I'm crazy, for those of you that know me, this is crazy of me.

I am running in the So Cal Ragnar Relay. Don't as me why, I haven't yet figured it out. It's a team relay run from Huntington Beach over to the I-15 freeway, down through Temecula, into Escondido, back west to the ocean and then all the way down through San Diego, Imperial Beach and back up the small strand that becomes Coronado Island. I will be running in the #10 out of 12 runners slot. Every runner runs three times. We start Friday morning, April 15th and finish somewhere on Saturday afternoon. My relay team is made up of a bunch of single girl friends of mine. Some have run this before, others like me haven't. The longest distance I have to run is 6.4 miles on my last leg. My legs are first through Corona, second in San Marcos and then third, from the downtown San Diego Harbor all the way to Imperial Beach in National City, south of San Diego.

I am trying to train for this by running 4 times a week, at least 3 miles each time. Last Saturday I did almost 4 with my friend, Tuesday did a little over 3 on the trails below my house, today have plans to run almost 4 and then will run tomorrow morning before heading up to Orange County for the day.

As Jenna and Rosey said, "this will be the best/worst day of your life." Why?!?!?

Proud to be a BYU alum

I went to BYU. Loved the school, loved the experience. I never thought of applying anywhere else. I applied only there and luckily, I got in. This season, I have LOVED the success BYU has had on the basketball court. They're looking good and it's been great to have conversations at work with people about the church, because they first asked about the BYU basketball team. I feel bad for Brandon Davies and all the negative attention he is currently receiving for violating the schools honor code. BYU bumped up in the rankings to be #3 in the country and so it was big news when Davies was kicked off the basketball team the very next day for violating the honor code. It's sad that this year had to end that way for him and a very inopportune time for the team, right before the conference tournament and NCAA tournament. BYU did lose the next day to New Mexico, never getting themselves going or finding a rotation that worked. I feel bad and have been impressed with the BYU athletes who said they would stick by him, no matter how the team does in their future games. His misdeeds are out there in the public, not because the school said specifically what he did, but other news outlets did. But I've now spent the last couple days defending the Honor Code to a lot of people at work and member friends of mine who didn't go to BYU and just have a problem with the church outlining rules for the students. I don't remember thinking specifically that I wanted to go to BYU because of the Honor Code. Looking back now, that's what it was. I wanted to be at a school where I was surrounded by members. My pre college school days weren't filled with LDS members all around me. I went to school with a lot of people who didn't believe the same as I did or do the same things I did or said no to the same things I did. I wanted to be somewhere that had a lot of people with the same values as me. BYU was it. And I found that. The Honor Code was not hard to live if you were living the principles of the gospel and following the For Strength of Youth Pamphlet. It was a great thing for me to be with girls that had the same standards, have good clean fun with so many friends that I made there and have my testimony strengthened by living a clean life surrounded by clean, honest and good people. No one is perfect, mistakes are made and can be repented over. But for the most part, people did the best they could to live the rules and they lived them gladly.

So, the rules were never restricting to one who wanted to live that way. And you only went there if you wanted to live that way. Thank you BYU for staying true to the honor code and not treating an athlete any differently. Thank you to BYU for teaching us, that even when there are mistakes, kindness and love are shown to help uplift the one who fell, that they can be lifted back up. 

Career Development....for others

Lately, my job has taken center stage....literally. On Saturday, February 5th, I participated in a San Diego Paralegal Association panel that featured 3 paralegals. Our courts community outreach coordinator, when asked for a participant from the court, suggested me. I got to give a 30 minute presentation on my journey to becoming a paralegal, my current responsibilities and employment and finally 5 tips for paralegals just entering the field or wanting to move to a different area within the paralegal field. I thought 30 minutes would be hard to do, but I ended up talking for 25 minutes (with a power point slideshow as well) and then a 5-10 minute Q&A period. I got good feedback, so hopefully it was helpful to the participating paralegals. From there though, I got requests to write for the SDPA newsletter and then this next week, I get to participate in a high school career fair. It's getting kind of ridiculous. But I've been thinking. I just got called to my stakes Public Affairs committee and right after, I get to participate in all these community events. And my assignment on the Public Affairs committee is to create and manage opt in email lists for the community things the stake presidency wants the stake to know about. So, I get to hear about all the city council initiatives that they'll be voting on and what's of concern to the stake leaders about our community. First on our list...stores selling marijuana illegally. There's 180 in San Diego that are selling illegally, with a good half of them in the neighborhood of Pacific Beach, in my stake. Kind of crazy. So that's the first list to create. At our last meeting, I had a little bit of a run in with an older sister on the committee who started harping at me like I was the sole representative of all Young Single Adults in the stake. Pretty much telling me that she could never get the singles out to help or do what she needed them to do. I spent the next 30 minutes educating her how to talk to the singles. FINALLY, there was a breakthrough and she recognized what she'd been doing wrong all these years of talking to the single adults like they were children! (I remember her emails to my ward, they were very much, You're going to do this, you must come to help cause you're young and strong and can clean up after all of us older folks do the event..blah, blah). And the stake presidency member pretty much sat back and nodded to everything I said, and then after the meeting was over and we walked out, he said "And you were wondering why you're in this calling? That was one of the reasons Sister Christensen." Great. Calling fulfilled...

Just feeling good!

Do you ever have those days when you feel like you could walk down the street, whistling, that a cartoon bird would fly above you and whistle a tune as well? Maybe I just watched 500 days of Summer (edited) the other day, but I feel like that could happen this week. Family is good. Work has been good this week, busy but good, I'm moving forward with some projects I get to start after going to training for them. BYU beat SDSU in the Mountain West Conference showdown of the century (we're only 11 years into this century, so really, how momentous can it be, but up till now, it's was the most awesome!!), my niece was born on the same day as the blessed athletic event, making the day quadruple better. My 2 nephews celebrate their birthdays this week as well and I get to attend a birthday party for one of them Saturday. I get to speak in church (if anything could keep the cartoon bird out of the picture, this would be it), but give it 10 minutes and that will be done!! And I have some of the best friends ever. Some of us are headed to Nashville in April, so we had a planning party for it and we are so excited to stay at Grandma C.'s house. She's got to be out of her mind to let 7 girls stay there:) Pretty much, life can't get better. And I live in San Diego. I'm sorry to any east coasters out there, but it has been a beautiful, dry week with temps in the 70s. Yes, last week I got my first sunburn of the year. It's kind of ridiculous!

Beautiful new niece Erica

I am aunt for the 6th time. Brigitte, Tyler and Logan (sister,  brother in law and newphew) welcomed their second child, a baby girl, Wednesday. She was 7lbs, 14oz and 19 inches long. She's pretty:)

I'm super happy for Brigitte, Tyler and Logan. She looks like a cutie and I can't wait to meet her. She of course was born on what became a perfect day. She was born and BYU beat SDSU in basketball, the perfect day.

2010 holiday's

I'm finally posting the long awaited photos from the 2010 year end festivities. You'd think I could get a handle on this part of my life, just post the pics Lisa!!! So here they are, and pretty much they're so cool cause they're of my family:) I one day will do a post dedicated solely to my family members, outlining each one. Maybe each week, one post should just be about a family member, and through that, I can get to know them better.

 don't worry, jack's pants never fit:)

Thanksgiving this year was at my sister Shelley's house. She lives about 2 hours northeast of San Diego, so not a hard drive at all for me. I got up there early on Thanksgiving morning and hung out till Friday night. I had to be back to work in the temple on Saturday morning. All my family members, sadly except Tyler, Brigitte's husband who had to work, came down. All under one roof. Super fun!! And the nieces and nephews were super fun too! Mariah is a talker and lets us all know what to do, she's the little mom over all of them. Logan, just younger than Mariah, seemed to take her pretty well. He likes to play and had a good time with Jack. Jack is the little cheese for the camera. He would smile and not shy away from it when it was pulled out. He and Logan liked to laugh with eachother. Sydney was cute, rolling everywhere and being vocal about what she wanted:) Bruce took everyone in and seemed to watch to see what everyone was going to do. He and Sydney are cute together. Logan and Jack seemed to like him too. Baby Bruce and Baby Sydney were very patient in allowing the older kids to play with them and with their stuff.

The adults got all the food they wanted, needed and more. I got to put my hand inside the turkey this year and between the meet and skin, so not my favorite part but someone had to do it I guess. There were all the wonderful thanksgiving goodness and then more, including a delectable chocolate dessert that Melissa brought and rolls from Brittany. It was all so good.
And the family photo. We went up to Oak Glen, a town past Shelley and Steve's, to take a family photo with Britt's camera. Sometimes I sit back and can't believe my family that used to be just 2 parents and 6 kids now include 4 spouses and 5 (soon to be 6 tomorrow!!) grandkids. With the 7th coming this summer, yay Mel and Kiel! Crazy!

Relief Society Non Sunday Meeting:)

One of my new callings in my new ward is the Relief Society Non Sunday Meeting Coordinator (mouthful isn't it, and I can't figure out a good acronym). We had our first one of the year last night. This year in Relief Society, the presidency decided on the theme "Following in His Footsteps." We are going to focus on becoming like and following the Savior. So our first activity focused on missionary work. We had the sister missionaries do a presentation on Preach My Gospel and how it can be used by every day member missionaries and their families. It was a good discussion. We then hooked up a computer to a projector and did a presentation on the new mormon.org and lds.org. We went through how to set up a profile, so others who are interested in the church and want to read testimonies by real members, can read what you have to say. It's a very less intimidating way of sharing your testimony then face to face. We then had refreshments of fruit with a whipped topping. All in all, a good start to the year, with hopefully more non sunday meetings being attended by more of the sisters in the ward.

It's different being back in a family ward. I've now been in this ward, out of the singles ward, for 3 months. I have to admit, it hasn't been the easiest transition for me. I loved my time in the La Jolla YSA ward. I'd been there 5 1/2 years and have a lot of great friends there. While we're still friends, your social life shrinks some when you don't see everyone each Sunday to hear what is going on. I think it's strange for ME to say this, because I did not enjoy my singles ward experience in Walnut Creek. I very reluctantly moved from the family ward I grew up in and was in after college, to a ward with all these young single adults who were younger than my 24 years (really, i had a complex about that. Kind of dumb in hindsight). But my ward in San Diego, was big, had a lot of other singles that were students or working professionals. The average age is probably 26, so it was perfect for me for the whole time I was there. And then you turn 31 and out you go. Back into a family ward where you have to make new Sunday friends and try to relate with folks with families. Home teaching is a totally different thing, the high priests home teach the singles! It's just a little different. My roommates are in the family ward with me too, so that's good and it's not like the ward is devoid of other singles. It's just not quite the same as a really great singles ward. Ok, enough pity party about that.

Check out the new mormon.org site. It's a great tool to use with friends who are investigating or for yourself to share the gospel.