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. :)