Over the past few months, there’ve been a few changes in the Christensen family. Take a look:

Meet the Party Crasher, born on the same day we were supposed to have Alisha’s baby shower – so much for her insistence that he’d wait to be born until after we were done. A party? In his honor? No way was he missing out.

He is now four months old, hooray! (Picture stolen from Alisha, BYU shirt courtesy of his favorite auntie.) He is hands-down the cutest nephew ever. And yes, I know for now that he’s my only nephew ever. But – like I’m always telling my siblings – there’s just something about being Number One that’s inherently awesome.

We had a family picture taken. It was a close call even getting us all together, so having a picture where none of us are blinking is astounding. Thanks to our great photographer (and our fabulous mom with an eye for how to have us sit so we’d look our best), we’ve got a family picture with everyone (including the Party Crasher)! Obviously, the picture’s from SRS Photography.

The day after the family picture, Jessie & Barry left to Rexburg, Idaho. They’re starting school at BYU-Idaho, and we miss them. Not to worry though – they are staying plenty busy making homemade soap, french bread, gardening with our fabulous aunt, and doing all sorts of other craziness.

Logan’s now working the same sort of job as Dad, except he’s at the bottom of the food chain. He’s got a three weeks on/three weeks off schedule and is spending his time in the Gulf. When he’s home, he and the Lion Tamer are busy working on their new house. Logan and Dad managed to replace the roof on the new house the last time they were home, and there’s still plenty of work to do. (Picture stolen from the Lion Tamer.)

It’s about ten minutes from my parents’ place. No wonder everyone keeps thinking I live eight days away, since they’ve all managed to move within about eight miles. (Jessie and Barry’s move doesn’t count – they’ve both said it’s a temporary thing, and they want to come back to the same area too.)

Reece is about to make a move that makes my place look a little closer though. He enlisted in the Marines, and he’s set to go to boot camp in San Diego in September. I am proud of him. On pain of death, I’m only posting one picture of him at his first swearing in. He won’t let me post the video, but I’m happy to email it to you if you want it. (The picture’s stolen from Mom – my phone isn’t cool enough to take videos and still shots at the same time. Well, maybe it is – but I haven’t figured it out yet.) Apparently there are a few more ceremonies to come, so there will be lots more photos later.

We had the Kansas City Temple Open House and Dedication. Can you believe how fast it was finished?!? I helped by giving tours on two different days (most of my tours were in Spanish, which was totally awesome) and then I went with family and friends on a bunch of other days. Here are a few of the people I got to go with:

If you missed it (or you just want to see pictures of the temple again), you can find them here.

As a part of the temple celebrations, Reece, Wade and Sam got to participate in the cultural celebration put on by the youth of the area. 3,000 kids, ages 12-18, participated! It was fantastic to get to watch all of them. Check out the video of the kids here.

After the celebration, I even got to see the prophet, up close and personal. The coolest part – he paid attention to the little kids who were waiting to meet him.

My house celebrated a birthday just a few days ago. Can you believe it’s been a year since I moved in? In celebration, I finally got my act together and hung a few pictures up. Check it out. (And yes, I realize that some of my frames still need pictures. I’m working on it. Don’t rush me.)

For comparison’s sake, here’s the picture I took when I moved in (as I started taping the fireplace to paint it – the red brick went that very same night).

And my bedroom…

What a difference a year makes.

And finally, Mother’s Day was this Sunday. Let me tell you, my mom is one incredible lady. We celebrated by getting together and enjoying the best fried chicken I have ever had, courtesy of Reece. (Seriously, it was better than even Mom and I have ever made – and that’s saying something.) For your viewing pleasure…

You’ll notice Mom loves lime green. And if you’re curious – the reason she’s laughing her head off with the green towel is because she was busy singing “I’m Sexy and I Know It.” We didn’t catch a video – lucky for her. (Or maybe lucky for Dad… we want him to be happy my blog’s back, not wishing that I hadn’t started blogging again.)

Anyway, 17 pictures and 936 words (and counting!), and you can consider yourself caught up. Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing me again real soon.

A week and a half ago, my fabulous Aunties, my mom, my step-grandmas, Alisha, Jessie and I all got together to party. Going to Time Out for Women was just our excuse to get together. It was great! I only made it to the Saturday session (our JRCLS annual dinner was on Friday night, and since I’m on the board I definitely couldn’t skip), but the first speaker was fabulous. My totally-crafty-very-amazing-aunts made the best journals for us to take notes in, and I was looking through mine today. The quote that jumped out to me was from Mariama Kallon – “Today is the Best Time of My Life.” Because it is.

Just in the past two weeks, I’ve gotten to:

• See the amazingly wonderful aforementioned women that always blow me away with how beautiful, kind and talented they are. They are all so fabulous that I sometimes can’t believe I am lucky enough to be related to them. (And yes, I am related to every single person in that picture.)
• Be a part of the JRCLS Annual Dinner where we had an inspiring talk by Elder Lance B. Wickman, who is the Legal General Counsel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
• Sing one of my favorite hymns as a solo in Church. (For a beautiful version of someone singing the same arrangement, go here.)
• Attend the Association for Women Lawyers first “CLE in the City” (a la Sex and the City – of course I wore stilettos!)
• Dance to salsa music. All. Night. Long. (Also wearing stilettos. Naturally.)
• Celebrate Logan’s 23rd Birthday with my family. We all had the best laugh when Cassie realized that Logan and Alisha are the same age for the next two weeks. In order to spare my father the embarrassment, I won’t go into detail about her comments. Let’s just say Cassie is very skilled at math. And way too knowledgeable for my dad’s health. The video’s courtesy of Wade. I take no credit for it.
• Watch Cassie in her very last Primary Program.
• Eat dinner with a girlfriend from elementary school (along with her husband and wonderful six month old!)
• Work. Really, this is one of those wonderful things. I represent some incredible, resilient people, and I feel fortunate to do the work I do.

With all those great things in my life, how can I not agree with Mariama Kallon? Today. IS. the BEST time of my life.

So… in the past two months I have:

Obtained a roommate. Alaska moved in. Then she passed the bar exam. And then she spent the next weeks looking for a job. Which she found. Hooray! The only sad part? Well, it’s four hours away. Which means in a few short weeks, I will be losing a roommate. We’ll be okay though – after all, that’s what facebook is for. Still, I’m going to miss our joint dinners. There’s something fabulous about cooking for someone who totally loves what you make. It’s doubly great when they do the dishes too.

Spent countless hours at the dog park. Storm has a thing for going out. And I have a thing for making sure she’s happy. My family refers to her as the Diva Dog. It’s not my fault she loves blueberries. And kiwis. Apples though? Don’t bother. I know – picky picky. That’s why we call her the Diva.

Of course, she hasn’t been limited to just the dog park. We’ve spent a lot of time in Cameron with her dog cousins. And we’ve spent time in Kansas City learning to play frisbee golf. (I’m getting pretty good, if I do say so myself. Storm? Well, let’s just say she’s happy to simply look at the frisbee. She’s not much of a catcher.)

Gave a cupcake presentation. And a makeup presentation. And a how-to-do-your-hair presentation. And a what-a-lawyer-really-does presentation. Not all at the same time. I’m sure there’s a connection between all those things, but it was much easier to do them separately. It was fun too. I feel pretty lucky that my siblings call me when they need someone to come speak to their youth groups. 

Participated in General Conference. In case you’re wondering – Mormons. Are. Christian. If you’re curious, you should check us out. Or shoot me an email. We only call ourselves “Mormons” for convenience’s sake. The whole name of our church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (I know, it’s a mouthful, right?)

One of my favorite messages from General Conference was a talk on the Book of Mormon by Tad R. Callister. Here’s a quote from it: “That is the genius of the Book of Mormon—there is no middle ground. It is either the word of God as professed, or it is a total fraud. This book does not merely claim to be a moral treatise or theological commentary or collection of insightful writings. It claims to be the word of God—every sentence, every verse, every page. Joseph Smith declared that an angel of God directed him to gold plates, which contained the writings of prophets in ancient America, and that he translated those plates by divine powers. If that story is true, then the Book of Mormon is holy scripture, just as it professes to be; if not, it is a sophisticated but, nonetheless, diabolical hoax.”

Raked. And raked. And raked. Being a homeowner rocks. Being a homeowner with a lot of trees in the vicinity also rocks. Raking for hours to fill bags of leaves and then coming out the next morning to find that it looks like you haven’t raked at all? Priceless. Well, maybe not priceless. But satisfying in a weird sort of way. After all, those six 39-gallon sized bags packed full of leaves? It looks like that’s just the beginning. I can hardly wait for snow. (Which I will NOT be putting in 39-gallon sized bags. In case you were wondering.)

And finally… witnessed Reece become a grandpa. A grandpa to a little herd of piglets. Those 9 pigs have become… well, a lot more than 9. We won’t talk about it here. Mom is much happier not thinking about it.

Of course, those aren’t the only things that have gone on over the past two months. Still, do you really expect me to fit EVERYTHING in one post? Don’t worry – my hiatus is over. Of course, for my darling siblings, maybe you *should* worry – this means that everything is now fair game for the blog again!

Cassie’s not the only one who made me laugh with her wonderful description of school. (Ahem. Prison.) Sam’s also in on the drama. She sent me a text this morning:

I’d say their imaginations are alive and well. That ought to serve them well for their creative writing assignments. As for reporting cold hard facts… well, I guess it’s all in how you look at it.

Good luck in prison kids. Maybe they’ll let you out for house arrest this afternoon. :)

Anyway, my wonderful mechanics (Dad and Reece) thought we’d be able to squeeze a few more months out of my little brown car. So they spent all Monday fixing it up – and it worked great. Well, great for a twelve year old car with almost 200,000 miles on it. Dad got under it one last time, just to check the bottom of the transmission. And found a teeny tiny crack. No biggie. Just a little tricky special putty stuff (I don’t remember the name) and we’d be all good, right? WRONG. Two seconds later, my transmission fluid was all over Dad and the driveway. We decided that we’d find a better solution to the car problems.

And we did.

Say hello to my brand new car. May the Mud Racer rest in peace.

Storm is a three year old Siberian Husky. I think she’s mixed with something else, because her hair’s a little shorter than a regular husky. (I’m not complaining. There’s already more than enough hair to go around. Thank goodness for the Furminator.) She was living with a family who loved her very much, but they are moving this week to Montana and can’t take her with them. They dropped her off today. I’m sad for them, but Storm and I are already having a blast. We’ve been around my neighborhood, to the pet store (we had to get the Furminator before my house became a pile of fur!), and had so much fun that Storm’s now sleeping on the floor. Oh, she won’t be on the floor for long. I want to build a bed for her that looks like this. Actually, I have a whole bunch of things I’d like to do for her. (Don’t you love Pinterest?!) For now though, we’ll just enjoy tonight.