"So I was thinking, and I know it's terrible of me..." - Christian

So all this week Christian has been away from me, all day every day. Starting Monday, he had band camp. They learned marching drills, the entirety of their pre-game sequence (which is 7-8 minutes long), and about 2/3 of one of their shows for this year (they have 3 or 4 shows every year). It was an intense week. Almost every day, he was there from 8 am to 10 pm, with only an hour and a half break for each of lunch and dinner (a few days he only had to go a half day). He got sunburned too, pretty bad on his chin, which I assume he forgot to put sunscreen on. He got a burn on his chin that was really bad and blistered, and bled. It's still bleeding and scabby. So he gets to go to school tomorrow with a bleeding chin. The rest of him wasn't so bad. I missed him a lot while he was at band camp, especially as I've gotten so used to having him around all the time, and him being there when I came home from work. I had to come home from work and eat dinner by myself a couple times-- something I'm very not used to. But now band camp is over, hooray!!! And I get to spend time with him!

The beginning of this week we heard back from the PICS evaluator people, informing Christian that the position he'd wanted had already been filled. We were depressed. But then, the day after that, he got an email from the computer lab assistant people, saying "Hey, a position in the computer labs just opened up! If you're still interested in the job, just fill out this availability schedule and send it back to us." So we were super excited, and Christian filled out the form and sent it back within an hour of getting the email. We were so pumped, so excited that Christian finally had a job!!! But then the next day, he got another email. His schedule apparently didn't work out with what they needed, so they declined to give him the job. So even after an emotional rollercoaster this week, Christian still remains jobless.

Friday night Christian's friend, Chris, moved into town. Just a few blocks away from us, too! So we went over there to see him. We got the grand tour, and it's TONS bigger than our humble little apartment could ever dream of being. But then again, he has 3 or 4 roommates that share it with him. We played Payday with him, and we got reminded that the Honor Code still exists even though we are married. I had forgotten that some people actually still have to follow an opposite-gender-in-your-house curfew. So I got kicked out at 1 am. Christian could have stayed longer, but he was nice and wanted to come home with me. I have a very sweet husband.

Last night (Saturday) we had our... kind-of-date-night. We watched a movie at home and baked (and ate) cookies. We watched the Hunchback of Notre Dame, since I had never seen it and it is one of Christian's favorites. I decided that the end was dumb, since Esmerelda got together with Mr. Dorkface (Phoebus) instead of Quasimodo. Phoebus isn't even on the cover of the movie at all, except a tiny picture where you can't even see his face properly! Quasimodo had a crush on Esmerelda the whole movie, and she was so nice to him and kissed him on the cheek and flirted with him, he cried over her, and the whole point of the movie was that looks don't matter!!! And then Esmerelda at the end went with the hot captain army general dude, and Quasimodo the main character was left behind, alone without any girl, just some stone gargoyles to keep him company!!! What a sucky ending. Anyway. It had some good catchy music though. Alan Menken rocks.

Today at church in Sunday School, we had a lesson on eternal marriage (Doctrine and Covenants 132). Part of the activity was to create a "symbol" for our marriages. Something that means something special to us both, and will remind us to stay loyal to each other whenever we see it, just as seeing the symbol of the "Y" for BYU strengthens loyalty of students to the school. So here's what we came up with.

The Texas flag (since we are both from Texas), with music notes over it, and the heads of the notes representing our rings (Christian's on the left, mine on the right, obviously). I think it's a good idea to have a symbol of our marriage. We should print it out and hang it up somewhere. I encourage everyone to make one for their marriage as well. :) Perhaps tomorrow for your FHE?

Tonight after church (we got a new bishop!), we went to the end-of-band-camp marching band fireside. The band director spoke, and was really cute with his wife. He spent the time telling his life story, and it was really funny when he got to the part about meeting/interacting with his wife. He invited her up for all to observe, and they kept grabbing the microphone away from each other to correct each other, and tell THEIR versions of the stories. It was hilarious. He talked a lot about crossroads in life, and how you should always rely on the Lord to tell you which way to go. He encouraged us to have faith at all our life's crossroads. It was a good fireside.

Tonight the recipe we will share with you is the cookie recipe we made on Saturday night (while we watched the movie). It's called Turtle Cookies. We kind of altered it from the original recipe (since we had no caramel candies, but we had a package of chocolate pudding mix with caramel chips mixed in). But I'm sure Jiffy's recipe is better, so follow it.

Ingredients:

2 pkgs Jiffy chocolate chip muffin mix

1 small pkg instant chocolate pudding mix

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs

14 chocolate caramel candies, chopped (we don't know what exactly these are...)

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all the ingredients together, shape into balls and bake on a slightly greased cookie sheet for 12-14 minutes.

The cookies were scrumptious. Our cookie dough didn't turn out that great, but that's because we accidentally used too much pudding (we used most of a large package of chocolate pudding instead of a small one). So if you do it right I'm sure your cookie dough will be delicious.

We are excited to start school tomorrow!!! Christian gets to start learning how to play baritone and tuba tomorrow. He also has Music Theory and Sight Singing tomorrow. We both have biology too (we are trying to get into the same class), and we are already in the same class for LDS Marriage and Family. I have Psychological Statistics tomorrow, and university choir (to fulfill my music minor). Christian also has master class for his horn in the evening. Hooray!!! We are both so pumped!

We love you all!

Christian and Brittany