Father & Sons Campout

This year the Palo Verde Ward decided to have our Father & Sons camp out somewhere out of the heat. My job was to find the location. So, with the help of Google Earth and GeoCaching.com I was able to find a location just south of Flagstaff. It was the best F&S ever!!

Hiking, looking for rocks, finding frogs and getting dirty...

It's difficult

It's difficult when you have the two cutest kids in the world...

Mela

Commitment

I heard a talk from a BYU professor where he asked a question about marriage: “What’s more important in a good marriage: love or commitment?”

...I pause for you to consider your answer...

The professor answered the question stating commitment was more important than love in a marriage. When I heard this I had to digest it. His statement was counter intuitive to me.

This may sound crazy; there are times, I’m sure, when Mela doesn’t have happy/loving feelings towards me. And, this may sound even crazier; there are times when I don’t have happy/loving feelings towards Mela. It is at these times when our commitment to each other overcomes our negative feelings and brings back our happy/loving feelings.

Does this make sense?

Now this brings me to my real topic...

I think commitment is an essential component of our faith in our Heavenly Father and in His church. In part, our faith is manifested by our commitment to the Lord.

I know lots of people who love the Lord. I think that’s great and I’m not trying to take away anything from those people. However, I know people who love the Lord but aren’t committed to the Lord. People need to be committed to following the Lord and His commandments. How could I really love Mela if I wasn't committed to her? How can one really love the Lord without being totally committed to Him?

Personally, and this may sound crazy, there are times when I really don’t want to attend my meetings on Sunday. I may be too tired, the kids are grumpy, my diet coke levels are too low, or whatever. My commitment to my calling and to the covenants I have made to the Lord drag me kicking and screaming to my Church meetings.

I remember reading a story about Brigham Young and how he was publicly chastised by Joseph Smith. Brigham was committed to following Joseph no matter what. Many of the early saints were like this – they were committed to following Joseph. If Joseph asked them drop everything and to go on a three year mission to who-knows-where, they went. They may have had a hard time with what Joseph was asking but they were committed to Joseph and therefore committed to the Lord.

If a similar request was made of me, I would have a really hard time. If the Prophet called me right now to drop everything (my job, my family, my house, my truck, my iPod) and go preach the gospel in Iran, would I say yes? I don’t know. It would be an amazing act of faith and commitment to follow the Prophet.

Fortunately, I am only being asked to attend my meetings, obey my leaders, follow the commandments, be a good husband and raise my kids. Sometimes I have a hard time doing even the easy stuff let alone the hard stuff. I need to be more committed!

Commitment is the glue that binds us to our faith.

Easter Picnic 2009

Snow!!

So...

I put the pictures of the Easter Picnic on a link on the left-hand side of this site.

Camping for Easter weekend is a tradition on Mela’s side of the family going way back (I don’t know exactly how far back). I look forward to it every year.

This year we FROOZE! There was some freak snow/wind/rain/hail storm that blew in Friday night. Mela and I had approximately 1 hour of sleep the whole night in our tents.

Saturday morning as we were huddled in Lon & Karen’s trailer Mela and I both realized why the Lord saw fit to bring us to this world in the 20th century - freezing in the wilderness isn’t our thing. We packed up the kids and went to Denny’s for breakfast.

We came back to the campground a couple of hours later only to decide there was no way we were going to spend another night freezing our A__’s off, so we packed everything up.

I know we are wimps... kudo’s to the rest of the family who sucked-it-up through the cold and the rain. I bet your comfortable trailer’s and fifth-wheel’s helped...

Despite the cold and general grumpiness, we had a great time. On Friday and on Saturday we were able to ride Quads and hike. And, being with the ones you love will make all the difference no matter how cold it was.

Goldfield Ghost Town

Easter Picnic

Every year my wife's side of the family gets together and goes camping on Easter. They call it the Easter Picnic. I have been attending the Easter Picnic since 2004. I put all the pictures I took for each year on the right. Enjoy...

What’s been going on...

Not too much.

I did have to officiate a funeral last week. The funeral was for a member in our ward who I have never met. The bishop was out of town and so it fell upon me. Fun fun fun...

I speak in front of large groups of people all the time both for work and church. I usually don’t get very nervous. For this funeral I was VERY nervous. Most of the audience was non-members. Emotions were running high – lots of crying and upset people. My heart went out to everyone present. I really hope they felt the spirit of the talks given and I bore testimony of the Plan of Salvation.

I am so grateful to know that life doesn’t begin at birth and it doesn’t end at death.

Mela and I are working to get back to basics. We are eating out a lot less and cooking a lot more (actually Mela is doing the cooking – you wouldn’t want me to cook). We’ve been trying to steer the kids away from watching TV towards, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, actually playing outside. I get a kick out of riding bikes with Andrew and, believe it or not, riding bikes with daddy is Andrew’s favorite thing to do.

We’re not always successful in getting the kids away from the TV but we are doing better. 76 degree days make it a lot easier to get everyone out of the house. I worry about the 110 degree days...

On another note: I survived another round of layoffs at Schwab the other day. I have survived 4 rounds of layoffs in my 11 years at the Land of Schwab. I am very grateful for my job. I make enough money to so Mela can stay home with the kids and so I can support my technology habit. Over the last year I had applied for 2 different positions in other departments. Both times it came down to choosing me or some other guy and, you guessed it, they choose the other guy. I am really glad I didn’t get those positions. I would be really stressed out being the new guy with all the cutting going on.

Life is good. Life is busy.

Sorry for not posting on my blog for a long time. For some reason they locked down blogger here in the Land of Schwab so I have to post stuff from home. When I’m at home I get distracted by kids wanting the play and the wive wanting to “play” also. Terrible!!

thoughts

I haven’t written in a while. Mela and I have been so busy with life. I didn’t even get to send out a Christmas letter this year – I am very sorry. I didn’t get to a Christmas letter for two reasons: we were busy and I have been so uninspired of late. It seems like a funk has settled itself upon me for the last few weeks. Well it’s time to put an end to it!

I have been pondering the actual funk itself and its source. I noticed other people have been afflicted by this funk. I feel it in myself and I feel it in others. There is a funk out there and I have been struggling to put my finger on it.

Let me tell you what I mean when I say “funk”. A funk is a state where you really don’t want to do anything. Nothing sounds fun. Everything requires too much energy to do. Even things that were fun seem to just take too much energy. You end up sitting in front of the TV or the computer and just do nothing.

This funk could be the postpartum depression we all get from the holidays. Christmas trees come down, New Years is over and now you have to get back to the “real world”...

On another note:

Some days it just not worth chewing through the restraints....

I need to update my blog

I really need to update my blog but I don’t have anything to say... Life in the Christiansen household here in the Forsaken Land of Buckeye has been very busy. Christmas consisted of service projects, family visits, getting gifts together, putting up Christmas lights, taking them down and other family stuff. It all sounds really boring but it really isn't...

Andrew and Jaedyn are at the age where they are fully immersed in the magic that is Christmas. Nothing equals the look on my kids faces as they came downstairs on Christmas morning. I love my sweet children!!


On another note...

We finally got our big screen TV – it is super cool. Let me tell you how we got it. In the Christiansen household we've been in get-our-financial-house-in-order mode for the last few months. We didn’t want to put a 42 inch TV on a credit card and we didn’t have cash just laying around. Mela had the brilliant idea of counting our change. We had a 5 gallon water jug about 2/3s full of change. I called my bank and asked them how to handle about 75 pounds of change. The bank gave us these big pouches where we could put the uncounted change; they would count it for us and deposit it into our account in a couple of days. We ended up with $787.13 in change! It turns out we did have cash just laying around. Mela rocks!!

We ended up buying a $800 42inch Vizio at Costco. Super cool.

On another note I made another impulse purchase (so much for the get-our-financial-house-in-order mode). So, we have this really neat TV... My iTunes (the program I love to hate) library has several gigabytes of movies, TV shows and music. My iTunes library lives on my computer downstairs in my Man Cave. I stopped at the Apple store at the Biltmore the other day and bought an Apple TV. The Apple TV is the bomb!! Everything in my iTunes library is now accessible upstairs on the Vizio now. If Andrew wants to watch Cars for the millionth time we can just pull it up on the Apple TV. If I want to watch the Matrix trilogy naked and eat Cheetos, I can do it with just a couple of clicks.

Family Pictures

Nothing brings a family closer than taking family pictures - not!

Thanksgiving in The Land of Pima

We got back from The Land of Pima on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time. We did the following:

• Ate far too much (gained 5 lbs)
• Played the Wii far far far too much (it rained and Mario Cart was fun)
• Chased cats
• Routed wood
• Followed Santa through the streets of Safford
• Ate Mexican food
• Went to WalMart 8 times
• Bought Milk for $3.19 a gallon (rip off!!)
• Bought Gas for $1.799 a gallon
  
• Road the Quad far & wide - nearly drove into a ditch twice
  
• Got my truck covered in mud
• Helped Grandpa Lon in his shop
• Installed Office 2003 on a laptop
• Struggled with up & down internet (it was just terrible I tell you!)
• Bought Christmas gifts
• Went on a date with the wife (we saw 4 Christmas')
• Watched the Cardinals loss
• Watched Handcock on Kyle's iPod Touch
• Jaedyn barfed all over Kyle - Kyle took it like a man (You aren't a real man or real woman until you've had a child barf all over you)
• Nursed Jaedyn back to health
• Took pictures
• Played with many cousins

Below are some pictures from the Land of Pima AZ...