the time has come- I have moved... to a married blog like the rest of Provo you ask?? No, to a happy food and running and rambling blog :) come visit me (when I am in the blogging mood) at runnerinthekitchen!!! I hope that the 2 people that read my blog (which no, does not even include immediate family members- they're missing out ;) ) come visit!! Hope you have a wonderful day!! :)

settling

It's been a while once again... oops. Haha I'm pretty sure way too many of my posts begin with those words. Anyway, I just had to write what I am feeling today... I am feeling such a strong sense of hope (that makes it sound like I'm usually depressed or something- I am just fine- just realizing some things). There are some things that you know so clearly but do not really resonate until later. The feeling that I have experienced that just began to resonate with me is the feeling of knowing I should not settle in any aspect of my life and realizing what settling would be. I have always had this hope of what my future will bring, but it has always somehow seemed so out of reach. Today I was speaking with my Dad (many of my realizations come when speaking with him haha) and I realized that many of the things that I hope for in my future are not too much to hope for. It really resonated with me today that I should not and cannot settle in any aspect of life... education, relationships, time goals with running, or in imagining what I can be. I love that we have the power to do or be whatever we choose. I believe that if we are willing to work towards it we can feel that we are taking life and savoring every moment and live it to the fullest and become who we want to be.

Christina Perri - A Thousand Years (Official Music Video)

ok, so I know I already posted the above song, but I'm a little obsessed with it, so I just had to emphasize once again my love for it hehe

The above song I heard on this blog (which I love) and I loved the song so I had to post- enjoy :)

The Latest and Greatest

Wow, I have not posted in forever- it has been a little crazy!!! I just finished the busiest semester I have ever attended. It was so great though and I learned so much! This semester I took New Testament, Doctrine and Covenants, and Communications 101 (dealing with media and all). I know I say this all the time but I really am so grateful to attend BYU- I love it so much and my education there has changed my life forever.

Now, catch up... first, my birthday... I have the most amazing friends in the world! First, at midnight, my roommate had some of our really good friends bring me flowers, gummy bears, confetti, etc. etc. :) Here are the flowers :) (if you know me, you know flowers are my very favorite thing in the world!!

Then I woke up to

 After all that, I went to school and then went home for a BBQ with the family (my favorite way to spend my birthday). When I got home my sweet roommate bought me my favorite ice cream! A couple days later they threw me a party at her cabin which was so thoughtful and meant so much!! Here are some pics from the party.

 Elysse and Kate :) (Kate is who organized it and it is her cabin)

 Kaylie and Sara

 Lots of awesome people

 me and Amanda

 Me and Paul- it looks like I put that in his hair and am torturing him- but he just did it and I was laughing (had to clarify haha)

me and Elysse :)

 They also took me out dinner and dessert later that week- I have the best friends in the world!!!

Ashley, Kate, and me

Two weeks ago, I ran my second marathon with two of my best friends!! It was so fun!!! I ran it in these new shoes. They are Brooks, Pure Cadence. These are my favorite shoes I have ever run in- they felt like I was running on pillows. The way they are laced helps the high arch in my foot and the way they are formed helps you to not heel strike as much and run more towards the middle of your foot (which is a good thing). However, I was a little stupid and only did one 5 mile run and one 20 mile run in them before the marathon. Because of this, my muscles were not used to the different kind of running and my feet not used to the shoes and I got a blister half the size of my foot (not exaggerating) and was in pain in the marathon. It slowed me down by half an hour because it came on around mile 6 but started to really get bad after about mile 13. Despite this, I absolutely LOVED the shoes- I just have to break them in before I run 26.2 miles in them. Duh Christianne...

Here are some pics of me and my friends- I forgot to take some with my other friend who ran it with us (ps: one of them is from my friends instagram so some of her pics are on there too :) 

 my Dad and brother came to cheer me on (just like at the last race) and it meant so much to me- it's crazy how much it helps having someone you know and love cheering you on

 Paul came to cheer us on- even wrote Ashley and I funny notes the night before to give us laughs before the run!

Our old roommate got married and here is a pic from that...

I read this talk last night and it was so great. It really made me evaluate what sacrifices I am willing to make for the things I believe in that are most important to me. Hope you're all having an amazing day!

life and recipes

Hello!!

 First off, not that this is important, but I just wanted to tell you all because I was super excited- I love to cook and I love food, so it's always really exciting when I get new food, anyway, the reason I'm telling you all of this is because I have some new meal ideas to share :) First off, I made this sandwich the other day which I'm sure everyone else on the planet knows about, but I put all my favorite things together and was happily surprised... anyway, I made a sandwich and it had avocado, scrambled eggs (I tried to do a fried egg, but we don't have a skillet so I broke the yoke trying to get it out of the sauce pan and had to turn it into scrambled eggs haha), anyway, I put veganaise, fresh sliced mozzarella, tomato, and the egg and avocado on it- I kid you not, this now one of my new favorite sandwiches- I loved it so much I made another and then ate another for breakfast the next morning (overkill?) haha, anyway and the other thing I made today-sounds super nasty but bear with me... I blended up  an orange, strawberries, 1/2 avocado, cottage cheese, and almond dream (unsweetened), and it was one of the best smoothies I have ever had. I thought of it because I went to Banana leaf and had the most amazing avocado drink and have wanted to drink something with an avocado ever since. Anyway, it was delicious- try it!

Second, I have super funny stories to share- I have pictures to go along with it, but it was a long night, and I was wearing two layers of pants and lots of layers of shirts, so be charitable in your comments about me ;) It's a bit long- beware.... so a couple weeks ago, our friends called us and asked us to come over, as we were walking over, who is on the balconies above us but them, pouring buckets of water on us, anyway, this made us laugh super hard, so we decided to get them back just to know exactly who they were dealing with so we decided to seranawrap (I hate that word- I have no idea how to spell it) their door and fill it with popcorn so it all dumps out when they open the door. First thing you need to know, me and my roommate LOVE to go to bed early and wake up early- we are by no means night owls, so at 9, we were so tired and decided to go to sleep and set our alarms for 2 to wake up and do it, but I said we should probably just pop the popcorn real quick so we didn't even have to think when we woke up, so we started- needless to say... we ended up popping popcorn from 9 PM-1 AM. We were EXHAUSTED!!! Who knew popping four garbage bags full of popcorn would take 4 hours? Then we went and garbage bagged their door (it was stronger than the other stuff), and filled it with popcorn,

 but to our dismay, it did not fill the whole door like we so hoped,

so naturally we went to the store and went to buy more (go big or go home right?) But all the store had was cheetos and cheese puffs, so we bought lots of that.

Then, we got back only to find out our duck taping job had failed and it had all fallen out, so I give my keys to my roommie and she goes back to get bowls to scoop the popcorn while Ash and I start cleaning up, so we have to clean up the whole thing and start over again. However, after we have barricaded the door, and filled it to the brim with popcorn, I look over and was like, "where are my keys?" And Amanda says, "uh oh- I put them in that bowl" (which was now empty). We search everywhere- no keys, we have to finally arrive at the sad conclusion that my keys were simply mixed up in the popcorn in this door

There is the empty bowl and as you can see, we kinda gave up on the last cleaning up parts... so we go back to our apartment and try desperately to pick the lock, and it's a no go- so, so we start calling everyone we know to see if they would love to have us as roommates for the night starting that night at 2:30 AM, but strangely enough, no one answered their phone (weird- I guess some people like to sleep at those hours rather than filling people's doors with popcorn), so finally Ashley calls one of the boys from the apartment and he was so sweet and said he'd come over and pick our lock but after she hangs up, we felt super guilty waking him up at that time to do a good deed only to have popcorn fall all over him, so she called him back and said nevermind- don't open your door!! So, long story short (not really though), they figured it out, opened their door and searched for my keys (first off can we just say how nice of them? Who nicely looks for their keys after they've woken them up at 3 in the morning with popcorn, cheetos, and cheese puffs pouring in their apartment?!?) Anyway, so they can't find my keys :( so they come try to pick our lock-result = close, but no cigar. So finally we tell them they can go home, we'd just sleep in the hallway on bags of popcorn, so we all lay down and try to sleep but it's not happening, the boys come back up, keep trying to help us and help us think through our options. We think of sleeping in my car, but wait, we don't have my keys haha, so one of the boys tells us we could sleep in his car if we wanted, so we all happily agreed (much better than the hallway) and he brought out their couch cushions and let me and my 2 roommates sleep in their car (that's right folks, we slept in a car- but a very comfortable one at that). By this point it was 4 AM, and it took us a while to fall asleep because we couldn't stop laughing. Then they woke us up at six and had found my keys (seriously, nicest boys ever to even give them back and do all that). Anyway, there's my story and I'm stickin to it. Moral of the story.... keep your keys with you at all times and popcorn takes a while to pop so start in the middle of the day :) Hope you're all having the best day ever and enjoyed my never ending story ;)

fantastic talk

This morning I read a talk entitled, Seek Learning: You Have a Work to do. This is exactly what I was talking about yesterday in my post- enjoy!