Pictures from Recent Posts

Howdy. Here are the pictures from fishing and pictures of our new townhouse.

^Me and Christian in the car on the way to go fishing.

^A dead deer skeleton we found on the path down to the lake.

Christian showing us one of the bugs we caught and used as bait.

Christian with all the bugs.

Another decomposing deer carcass in the river, covered in flies.

My very safety-conscious grandpa has a rope that he uses for people crossing the river. It was actually really hard to keep your balance with the current. Everyone holds onto the rope, and then if someone falls, the weight of everyone else will keep that person from floating away. Rather ingenious actually. You can see Brooke almost losing her footing here. From left to right in this picture: My uncle Tennessee, my cousin Kira (Laura's 10-year-old daughter), my cousin Nathan (my Uncle Tennessee's 10-year-old son), my aunt Laura (Kira's mother), Brooke (Tennessee's 7-year-old daughter), and my grandpa.

Brooke squeezing the fish that Grandpa caught for her and let her reel in.

Me and Christian in our sexy fishing gear. Waterproof waders, boots, sunglasses, slathered in sunblock, and comfy t-shirts.

Christian perfecting his cast.

Me failing at casting, obviously needing further assistance from my grandpa.

Now you shall be privileged to see pictures of our new townhouse.

The entrance

The backyard (we have weed-whacked since then, and see that tiny shiny metal thing at the end of the hose? That's our sprinkler head. It has two holes and it can water our backyard thoroughly in about 10 minutes.)

Our living room

The other half of the living room. That's the realtor's sign that we have to keep in the window since the townhouse is technically for sale right now.

View of the kitchen from the door.

Guest bathroom

Our big kitchen (hark! the herald angels sing!)

Our walk-in pantry!!!! :D :D :D

The stairs

Our bedroom. We have not quite yet gone to pick up our mattress, though we have bought one (see our last post).

My dresser and the door to the WALK IN closet (! We have a closet!)

Master bathroom

Our "music/book room", home to Christian's French horn, my guitar, my oboe, and all our books over in the right corner (there are more that aren't in the picture). And yes, they are in boxes because we have no bookshelves.

Our craft/study room.

Well, that's the grand tour!

Best wishes!

Love,

Brittany and Christian

Happy Anniversary To Us!!!!

All right, in the last post Christian said we'd tell you about our trip to Idaho. On the weekend of June 11-13, we picked up Sarah and drove up to Idaho to visit Mary and Derek, mostly because it was Derek's birthday and we wanted to celebrate with him. We arrived late Friday night and slept over. Mary had already had a surprise birthday party for him on Thursday, but apparently he had expected it so it wasn't really a surprise. So she decided that we should throw him another surprise birthday party because he wouldn't be expecting two. Plus, there'd be different people at this one. So Saturday morning Mary and Sarah and Derek went to take a tour of the BYU-Idaho campus, and Christian and I got busy setting everything up for the party. We bought streamers, a happy birthday banner, balloons, chips, candy, gummy-worm-chocolate-pudding-and-Oreo-crumbs "dirt cups", and everything, and set it all up at a picnic table at the park. It was surprisingly cold for June - I was wearing a sweater and a jacket and was still cold. When they arrived (Mary had told Derek that she wanted to show Sarah the local park) we yelled surprise and we all celebrated. I think he was genuinely surprised this time. Then we all went home and talked for a while, and then Mary and Derek said they wanted to take us out to Texas Roadhouse for our anniversary! We said yes and went, and it was DELICIOUS. We drove home that night so we could celebrate our anniversary together on Sunday.

On Sunday after church we came home and just spent a lot of quality time together. We made no-bake cookies together, watched Enchanted, and spent a lot of time just giggling and being silly. It was a really fun night and we had a great anniversary!

Christian and I both did relatively well on our finals. Out of the two I took in the testing center, I got a 96 on one and a 79 on the other. I was disappointed about the 79 because I thought I'd done better, but I do have 2.5 extra credit points that will be applied to it, so... it should be ok. Christian got a 96 on one final, and he doesn't know what he got on the other one. Final grades come out next week, so we'll see how we did overall this semester.

This last weekend we went mattress shopping (FINALLY!!!)! We got a good memory foam mattress and box springs for about $350 plus tax, which we regarded as a pretty good deal, and we bought a regular steel run-of-the-mill bed frame. As soon as we find someone who is nice enough and has a truck, we will be able to pick up our mattress, put away the pile of blankets on the floor that we've been sleeping on, and finally let our backs heal. It's going to be so awesome :D

Today we start our new classes for summer term. Christian's are Intro to Computer Programming and Music 202 (Music: Civilization), which is basically a study of the 2nd half of the history of art forms (music, art, architecture, etc). Mine are Public Speaking and Abnormal Psychology, which I'm REALLY excited about!!! Public Speaking I just took because that is a very weak area of mine and I figured, hey, let's make my weaknesses my strengths, right? I am SUPER EXCITED about Abnormal Psychology... this is probably the highlight class of my major (to me). I get to study all the possible disorders and mental illnesses and stuff you can have, and all the symptoms and everything... oooh it's going to be so fun!!!

We did try a new recipe this week (it was called Best Chicken Ever), but we both agreed that it really wasn't the best chicken ever. It was slightly below average, actually. So we decided not to post it for you.

Although, we have a great tip for you. If you've ever tried those things called "Suddenly Pasta Salad" that they have in the store, they're really good but are slightly expensive (usually around $2.50-$3 for a box that makes 2 servings). But this week we discovered that the Western Family off-brand of the same thing tastes EXACTLY THE SAME and runs you usually around $1 or $1.50. Sweet! Try the Ranch and Bacon flavor, it's my favorite. :D

Quick Update

Hey everyone,
I haven't got a lot of time, but I wanted to post a quick update on life. The term is wrapping up with finals today (Wednesday the 16th) and tomorrow. I had one final scheduled for this morning for my Latin class. Ugh, never again will I take a 5 credit course, especially in the spring/summer terms. It was very fast paced, and I might have only gotten a B in it. I'm a little nervous to see how my final went. Tomorrow Brittany and I have to take the rest of our finals.

We were studying yesterday, when Brittany got sick in the library. I took her home real fast and got her some Sprite and soda crackers at the store (I don't know why, but that's what my mom always gave me when I was having stomach problems). She's been pretty out of it since, sleeping a lot. She says that she gets sick every time she moves a lot, so she's tried to stay pretty still. Hopefully I'll be able to get some food in her that she can keep down.

We are still trying to finish off our move-in. We keep finding things that we should probably get now that we've upgraded. Brittany's grandparents bought us a dresser at a garage sale for our anniversary, which was this last Sunday. (I'll write about our weekend in Idaho and anniversary later.) I think all we need still is a mattress and a TV. It's pretty obvious which one is more important *cough*TV*cough* jk. :) We'll be going mattress shopping tomorrow moms, so don't rag on us.

Anyway, I better get back home. It's been rough not having internet at the house. That's the biggest reason we haven't been doing our blog as faithfully. We just don't really think about it during the week. Love you all!
Christian and Brittany

This is from June 3rd. Oops!

June 3, 2010

Sorry about the blog not being done on Sunday, but it was right in the middle of our move. That's pretty much all we've done this week: cleaning and moving. Besides Memorial Day.

We spent all last week cleaning our old apartment and gradually moving stuff into our new place. We spent forever cleaning it top to bottom for a very strict cleaning check like our landlady said she'd do (including scrubbing the floor under the fridge, oven, etc), but when she finally came to check it, she basically just glanced into each room and said we did great. So it looks like we'll be getting back all of our deposit. We took probably around 10-15 round trips in total to bring all our stuff, including one trip that brought all the furniture. My uncle and our friend Chris helped us move stuff, which was super nice of them. My uncle and aunt also loaned us their table and chairs since our table isn't really very snazzy-looking. We want our new place to look as good as possible so that when people come to see it to see if they want to buy it, they won't be dissuaded by our crappy furniture.

So now we have a 3-bedroom townhouse to live in for about 2 months, so we decided we needed a couch. We managed to get one off of Freecycle.org (best site ever) that's black vinyl with tears in it that have been covered up with black duct tape. So much for not having crappy furniture. We are planning on covering it with probably a big afghan or something. Also, since the bed we had in our old apartment belonged to the apartment, we don't have a bed now. In the past week ish, we've been sleeping with one of us on the couch and one of us on a pile of folded blankets on the floor beside the couch. But we are planning on going bed-shopping on Saturday, when we will be able to make use of our friend's truck to transport a new bed. We would just borrow one from someone, but we figure eventually we will need to buy our own bed anyway, so why not now? I am quite excited to go bed-shopping. We have unpacked most of the boxes, but we've still got a few to go, and our new place looks SOOO big compared to our old apartment. It's a full 5 times bigger!

Our old computer died last week, to the point that repairing it would cost more than getting a new one. Fortunately all our files are safe on the hard drive. So we ordered a new computer (we got a great deal on it) and it just arrived about an hour ago. Christian is VERY excited about it (I consider it an early anniversary present since he can finally play his game I gave him for his birthday on it) because of the nice big flat screen monitor it came with, and the nice speakers and great graphics and other awesome specs that I won't even try to mention because I know nothing about them and I'll be sure to mess something up when I talk about them. He calls it his “new toy” and has officially named it the Mealey Master. Right now he is in the process of setting it up, and he keeps exclaiming over the big screen and the cool graphics. He will probably be playing his game and watching movies on it until I make him go to bed tonight.

On Memorial Day we went stream fishing with my grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt, and cousins. It was Christian's first time to go fishing ever, and sort of my first time as well since I don't remember the last time I went. It was quite fun. We got to wear waders and everything. There was a nasty deer carcass decomposing in the water which my cousins were quite excited about. We strained some disgusting-looking bugs out of the stream with a big mesh cloth, and used them for bait. Here are some pictures of it all for your own personal enjoyment. Neither Christian or I ended up catching anything (actually, my grandpa was the only one who caught anything and he only caught 2 trout, one of which he let my cousin play with and release). But we had lots of fun!

Since in the process of moving out we didn't have time to go shopping much, we ate out a lot and consequently didn't have an opportunity to make a new recipe this week to share with you. We apologize and will try a new recipe within the next couple days so that you can have a new recipe soon.

We love you all!
Brittany and Christian