Monthly Archives: February 2007

Tuesday morning Carrie flew out of the St. George airport headed for Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she will enter the MTC for 2 months before going on to her mission in Goiania, Brazil. We spent the week before she left just hanging out and spending time together. Leslee, Olivia and I drove down to St. George for a few days last week to hang out. Leslee & I made her a farewell dinner of Manicotti with garlic bread and salad. We felt pretty accomplished in this since neither Leslee nor I cook very often, and Manicotti is a major undertaking.

Carrie, Me, Beezy, & Leslee

I drove home sans Leslee on Friday to spend the rest of the weekend with my hubby & go to a reunion. Then Sunday morning we got up bright and early (5:30 am!) to drive down to St. George again. Carrie’s farewell started at 11:00 & Wyatt didn’t want to be late! We took Wade & his girlfriend with us.

Katie, Wade, Carrie & Wyatt

Carrie’s farewell was great. I think she will be an excellent missionary. Afterward there was a luncheon at the park for her where we could all say our good-byes.

I will miss Carrie soooo sooo much! But I know that she will have so many blessings for her willingness to serve, and for that, I’m really excited.

Good Luck Care-Bear! I LOVE YOU!!

Carrie & Me

(c) Simple Gifts: Photographs and Reflections from the Landscape.

I was driving across Utah this past weekend, and the barren landscape with the low angled winter sun reminded me of one of my favorite authors, Willa Cather.

I was first introduced to her passionate prose in eleventh grade’s American Lit class with Mr. Williams. My Antonia was a required reading that I found deeply expressive and heroic. I’ve since read other classics by Ms. Cather, including O Pioneers, The Song of the Lark, and several of her short stories. Her heros are set against the backdrop of the unforgiving, yet somehow nurturing landscape of the Great Divide. Her characters are almost all imigrants, who must overcome their past as they overcome the land; and the heroism is to be found not in great acts, but in simple determination and fortitude that made the pioneer era the stuff of legends.

One of my very favorite quotes comes from My Antonia:

The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs’s story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.

In Utah (where the mormons settled), every summer the roads and highways are lined with wild sunflowers, and I’m always reminded of this passage.

Well, here we are: Friday, February 2nd, 2007. Not a significant day to most of the world, but it’s the day I’ve been waiting for for weeks and weeks. I am now ready to make an announcement.

Drum roll please! Wyatt and I are expecting another baby! We’re due August 3rd, which makes me 14 weeks today, and just starting my second trimester. I am still sick, but not as horribly as I have been for the past couple months, and definately not as horribly as I was with Olivia (a sign that it’s a boy perhaps?).

Baby Christensen at 9 1/2 weeks.

We, of course, are very excited for this new little one. I am a little nervous to have a baby in August, but Olivia and I will just have to get a pass to the pool and live there! Wyatt and I have a few names picked out (for both boys & girls), a change in pace to last time where we couldn’t agree for months and months. But we’re not sharing those names until the time is at hand (well, I’m not. If you ask Wyatt, I’m sure he’ll tell you). I hate third party opinions on names, so if you have one, don’t share. I don’t want to hear it.

So yes, life has been a FULL tank these past few months. We’ve moved twice, remodeled a house, had nine great dane puppies, two sisters leaving on a mission, and we’re expecting a baby. Hurray for us!

Today my sister, Leslee got her call to serve as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was called to serve in Rancagua, Chile for 18 months. She will learn & speak Spanish. She goes in to the MTC in April.

She had her mission call sent to my house in case she was out of town when it came. But she wasn’t out of town, so instead of getting to open it right away, I had to wait for her to come over! That was really hard for me. Wyatt and I teased her as she came in because she wasn’t running and flailing her arms in the excitement we thought she should be displaying. But she was plenty excited. We had to get everyone(family in St. George) on speaker phone before Leslee would open and read her call. But when she finally did, it was pretty neat.

I am so excited for her. She is going to be such an awesome missionary. She will be the companion everyone loves to serve with because she is so easy going, and really lifts up people around her. She has such a strong testimony of the gospel, and people will be able to feel that testimony not only by the words she says, but the love that exudes from her soul. I am going to miss her terribly though. With both Leslee and Carrie gone on missions, I’m going to be one lonely Rica Consuela. But it will be fun when Leslee comes home cause she and I will be able to speak Spanish together!