittany's stuff here when she gets home from work)

Sunday Brittany and I performed "Peace I Leave With You" by Rob Gardner in sacrament meeting. We performed this in Brittany's parents' ward about a year ago, and our bishop mentioned that he didn't want to do an intermediate hymn ever again because there was so much talent in the ward for special musical numbers. It went really well and we both got lots of compliments. I really enjoy performing with Brittany. It always seems to be better when it's with her.

I also had my first rehearsal as ward choir director. What a fiasco! For one, no one seemed to want to come to it. I was told we had lots of singers in the ward, so I'll be making some calls and "inviting" people to come sing. Also, the music that I was trying to work on was voiced, originally, for four-part mens. I had tried to re-voice it, but didn't have time to get it into Finale. So I tried to get the altos to sing bass clef and octave higher, but nothing seemed to work out. Then, I found out that our rehearsal had to be cut short because the next ward's choir was supposed to rehearse. *sigh* oh well, we'll see how it all works out.

Anyway, I have to get to band practice. We are having a concert tonight. This week's recipe is what we call Fried Zucchini Casserole. The original name is Zucchini Rice Casserole, but we decided to name it differently because it reminded us of fried zucchini. Hope you enjoy! Love yall

Christian and Brittany

Fried Zucchini Casserole

Ingredients:

2 lbs zucchini

¼ cup butter

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 ¼ cup white rice, cooked

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup bread crumbs (we used Italian bread crumbs, and it was yummy)

2 Tbs butter, melted

grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to broil setting. Grease a 9x13 baking dish and set aside. Cut ends from zucchini and steam until tender. Dice. Combine butter and vegetable oil in a cooking pot and heat until butter is melted. Add cooked rice and zucchini and sauté until golden, stirring frequently. Stir in the cheese until it is melted. Quickly stir in the eggs, and before they’ve had time to cook in the pot, pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle generously with bread crumbs, and drizzle with the melted butter. Broil on the top rack of the oven for about 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbly. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan cheese, if desired.

Notes:

*We changed the original recipe a lot even before we typed it up for you. The recipe was also originally intended for use with a Dutch oven instead of a cooking pot. We altered it to work with a stove. These are the directions we gave you.

*If you have a rice cooker that has a steaming basket, you could cook the rice and steam the zucchini at the same time. We chopped the zucchini first, then steamed it (so we’d have room in the steaming basket for it). Also, we were impatient for the rice and zucchini to sauté to the “golden” stage (it was taking a surprisingly long time), so we just continued with the recipe before it was golden. It was just fine.

*Interesting tidbit: the original recipe was named “Zucchini Rice Casserole”, but when we tried the casserole Christian exclaimed how much it tasted like fried zucchini. I agreed, so we officially re-named it.

I jus' wanna let you know, the backa yo' head is ridikkulus!

The title comes from this MadTV excerpt: "Can I Have Your Number?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRbkkqZikx4 It's awesomely funny. DISCLAIMER: There are maybe 4 or 5 milder swear words interspersed in here, but the rest of the video is so funny that it makes up for it.

Last week we forgot to relate to you an exciting story: the story of our very first burnt dinner as a married couple!!! *cue the awwwww's* I know!!! Christian was taking a nap, so I was in charge of dinner. I was making Chicken Parmigiana again (see the recipe from a few posts ago). I got everything ready, put the chicken in the oven, set the oven's timer for ten minutes (which was when I was supposed to turn over the chicken), and then went and laid down on the bed. BAD idea. Two hours later, I awoke to a curious smell permeating the apartment. In my groggy, just-awoken state, it took me a minute to figure out what the smell was. It dawned on me. I gasped and jumped up from the bed, and opened the oven to reveal a baking dish full of black, charred, shriveled, very smelly Chicken Parmigiana. I stared open-mouthed at it for a minute, then went and woke up Christian so he could see. We both started laughing. We went out to eat that night. We had to resort to the hard-core baking soda method of cleaning the burned-on stuff off of our baking dish. And our apartment smelled faintly like burnt chicken for at least a week or so afterwards. Not an exceptionally pleasant smell to come home to. So did all of our clothes, since our bedroom is so close to the kitchen. We had to wash them all.

Tragic story of the week: On Friday I had a 5-page research paper due for biology on the benefits of stem cell research. I stayed up until 4 AM Thursday night (well, technically Friday morning) doing it. By the time I was done, I was SUPER tired, but I finally finished it and emailed it to myself so I could print it off at a school computer the next day before class. I closed the paper. Then I clicked on the link that I'd emailed myself, and to my horror I discovered that I had sent myself just my rough draft (just some bullet points of things I was planning to talk about). My real, finished paper was DELETED. GONE. I woke Christian up and he very kindly - even though he was very tired - helped me search my entire computer including temp files and everything. But it was completely GONE. And it was 4:00 AM and I had to get up in two hours (at 6:00) to go to class. After a giant pity party and a few "Why???? WHY???? I didn't do anything!!!"'s, I eventually regained enough composure to write a pleading email to my professor about it. He felt sorry for me. And so in class Friday, he extended the deadline for the papers until Monday!!!!! Hooray!!!!!! I still had to re-type the entire paper, but at least this time I knew in general what I was going to write about, and which sources I was going to use. So it was a little easier the second time around. I turned it in this morning. And it was beautiful.

On Friday we had our ward Halloween party. All right, all right, I know you've all been dying to know what we dressed up as. We went as.......*drumroll* ......Steve and Blue, from Blue's Clues!!! (ba-bow!!!) Obviously, Christian was Steve, and I was Blue. We picked up some clothes from D.I. to make our costumes with. You can't see it in the pictures, but my spots were cut out from an old blue t-shirt and taped on with packing tape (I didn't want to ruin my good blue t-shirt by sewing things onto it). We had to get kind of creative with the ears too. For Christian, we couldn't find a shirt at D.I. that looked exactly like Steve's. So we got one that could give the general effect, and he wore a nametag that said "Hello, my name is STEVE", so that people could tell who he was. Unfortunately, we didn't think about the fact that most people in our ward don't know us yet, and so they might think his name was actually Steve.... oh well. Here are the pictures: one that we took with the Halloween party backdrop (that may or may not complement our costumes), and two that we took of each other at our apartment.

There were SO MANY CUTE BABIES there, dressed as WAY CUTE THINGS!!!! There were little tigers with eyeliner noses, and little pumpkins.... and one little baby was dressed as a dragon, and his mom was a damsel in distress and his dad was a knight.... awwwww!!!! Christian says I go baby-crazy every time we go to church. I guess I do. They're all just so darn cute!!! There was one baby blessed just this week named Apollo, and he's SO TINY and SOOO CUTE! They dressed him in this darling little knit white outfit that looked like a little snow suit.... it was ADORABLE..... ahem. Anyway.

Our last piece of news is that Christian was just yesterday given a second calling in the ward..... along with the Redeeming the Dead Committee Chairman, he is now also....... the ward choir director!!! I laughed out loud (literally) when the bishop told him. We'd been going back and forth about who we thought was going to be the new choir director. I guess it was him. Haha. But he's way excited about it, and I think he'll be amazing. He's already started looking up new pieces so that we can start having choir practice asap. This should be really fun for him, and he'll do really well.

I am still without a calling. However, the bishop knows (I reminded him) and says he is going down his list looking for people without callings, and calling them as things. I hope someone gets called to be the ward program printer person. We have no sacrament meeting programs currently...

And the most recent news of all (as of today): a couple weeks ago, there were auditions for the band that plays at the basketball games. There are 8 positions, and about 10-12 horns auditioned. Christian was the first to audition - like a week before everyone else - and he didn't really think much about it until today, when he was reminded that audition results are out today. So he went down and looked, and was surprised to find out that he got first chair in the band that plays at the mens' home basketball games! This comes along with a little more scholarship, which will make next semester even more financially feasible as far as funding goes. The first game is on November 13, and he is pumped!

Anyhow, here is the recipe for this week. And yes, it does say 1/2 CUP of basil. We tried it but with a few alterations that we think made it worse. Instead of fresh basil, we used the kind in the spice jar, since we didn't have fresh. We didn't have enough basil to make half a cup, so we also put in some oregano. And our shredded zucchini that we'd frozen beforehand didn't end up thawing very well - it ended up being mush, basically. I guess you're supposed to use fresh zucchini. Anyway, ours ended up being pretty much noodles with zucchini pesto sauce. It looks bizarre and green, with flecks in the sauce, and has a strong basil-y taste, so don't feed it to picky children if you're planning on them actually eating it. Perhaps it will be better if you use fresh basil, and zucchini that's not mush. I did actually like the taste of it somewhat. Try it out and see what you think. Maybe if you do it actually correctly it will be better. :D

Zucchini Alfredo

Ingredients

12 oz package uncooked noodles (egg noodles, linguine, fettucine, whatever)

3 Tbs vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 cups shredded zucchini

1/2 cup milk

4 oz cream cheese, cubed

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

salt and pepper to taste

grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add noodles and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.

2. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in garlic, and cook 2 minutes. Mix in zucchini, and cook 10 minutes, until some of the moisture has evaporated.

3. Pour the milk into the skillet, and stir in cream cheese until melted. Mix in basil. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Serve over the cooked pasta.

Anywho. Adios, amigos!

Brittany and Christian

Dead Pocket

Quote from this week is from Jim Gaffigan's comedy skit on Hot Pocket's seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9c9lAfXQHs lolol

So this week was really boring. Except NOT. Holy cow was this week busy. This week in brass workshop we finished up on trombone, and began on a tuba/euphonium portion. Those of us who play brass started on the tuba, and non-brass started on euphonium and baritone. As one of our first lessons we learned the difference between the two. If anyone cares, the trombone, baritone and euphonium are actually part of the same family, and are comparable to the trumpet family. The trombone=trumpet, baritone=cornet, and euphonium=flugelhorn. It all has to do with tubing sizes, and other such things. Anyways, so I got my tuba, and it's HUGE. I'm not talking compared to horn. Even compared to trombone it's big. It will be an interesting rest of the semester.

It was homecoming week this week. As such, the marching band played at the BYU devotional on Tuesday. I must say, we did awesomely. Our director said that even President Samuelson was up and rooting after we were playing (at least he was on the inside). There were lots of festivities going on throughout the week. We weren't able to go to any o

f the dances, though, because Brittany got called into work. It was unfortunate, but we had fun at home by renting Ghost of Girlfriends Past and watchin

g it together. It was a classic Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy.

We got a package from Mama M this week. We absolutely loved it! We got Halloween decorations to put up, and some candy! I'm very proud of myself, personally, because under normal circumstances the candy would have been gone in the first day or two, but a majority of it is actually still around! Thanks mom! Here are some pictures of our lovely home with the decorations:

Yesterday (Saturday) the band had TONS to do. We had a call time of 7:00 am so we could play for ESPN's College Game Day show that was held live in Provo this week. That was quite a waste of time for us, as we only ended up playing about 5-10 minutes of the hour and a half that we stood out there. The positive thing, in our (the band's) opinion was that in one of there coming-back-from-commercial intros they had a picture of the Provo Temple. We were impressed that they were willing to put that up there. '

After we left from the ESPN thing, we performed in the annual homecoming parade and pancake breakfast. That went well, and the band got 1st place in performance. Woohoo, we beat the only other band that was in the parade (which was a high school band). I wouldn't have volunteered to do it, but I guess tradition is tradition.

We then had about a three hour break for lunch. Then we had our call time for the homecoming game against TCU. We started out our pre-game practice in a medium-hard freezing cold rain, which continued into our ritual parade to the stadium. Luckily it stopped for the actual game. The rain must have been an omen for BYU, though. In the words of one of the sports announcers on the College Game Day show, BYU got "put over the leg of TCU, and spanked." It was a trouncing. Although, I have to admit that that was as much as the referee's fault as BYU's playing ability. There were lots of terrible calls that was just overall really frustrating. No use in complaining though. *SIGH* I just kinda wish my Saturday was spent in a better way.

On a happier note, about a month ago Brittany and I got an ad for a really cheap student discount deal on a Windows 7 upgrade. We decided to go for it because Brittany's laptop was running exceedingly slow, and we had heard that Windows 7 took up less RAM to run than Vista. We got that this week, and I spent an evening upgrading Brittany's computer. So far everything seems to be running a lot faster, and we are very pleased. We're not sure if we can use the upgrade on two computers, but once we get some more room on my hard drive we'll try upgrading mine.

Well it's very late, and I have to get up early so that I can practice for master class tomorrow. Apparently we're having a guest teacher - some crazy good horn player or something. The recipe this week was inspired by Leslie's giant zucchinis. It is Carrot Zucchini Casserole. It was surprisingly delicious, and didn't need any extra salt or anything in our opinion.

Love you all. Hope you have a good week.

Christian and Brittany.

1/2 lb ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

5 medium zucchini

5 medium carrots

1 can cream of mushroom

grated cheese (we used about 1 or 2 cups of cheddar)

Brown the ground beef and onion together and set aside. Steam the zucchini and carrots until tender. Mix it all together in a 9x13 with the cream of mushroom. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Fast and easy and really delicious! (Cheap and healthy too)

What are you sinking about?

Hello, all! We are officially back on schedule for our blog.

The clip the title of our blog came from, for this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vBn2_ia8zM

LOL.

First exciting news of the week: Christian's grants and scholarships came in!!!.... at a very, very opportune time. He got a Pell grant, a subsidized Stafford loan, and an Academic Competitiveness Grant. This will be extremely helpful in paying for school and other things. :) We're really happy and blessed.

D, the autistic boy I shadow at school, didn't have school on Thursday because of a "fall break" (I'm so jealous...). And Christian didn't have class. So on Thursday we both got a much-needed chance to sleep in. It was soooo nice. We'd been sleep deprived for a while, due to late work hours and homework. It was amazing to finally get a good sleep-in.

On Thursday afternoon, we got a knock on our door, which is actually unusual because you need an entry code to even get in to knock on our door. We answered it, and it was the plumber. He informed us that every time we drained water out of our kitchen sink, it released noxious gases out of our neighbor's bathroom sink (!?!?!). But he said he wasn't going to come fix it until Monday. Figures. So now apparently we are to avoid draining water from our kitchen sink for 5 days. Since we don't have a dishwasher, if we want to do the dishes we pretty much have to run (and drain) water in our sink. It's been really obnoxious trying to do the dishes without killing our neighbors with poison gas. We tried to do dishes in the bathtub, but it was gross and didn't work too well. So now we have settled with plugging the drain, filling our sink with water, and letting our dirty dishes soak in the water. There are only two of us, but we have a small sink and our sink is filling up fast. The plumber had better come tomorrow if he knows what's good for him. It's getting gross around here.

On Friday we both came home from class and conked out again. We slept from about 3 til 6 in the evening. It was a great nap, and then we woke up and went to the temple and did some sealings. It was nice to be reminded of our wedding day and do service at the same time.

On Saturday I had to work, but Christian got together with a bunch of his roommates from his freshman year at BYU. They had a great time reminiscing, eating chips and salsa, watching the football game, playing video games, and watching homemade movies. I was glad he finally got some interaction time with them; he's been missing them a lot. When we both came home we went over to Chris's house (Christian's friend) and hung out there for a while. We made dinner there. Note for all to remember: Never buy the 99-cent big family-size packages of store-brand egg noodles. We figured it was a good deal, and so we bought it, thinking the 99-cent kind of noodles couldn't be that much different than the regular kind; noodles are all made from the same basic stuff, right? We found out that apparently it can be VERY different. Those noodles turn straight from crunchy to slimy soggy mush. There is no in-between. It was kind of gross and we ended up throwing the leftover noodles away.

Now.... *drumroll* are you ready.... for the most delicious, mouthwatering meal that I have eaten in a VERY, VERY long time???? It made me want to do the scene from What About Bob, where he just keeps saying "Mmmmm... MMM!!! Mmm. Mmmmm, mmmm!" (clip is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvVKFCP5cCA) I just couldn't stop raving about how yummy it was!!! And it was super easy and only takes about 5-10 minutes of prep time, and you only bake it for 35 minutes! Start to finish in 40-45 minutes... AWESOME! You'll definitely want to add this one to the family cookbook once you try it. Behold.... the recipe for....

Chicken Parmigiana!!!

(courtesy of our "Taste of Home" cookbook... is it legal to re-type this?)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

3/4 tsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 oz each)

1 jar (26 oz) meatless spaghetti sauce

3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 375. In a shallow bowl, combine the bread crumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning, garlic powder and salt. In another bowl, lightly beat the egg. Dip chicken in egg, then roll in crumb mixture.

2) Place in a 13x9x2 baking dish, coated with cooking spray. Bake, uncovered, at 375 for 10 minutes on each side.

3) Pour spaghetti sauce over chicken; bake for 5 minutes. Sprinkle with shredded cheeses; bake 10 minutes longer or until chicken juices run clear. Serves 4.

Our Alterations:

Instead of 3/4 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan, we bought a bag of shredded "Italian Five Cheese Blend", which included mozzarella, provolone, romano, asiago, and parmesan, and just used a cup of that. We also used Italian-seasoned bread crumbs. Both were divine!

Believe me, guys, this recipe is to DIE FOR.

=============

Anyway, now that I'm done ranting about that recipe, I'll call it a blog. Hope everyone's doing well! Love you all!

Brittany and Christian

"Any two for elevennis?" - from Victor Borge's "Inflationary Language"

The link from which the title comes from is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY6kElOYcd8. VERY HILARIOUS! :) :)

Anywho, sorry about writing so late this week. It's all my fault. Brittany has been badgering me about it since Sunday, but I've just been crazy busy (more like crazy lazy).

The weekdays never really are very exciting. Mostly just class, work, class, and more work. Oh, and add in a little homework there too. We did have some reprieve over the week, though, because Lanie was in town for recruiting for Exxon. Brittany, on one of the days, went to one of her class/lecture/things and got a bunch of free pizza. lol. We invited Lanie over for dinner, where we made ratatouille (recipe to follow), and then went to the creamery for ice cream. We had lots of fun! We love you Lanie! Thanks for having work in Provo! :)

Friday night we went and spent the night at Leslie's house again. Mike flew in for the weekend to see everyone, again, and we all hung out and stayed up until crazy o'clock playing games. That was lots of fun. We really enjoy going up there. So much, in fact, that I left some clothes up there so that we would have a reason to come up again. More on that later, though.

Saturday, we woke up and had a lazy morning, and then left so that Brittany could go to work. Saturday ended just like that. Lots of work, both homework and the other kind.

Last night (Tuesday) the marching band performed at a high school competition as the exhibition band. We were really pumped, because this is the one show a year that we get to perform for people who actually appreciate what we're doing on the field. It was a very very exciting show, and we performed really well.

I don't know how many of you heard about the American Fork High School marching band, but on the way back from a competition last week one of their buses rolled over, and a few students were injured and one of the directors was killed. Only a week later, they decided to participate in this in spite of what happened. It was a very brave thing for them to do. Lots of the other bands wore American Fork colored arm bands to show support, and the BYU band performed Amazing Grace at the end of our show for them. It was a very sweet moment.

Anyway, Brittany wants to vent some about her STUPID biology teacher/test, and then the recipe. Hope yall have a great week.

Loves,

Christian

____________

So when I signed up for biology at the beginning of the year, I looked on ratemyprofessors.com and figured out the best biology teacher. Students were raving about how easy it was to get an easy A in his class, that the tests were super easy, that he was interesting and fun and had a good personality. So I said, "Great!" and I signed up for his class. It seemed great until I took the first midterm exam. I thought I knew mostly everything he'd talked about in class (at least enough to get a score in the low 90's). But the test was ridiculous. There were at least 3 questions whose answer choices were designed in this format:

A. the answer we talked about in class, that we decided together was the answer to this exact question

B. an answer we never mentioned in class but is true if you look at it the right way

C. an answer we also never mentioned in class but is true

D. only A and C

E. all of the above

I'm not exaggerating. Is that not ridiculous? I knew which statements were true and which ones weren't. I knew the material, which is what the test is SUPPOSED to test you on. The hard part about the question was figuring out whether he was the type of teacher that would choose A or E as the correct answer - you could argue for both. This is a biology test, not a psychology test. If I had known the exam would be like this, I would have spent more time studying the teacher than the material.

So after I received a grade on the test that didn't accurately reflect how well I knew the material, I went to dispute some questions with the teacher (as did pretty much the entire class). Come to find out, this teacher had a hard time understanding why I wanted an A. He considered a C a good grade. And apparently he had purposely designed the test questions to be "tricky" (aka ridiculous) because the biology department had yelled at him last year for having his class average on exams be too high (aka making his tests too easy). I understand that you can't give "easy" exams, but you can give FAIR ones! If a student knows the material, they should be able to get a grade on the exam reflecting that. If they don't know the material, they should get a grade on the exam reflecting that as well. I explained to him why I wanted an A out of the class, and he agreed to give me credit for two of the 3 unfair test questions, which bumped my class average up to barely an A.

Apparently the testing center gives teachers feedback on how "good" their test questions are, based on how well students did on the question: if students with a low score on the rest of the exam got the question wrong, and students with a high score on the rest of the exam got the question right, it was considered a good question because those who know their stuff can get it right, and those who didn't know their stuff can't. My teacher revealed that the testing center rated 90% of his questions as "Poor" questions. If he was taking an exam-question-making test, he would have gotten a 10% on it.

Anyway, I'm done ranting now, so here's the recipe for ratatouille.

Ratatouille

Ingredients:

1 medium sized onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium or large eggplant, diced

1 can stewed tomatoes

2 medium zucchini diced into large chunks

herbs as desired (try basil)

olive oil (enough to saute onion/garlic)

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Saute the onion and garlic till tender. Add eggplant and tomatoes, bring to simmer. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Add zucchini. Simmer for 10-15 more minutes until vegetables are suitably soft. Remove from heat, stir in herbs, and season to taste. Serve over rice, egg noodles, pasta, or boiled cubed potatoes.

Our Alterations:

We thought shredded cheese on top would have been great. Also, I think we chopped our zucchini a little tooo large, because it came out a little underdone while the eggplant was just right. We served it over egg noodles and we loved it.

Enjoy!

Love you all!

Brittany

Of Pirates, Potatoes, and Pizza

Sorry, all!!! We missed our Sunday blogging this week.... so, happy belated blog day everyone! This week has actually been an exciting one! Or, at least, the weekend was.... which is our excuse for not blogging on Sunday.

On Saturday both Christian and I had to work: me from 2-4, and him from 6-11. For work that day, I wasn't doing actual work but was hired to help with a birthday party for the little boy I work with, who was turning 7. Christian was going to drop me off at work and head over to Leslie's (our cousin's) house and spend time with them before he had to go to work. But when we got to my work, we discovered that TONS more kids than they had expected were showing up. About 15 or 16 very rowdy six-to-seven-year-old boys showed up. And there were only 3 reliable adults there, including me. So Christian decided to stay and help with the party, brave soul that he is. The kids loved him. They all had a great time throwing around pirate-speak, decorating treasure chests, dressing up like pirates, going on a treasure hunt, etc (can you tell it was a pirate-themed party?). After the chaos had subsided, I resolved to make my kids follow my mom's rule of thumb about birthday party guests: you can only invite however many guests as years you are old. 15 six-or-seven-year-olds running around your house, screaming and throwing beach balls at each other, in pirate gear, all on sugar highs, at once.... is way too much chaos for anyone.

After the party, Christian and I went home so that he could go to work. He is enjoying his work since it's very laid back and he has a lot of down time sometimes, where he can do whatever he wants: homework, Facebook, etc. Some days are pretty relaxed but some are insane, with him running around every 5 seconds to a different person who needs help. But he likes it. Apparently everyone else at his job has been in the position for at least from the beginning of the semester (the job that Christian got was because someone had quit). But even as the newbie, Christian is doing a great job.

After he got done with work at 11 pm on Saturday, we ran home, packed our sleepover stuff, and headed over to Leslie's. We had tons of fun playing Rage and Mad Gab with Chris and I, Leslie, Mike, and 3 of Leslie's kids who were still awake. We finally tucked in around 2:30 am. We slept on a double sized air mattress, and I discovered why Christian hates them so much. When ONE person sleeps on an air mattress, it's not so bad. You just wake up in a pit. But when TWO people sleep on one, then whoever is heaviest pushes the mattress down on one side, and the lighter person rolls down the hill and falls on top of the heavier person during the night. Christian woke up during the night as he was falling off the bed, and I was squished right next to him, almost pushing him off. It was really funny. We woke up the next morning and watched Conference and ate delicious homemade monkey bread and quiche and ALL SORTS of things for lunch. There was a ton of food and it was all so yummy!

P.S. Leslie, if you're reading this, please don't feel bad about the mattress. We really do appreciate the room you let us use, and we look forward to seeing you again this weekend! The mattress was no big deal really, it was just funny. :)

We left Leslie's after the Sunday afternoon conference ended, and went over to my aunt Nicole and uncle Tennessee's house to have dinner and hang out with my extended family. My grandma and grandpa were there, and so was my aunt Laura and her daughter Kira, my dad was there (because he had to give a presentation at UVU for his Excel course that he wrote), and of course me and Christian. We helped Nathan (Nicole and Tennessee's son) make his pirate costume for Halloween, and Christian roughhoused with all the kids. We ate a delicious dinner and helped do their dishes, then tried to get out of the way as fast as possible because they were packing to leave in the early morning for a trip to Disneyworld.

Monday was the last night my dad was here, because his plane left early this morning (Tuesday). So he came to pick me up after he did his presentation at UVU, and brought his friend Bro. Abarca (who did a "testimonial" at my dad's presentation about the course) and my grandma and grandpa. We wanted to take Christian with us, but he had school and work almost from dawn till midnight on Monday. So we all went to Brick Oven. It was delicious pizza, and we got lucky because the night we went just so happened to be "Get free root beer with pizza after 5:00 pm on Mondays" night. The pizza was super filling but super good, and I could only eat one slice. We had 3 slices left over when we were done, and we decided to take them to Christian at work. He had been starving pretty much all day and we felt bad that he didn't get to come with us. So since he was working in the library computer lab, and food really... technically... definitely isn't allowed in there, we had to figure out a way to sneak a take-home-sized box of pizza into the library. I ended up sliding it under my hoodie and blocking the squared-off edges of the box with my arms, pretending I was just really cold or something. We got through unnoticed by the security guards, and Christian didn't spill any pizza on the computers. Woot.

Recipe for this week:

Microwave Baked Potatoes

(Brittany's Super Easy, Super Quick, No-Poke, No-Bake, Easy-Peel version)

Directions:

1) Wash the dirt off the potatoes.

2) Put 2 or 3 potatoes on a plate. That's all. No poking, no buttering, no wrapping up.

3) Put that plate of potatoes in the microwave on High for about 8 minutes depending on size of potatoes. Small potatoes will be done in about 7 minutes, large ones may need up to 9 or 10 minutes. Warning: Hissing and worrisome noises may come from the potatoes in the microwave, but I take that to mean that air is escaping instead of being built up inside the potato... I have never had a potato even come close to exploding before, and I've done this a lot... :D cheers!

Potatoes will be soft, easily mashed, and baked all the way through. Skins will be loose, making it very easy to peel the skins off for overly picky children.

Anyway, have fun everyone! We love you all!

Brittany and Christian

Yes! Christian has a job! Final answer!

Biggest news of the week: (drumroll...........)

CHRISTIAN HAS A JOB!!! For real this time! Hooray!!!! The computer lab assistant people (who have been torturing him by offering him jobs multiple times then refusing it).... have finally given in! Christian is now a computer lab assistant at BYU, and has a picture nametag and everything! He starts work tomorrow. He will work the late evening shifts, because those are the ones they needed and that would work for Christian's busy school schedule. So usually he will be working about 7:00 pm til midnight. I have decided I will go with him to work and just chill in the computer lab that he's assigned to, and use that time to do my homework and go on Facebook and whatnot. It'll be kind of nice to have 5 hours of scheduled homework time, because that way I won't feel guilty about not doing it as soon as I come home. It'll also motivate me to study more, because I won't have much else to do in the computer labs besides study and do homework.

Needless to say, we had been getting concerned about his job in the past while (actually, pretty much ever since we got married). Job searching had been unsuccessful for a long time, and we were getting worried about it. A few weeks ago, we decided to fast and pray and go to the temple about it. We got the answer that right now was not the time. We were disappointed: we both wanted Christian to have a job, and we wondered why not now, but eventually came to accept "thy will be done" and to put the matter into the Lord's hands. I guess that was all He wanted us to do, because just a couple weeks later here comes a job! We also think that maybe it was also because Christian might have just needed a few weeks to get settled into his school schedule and get into his routine. It could be a combination of those, or just one of them. Either way, we're super excited that he has a job now!

______________________

We have been counting our blessings this week. Although we know we don't have much comparatively to many others, we know there are many, many people who are worse off, especially as we keep hearing at church about the pioneers, and all their challenges. As the gypsy's song "God Help the Outcasts" from Hunchback of Notre Dame goes, "I ask for nothing; I can get by. But I know so many less lucky than I." We also think that not having much right now will help us be more grateful once we do get to a more comfortable financial situation. We have caught ourselves saying "Won't it be awesome... when we actually have a COUCH???" and "Man, I can't wait till we have a CLOSET! And CARPET in our bedroom!" Lol.

But we love our little tiny apartment, and we are grateful for having a place to live at all, grateful that we have our trusty fans to keep us cool (and an oven that we can turn on in the mornings to keep us warm), grateful that we have a bed that's bigger than twin size, grateful that (almost) everything in our house functions like it should, grateful that we have clothes to wear, grateful that we live in a great city with super nice people, grateful that it only takes us 5 or 6 hours to completely deep clean everything in our entire home... the list goes on and on. We even figured today that we could live on even less, if we had to. Really, if the pioneers could survive like they did, we can too. BUT..... we are very grateful that we DON'T have to survive on a pioneer budget. Hooray!

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This week's recipe:

Baked Lemon Chicken (about 35 min start to finish, including prep time!)

Ingredients:

3 Tbs butter, melted

2 Tbs lemon juice

1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 oz each)

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2) In a shallow bowl, combine the butter, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. Place bread crumbs in another bowl.

3) Dip chicken in butter mixture, then coat with crumbs. Place in a 13x9 baking dish. Drizzle with the remaining butter mixture.

4) Bake, uncovered, at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until juices run clear.

Yield: 4 servings

We thought it was super good. The chicken came out very moist and tender! Christian even said he didn't usually like lemon chicken because it was too lemony for him, but this recipe was just the right balance. If you have a lot of butter left over (from having small chicken breasts), I'd suggest not drizzling it all over the top at the end, because our chicken came out a bit soggy because of it. However, Christian said he liked the sogginess. I didn't. I guess it depends on what you prefer.

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Oh - one funny thing to hopefully put a smile on your face this week:

We were driving down the road, making comments about how many posters there were advertising the flu shot. We thought they must desperately need the money from it or something because of how heavily it's been advertised around here. Then we saw one advertisement that we deemed the most desperate of them all, by far. It simply read: "FREE BAND-AID WITH FLU SHOT!"

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Anyway, we love you all and we are so excited for Mike and Alayne to come up here this weekend, as well as my dad! It'll be so fun! Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Brittany and Christian

Life in the doldrums

So this will be a short one, (twss) as we didn't really do anything spectacular this week. Life moves on in our days of school and homework and, in Brittany's case, actual work. She's been sick this week with a cold she caught from the boy she works with. It's mainly just sniffles and a nasty productive (as the doctors would say) cough, but hopefully she'll be better soon. I don't know if I'm getting it from her, but I've started getting a sore throat. I think it's mainly just exhaustion on my part.

One reason for the exhaustion is that marching band has been stepping it up a bit because we had our first home game yesterday. We've been hard at work preparing our half-time show. This week we played the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also from the original Star Trek, Hernando's Hideaway and Amazing Grace. It was a fun show, but the crowd didn't really react to it. People were kinda preoccupied with BYU losing 14-30 at the end of the first half. Unfortunately the losing continued and we ended up with 54-28 loss, bringing our AP ranking from 7 to 19. Sheesh. I'm not even going to rant because the players probably already feel bad enough about themselves.

Monday there was a party for the French horn master class. This is a class I'm taking with basically all the horn music majors. We all met at the horn professor's house and ate pizza and chatted for a while with everyone. It was raining pretty hard and we lost power for about 30 min during the middle. After dinner was done, the majority of people went home, but Brittany and I stayed with a few others to watch a movie on Dr. Lowe's HD 60" flat screen. It was even Blu-ray lol. We watched I Am Legend. It was fun to watch it again, but Brittany was a little freaked out because they kept jumping in through windows, and she has a thing with windows in her nightmares. It's ok though. We know that the monsters aren't going to come get us for another couple years. (The movie was supposed to take place in 2012, with the "cure" supposed to be happening this month actually).

Anyway, nothing else has really happened. We're boring, we know. Love everyone

Christian (and Brittany)

P.S. the shake and bake chicken we posted last week went well. It was delicious. So go try it. NOW!

P.P.S. Recipe this week is Cline's Shepherd's Pie

2 lbs ground beef, browned and drained

10 servings of mashed taters, hot

2 cans of condensed veggie beef soup

about 2 cu of shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 400000000000000 degrees (or just 400). Mix ground beef with the veggie soup and put it in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Cover it with the taters and then sprinkle cheese on top. Cook for 15-25 min, until cheese is melted and deliciously gooey. Doesn't really need to be salted or anything because the veggie soup takes care of that. It's good.

Kbye

Food, glorious food!

We actually had an eventful week this week - yay!!!

At the end of last week I got a call from a Mary Kay consultant saying that one of my old roommates (who is into Mary Kay) had chosen me to receive a complimentary Mary Kay pampering session at our home. I got to invite 5 friends to come and get in on the pampering, but as some people couldn't come I only ended up with 4 friends there. It was hilarious trying to fit everyone in our tiny apartment, but it worked out and it was lots of fun. Christian (surprisingly?) was not inclined to participate in the Mary Kay pampering session, so as soon as the mob descended on our apartment he left to go hang out with his friend Chris. They did manly things (or at least that is what I assume) like watch manly movies where things explode and there are lots of car chases, and talk about BYU's pwnage at football.

Christian is taking a music dictation class that starts at 8:00 am Tuesday/Thursday, and they took a mock final exam on Tuesday. If they got a good enough score, they could take that grade for the semester and not come to class or do any assignments anymore. Christian, the amazing musician that he is, got an A! So he receives an A for the entire semester and doesn't have to wake up at "stupid o'clock", as he calls it, to go to class Tuesday/Thursday anymore.

On Friday night we went to the BYU "Fall Fest", which was free with your BYU ID and boasted fun free activities like a dance, free food, a rock wall, free food, live bands, free food, a magic show, free food, a comedy show, free food, showing of Pixar's "Up!", free food, and oh, did we mention free food???? Can you guess the main reason that we went? Pretty much the entirety of BYU showed up. Probably all 30,000 students were packed into the Wilk and Brigham Square. This is what happens when you offer free food at a college function. People not from BYU also showed up, because it was only $3 without a BYU ID, which is a great price for free food and all those fun activities. It was fun, but we ended up going home early (after we had gotten food, of course) because all the fun activities were packed full, leaving no room for us. We had our own party at home with ice cream and Triple Chocolate Mess (see last week's post).

On Saturday there was a stake activity themed after the Olympics. 8 married-student wards divided into 4 countries (Greece, Italy, China, and Brazil) to compete in lots of fun games for the winning medals (made from York Peppermint Patties taped to appropriately-colored ribbons). There was a football toss, free food, a water balloon toss, free food, cantaloupe bowling, free food, 3-legged race, free food, a wheelbarrow/piggyback race, free food, tug-of-war, free food, a donut-on-a-string-eating-contest, free food, and even activities for everyone's babies (people helping them blow bubbles, mostly). Our ward was assigned Greece, so we were supposed to wear blue (since Greece's flag is blue/white). Christian and I actually did surprisingly well at the 3-legged race, and I surprised myself by doing better than average at the football toss. During the relay race at the end, combining all the activities, Christian pwned at the cantaloupe bowling; he got all the pins down with only two rolls while his 3 opponents stayed at the station for 7 or 8 rolls trying to get all the pins down. This gave our team a huge lead, and even though we had the slowest donut-eater (the last station) of all the teams, the lead was big enough to easily give Greece the victory! Originally we went for the free food (obviously), but it ended up being a really fun activity. We even found out our newlywed cousins J and M are in our stake. We were so excited to see them!

Today in our ward a girl gave a talk about provident living. She gave an old pioneer quote that we thought was really good: "Fix it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." We have decided that that will be our motto... pretty much for the rest of our lives as we are both in professions that aren't necessarily the highest-paying of all. But that's just fine with us. We're very happy together, and money isn't the most important thing.

We hope everyone is doing well and look forward to reading all your blogs or just hearing from you.

Love,

Brittany and Christian

P.S. We haven't tried this recipe yet (we planned to, but with all the free food this week our planned meals have been pushed back), but we are pretty pumped about trying it. It looks really easy and really yummy. Hooray for all-recipes.com! Here is the link to "Shake and Bake Chicken". http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Shake-and-Bake-Chicken/Detail.aspx We will try it soon and let you know in our next blog how it was. :)

I just lost The Game!!!!!

Hi everybody! Another week gone, but what a full week it was! Lots of exciting things going on.

First off, school started this week! It was way fun going to classes after three years of being away from BYU (no offense to North Harris and Tomball, but it's so much better going to university than to community college). Brittany and I have signed up for an LDS marriage and family class. I think it should be fun. We've already gone over some really cool stuff that has brought up lots of discussion between us. We decided not to take biology together because Brittany's teacher likes the things I hate about biology and hates the things I like. My teacher likes getting into the cellular stuff, which is what I enjoy most.

Marching band has been going great. We got about 2/3 of our show, which we're playing for our big performance in October, on the field. For that show we're playing Spanish Fantasy, Calm and Malaguena. It's some crazy hard music and drill, but lots of fun. We've also gotten the first movement of our A show, which we'll be performing at the Florida State game in 2 weeks. For that we're playing the theme from Star Trek, Hernando's Hideaway, Hey Good Lookin', and Amazing Grace. On the Star Trek song, we actually make the USS Enterprise on the field, and it moves across and blows up the Borg cube on the other side of the field. I'll try to post video as soon as I can.

Auditions for performing ensembles were on Monday, and I was kind of nervous because I'd been playing my lips off the week before for marching camp. When I picked up my concert horn on Monday, I sounded terrible because of marching camp, and also because I had my brass workshop class (where basically I learn to play all the brass instruments) and had been playing trombone all morning. But I was smiled upon by the powers that be, and on Wednesday I found out I was selected as principle horn in the symphony orchestra. For those of you who don't know music lingo, that's first chair in the second orchestra. I was hoping for an orchestra, and couldn't have gotten a better placement. It's going to be an exciting year and I'm excited for another crack at BYU performing ensembles.

Last night, Brittany and I went on a double date with my friend, Chris, and Brittany's old roommate, Joy. It was a blind date for them, and it went really well. Chris and I and Chris's other roommate (who helped us just for fun) made spaghetti with Chris's secret family recipe meat sauce, and garlic bread. It was very delicious. After that we watched The Sandlot, and played Risk 2210 (the futuristic version of it). It went really well and we all had fun.

Anyway, it's late and we're going to bed. Hope everyone is ok. Love lots.

Christian and Brittany

P.S.

Triple Chocolate Mess

1 chocolate cake mix

1 chocolate pudding mix (any size)

1 pint sour cream

6 oz chocolate chips

3/4 cu oil

4 eggs

1 cu water

Spray 4 qt crock pot with non-stick spray

Mix all the ingredients together in crockpot

Cook for 6-8 hours on Low

Serve over ice cream

It's good, but hard to clean up, so wash while it's warm.

Kbye