"If you were French bread, I would eat you. All the time. Every day." - Christian

All right, we know, we know! We totally slacked off last week and didn't do our blog. It was my fault. It was my turn. I'm sorry! As penance, I (Brittany) will do the blog for this week AND last week.

Last week was finals week. The very first final either of us took was Christian's juries. He got an accompanist at the last minute (the pianist had less than a week to learn the piece and it was HARD!) and the accompanist played beautifully. Christian was AMAZING. I got to hear him and he sounded so fantastic! I was so proud of him. The judges barely had anything bad to say. The only bad thing they mentioned was that he played it too loud. He was just too zealous. He got two A's and an A-. Go Christian!!! :) Finals week also went well otherwise. I was happy with my performance on my exams, and so was Christian on his. We will get to see our grades sometime this next week, we think.

Last week we also went on a fun date. We went to a little Italian place in downtown Provo called La Dolce Vita. It reminded me of a smaller Olive Garden. The food was all right, but we think we like Olive Garden better. Christian judges Italian places by their bread, and he wasn't too impressed with the bread. Basically it was buttered white bread toast. Christian got a meat-stuffed calzone and I tried something called Ana's Spinach Tortellini or something like that. It was green spinach tortellini stuffed with artichoke and covered in cream sauce and sun dried tomatoes. It was pretty good, but not stunningly so. Christian says his calzone was “pretty good”. We might go back again sometime, but I'm not dying to go back.

Christian is again reconsidering his major(s). A few weeks ago he decided he wanted to double major in computer science and music performance (see last post). But what he didn't know was that it's really hard to get BYU to sign off on a double major. Apparently, when he visited the advisement center, they told him 50% of BYU students were seniors because so many freshmen come in with all these AP/Dual Credit credits so they start as sophomores technically. And the admissions committee wants to let in more freshmen, but they can only have so many students at a time. So basically their goal is to get students in and out of BYU in as little time as possible. So naturally, they frown upon changing your major to anything that would extend the date of your graduation, especially if you're almost a senior like Christian is. Christian's original plan was to double major and graduate in April 2014, which extended his graduation by one full year. Three people have to sign off on that: the Computer Science department, the Music Performance department, and the dean of the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (because he chose Computer Science as his “primary major”). The advisement center said it's almost impossible to get anyone to sign off on a graduation date that was a year longer than original, so he condensed things some more to graduate in December 2013 (1 less semester). Apparently, that still wasn't good enough for them, so he did some more squishing and got his graduation date down to August 2013 (which is only his original graduation date plus spring and summer terms – not even full semesters). He can't really condense it down to more than that. Everyone has signed it except the dean so far. The advisement center said if he can set his graduation date for August 2013 that would be his best chance to get the dean to sign off on it, because he wouldn't be entering another academic year. However, there is still a chance that the dean will still not accept it. If this is the case, Christian will be doing some more academic reconsidering as far as his major(s) go(es).

This Friday, since both Christian and I are done with finals and school starts again on Tuesday, we drove up to Idaho to visit Mary and Derek. We got there Friday night and just basically chatted and caught up, then went to bed. Saturday morning we woke up early and went to the Rexburg temple. That was a rather fun experience. The Rexburg temple is beautiful and I hadn't realized it before. When we came home from the temple, we went out to eat some burgers. Mary and Derek know a place where you can get a 1-pound-of-meat burger plus a bunch of fries and drinks and 2 waffle cones for quite a reasonable price. So Christian and I shared a burger, as did Mary and Derek. I wasn't even able to eat a quarter of our burger, so we took it home and put it in the fridge. After that, we went to the park and tossed around a Frisbee for an hour or so. I discovered I have horrible hand-eye coordination, and I definitely need some practice if I'm ever going to learn how to throw anything correctly. It was terribly windy, so that gave me excuses when my throws were horrible, but it was rather embarrassing. I also can't catch a Frisbee to save my life. We all cheered every time I caught the Frisbee. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually caught it (we played for more than an hour). And we cheered when my throws actually sent the Frisbee a good distance in the direction of a human being. At one point, I made a throw and it actually went to someone, so everyone cheered for me. Mary made a throw right afterwards that looked exactly like my throw, and she said, “Oh, haha! Sorry, guys, that was a horrible throw!” Oh well. I already know I'm terrible at sports. We went home after that and played an awesome game of Monopoly. There ended up being a lot of times where Mary would land on a spot and Derek would say “That'll be $26” and Mary would pay him, never realizing that she was the one that actually owned that property. There was also a lot of snatching/hiding of other people's money, properties, or playing pieces when they were looking the other way, which made the game quite a bit more exciting and funny than Monopoly usually is. After that, we watched Princess and the Frog (I didn't fall asleep in the middle this time!) and went to bed. This morning (Sunday) we went to church with Mary and Derek, came home and watched Tarzan, then Christian and I left for home. We had a really fun time. Thanks Mary and Derek!

Our recipe this week is Oven-Barbecued Chicken. Christian thinks it is the best barbecued chicken he's ever eaten. Personally, I didn't like so much onion in it, but Christian loves it. Here is the recipe (from our Taste of Home cookbook).

6 bone-in chicken breast halves (8 oz each)

1/3 cup chopped onion

¾ cup ketchup

½ cup water

1/3 cup white vinegar

3 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp ground mustard

¼ tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1) In a nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray, brown chicken over medium heat. Transfer to a 13x9 dish coated with cooking spray.

2) Remove skillet from stovetop and recoat with cooking spray; cook onion over medium heat until tender. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Pour over chicken. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 45-55 minutes or until chicken juices run clear and a meat thermometer reads 170 degrees.

Serves 6

Anyway, we love you all!

Brittany and Christian