Braves and a Birthday!

Hello blog world! Thought I'd give you an update on recent happenings... Last week was a long one! After having a weekend away, Brian was in the field three nights in a row-needless to say, I was really ready for him to be home! Friday night we had some bad weather but then Saturday turned out beautiful! After running some mundane errands (and helping a poor dad in Target try to find school supplies for his kids...), we packed up and headed to the big ATL for a Braves game! Somehow, in all of my life, I have never been to a Braves game-or a MLB game period. It was time to change that. The Braves being one of Brian's favorite teams, he was pretty pumped too! And we went all out. I mean, all out.




We walked around a lot just passing time before the game started. We even ran into someone Brian went to high school with! Of course, I had to be in Braves spirit...Brian already had a Chipper Jones shirt, but I needed one too, of course! So I went with Prado. Why? Well, my rule-of-thumb is to always go with the Hispanic name first. And second, the Prado just happens to be one of my favorite museums in the world. Pretty perfect pick, I'd say! Too bad he was out with a finger injury...




And here we are in our official gear!

The park-it filled up! We played the SF Giants. (And won!) Brian said I was lucky. Guess that means we'll be going more often... ha!

Our very American dinner. JUMBO hot dogs (the were a foot long!), fries, and I just had to have a Coke...

Whoops-sideways. Here's Brian enjoying his very American dinner.

In our seats! Turns outs, the Braves give a military discount-so if you want to go for cheap, come with us! The tickets were almost 50% off! A little perk to him being gone all week!

See? It got pretty crowded!

I made him take a lot of these. =) I'm getting pretty good at taking self-portraits of us.

Ok so this week I also celebrated my birthday! I turned 23 yesterday-ah! And today is my Dad's birthday-Happy Birthday Dad-O! He's the big 5-0! So I decided to make my own birthday cake. I have a small obsession with petit fours, so I decided to attempt to make them out of a cookbook Stacey gave me for my KitchenAid mixer. Ok, we didn't have one of these growing up, but they make your life SO.MUCH.EASIER. It has superhuman powers when beating up not-quite-softened butter, which is amazing to watch. Yes, I am 5 years old. Anyways, I made EVERYTHING from scratch. Cake, icing, everything. The cake turned out alright, and then I went on to the icing. I had to show you...the icing recipe called for 4 CUPS of sugar. See? (sorry, it's sideways too)

After boiling that with water and a 1/4 tsp. of cream of tartar, you mix in 3 CUPS of powdered sugar! Oh my gosh I'm on sugar overload just talking about it! I used this super antique candy thermometer of my grandmother's to check the boiling icing...Mom and I thought it would be a really cute wall decoration in the kitchen since it's old, but I had to pull it down and use it--thank goodness it still actually works! This thing is probably 45 years old! Incredible. But I do have a confession to make...I still haven't tried one of my petit fours. I think I'm a little nauseous from how much sugar I used. Seriously, every time I look at them, I feel sick to my stomach. Brian, on the other hand, thinks they're delicious. What a good husband.


Thankfully, I was able to eat a little cake on my birthday because my amazing friend Dana MADE me a cookie cake! As it turns out, her family does cookie cakes for birthdays too, and she made me one! Isn't it darling? And she made her icing from scratch too! Being unemployed leads to multiple hobbies, such as aerobics and baking...they're counteractive.

Brian took me out for dinner last night to celebrate. We went to Country's Barbeque, which was a.ma.zing. My birthday dinner usually consisted of flanksteak, baked potatoes, and fruit salad, and this was a close second! We had BBQ pork and I had some of the best corn on the cob that I've ever eaten! We were stuffed.

Brian has been in and out of the field this week. They were sweet enough to not make him go in last night! Kidding--the Army doesn't care that much about my birthday. Actually, maybe they do-every time I came in the gate yesterday, the security guard wished me a happy birthday! Sweet people. No, Brian's training schedule just so happened to not have him in the field last night, which was awesome! This week he's doing MGT: Machine Gun Theory! Crazy! He learned to call for fire yesterday and Monday and today he's in the field shooting off 50 cal's and Mark 19's- and some SAWs- crazy! The range they're on is only about 1/2 mile from our house, so I can hear them...tat tat tat! Brian's sargeant said that he was a good shot on the 50 cal...so proud. Now I know he can defend himself...We (the wives) hear that once a month, they invite the spouses out to shoot the guns-we are so going! We're pretty excited about it.

Hmmm, other recent news...I've been applying for jobs and I've heard back from two and subsequently been denied by them, so that's been pretty awesome...ha! I've been doing lots of resume-tweaking and online work, so I'm still hopeful! I also start class next week...I keep forgetting that! Going to have to call my Auburn girls, since I still don't necessarily know where I'm going! Hope everyone is doing well!