Halloween 2012

Mitch and me as vikings!

Friend Halloween Party at our house. Ethingtons, Nelsons, and a special guest appearance by the Batemans!

Lots of creepy-looking food, as well as the classic Dinner in a Pumpkin

And lots of creepy-sounding candy

Belle, a mermaid, and a monster

And several attempts at a decent family photo

The weather cooperated, the costumes cooperated, the neighbors made scones and hot chocolate, the parties were a blast-- Halloween 2012: Success!

Quest for the Cookie

Tonight folks, I have crashed and burned yet again. Now I consider myself a pretty decent baker. I can make a dang good pie crust, pretty good cinnamon rolls, bake bread, cookies, pastries, etc. (it helps when you love to eat your product as much as I do)... So.... WHY CAN I NOT MAKE A GOOD SUGAR COOKIE????? I just want a fluffy, soft sugar cookie. Is that so much to ask? Neighbors bring them and my in-laws bake them so I know it can be done-- so far just not by me. Tonight I used an American Test Kitchen recipe. If you don't know what this is, they make a bunch of the same thing (like a sugar cookie) and have a panel judge until they get the perfect recipe. That is where I got my amazing chocolate cake recipe. Pretty much everything I make from them is awesome. So I had high hopes tonight. I followed the recipe perfectly. I measured impeccably. I mixed the dry ingredients, I creamed the butter and sugar for 3 minutes until it was light and fluffy. I sat and watched the dang things while they baked in my oven. And this is what I got. The worst part is that despite the exact same dough, oven temperature, and amount of dough on the pan each batch got progressively worse. What?!

Pan #1

Pan #2

Pan #3

And the inside of all of them full of these big holes!

Even the first batch that looked prettiest were crunchy with these weird holes inside them. I should be able to figure this out. I had to take an entire college class called "Experimental Foods" where we purposely screwed baked goods up like this and then discussed why it went wrong (and how to make it right). So, I'm appealing to all of you, my readers. Bring me some nice soft sugar cookies, and PLEEEEEASE send me a fail-proof recipe! This streak must be broken!!

The Lost Christmas Letter

I was going through our computer today and organizing files, folders, etc. and I came across this little gem. I didn't actually post it or send it during Christmas 2011 (when I originally wrote it) because I didn't want anyone to think I was making fun of them. I absolutely LOVE getting Christmas cards and letters which is why I go to the trouble and expense to send ours out...BUT, I'm always at a loss of what to write on the "how we are doing" letter. So I started this one as a joke and my sister Avree contributed some ideas. I thought she (and maybe some of you) might get a laugh out of it:

Merry Merry Christmas from the Moncurs! We just feel like this year we would be very ungrateful if we didn’t tell all our friends and family about all of our blessings, since we have SO MANY. The most appropriate way to do this would be to split our family up and list all of our many accomplishments by person. So here you go:

Andrew (8 months): He is such a little bundle of joy. He has never cried, he slept through the night when he was just one week old, and he has never been sick! His mom really feels this can be attributed to her amazing mothering (and memorizing Baby Wise of course). He has learned most of his letters and sounds, but to our dismay, still mixes up his “b’s” and “d’s.” We are confident he will be reading by age 1. He also can throw a football about 50 yards, his dad is so proud!

Kate (2 years): Oh Kate, Kate, Kate. We are so pleased that she is reading at a 4^th grade reading level. We just started chapter books and she LOVES them! She is so well-behaved and sweet (again, her mom attributes this to her superb mothering skills). She never raises her voice and always has a kind word to give to her siblings. In fact, we’ll just say here that none of our kids EVER fight or are cross with one another. What a blessing, we know. Kate also played soccer with the 10 year olds and scored every goal. She may have been a little ball hog, but since we’ve had Olympic Soccer Team scouts at our house we let it slide.

Marin (5 years): Marin just skipped 5 grades and is now in middle school. We just couldn’t stand to hold her back since she was reading on a college level. Her knowledge of quantum physics still astounds us! She started gymnastics and after learning how to do a triple back-handspring on the first day, has now mastered a triple back-flip on the balance beam! We couldn’t be prouder! Summer Olympics 2012 here we come! She has so many friends at school because she is so popular. We’ve also had some modeling agencies contact us, but she’s just so busy with her academics, sports, and music that we had to pass.

Cara (29 years): Even though Cara is actually typing this, Cara is going to speak of herself in the 3^rd person. Cara was extra busy this year being the Relief Society President, the Young Women’s President, and the Primary President—all at the same time! She didn’t let having a baby in April slow her down, and lost all of her baby weight in just 3 days! Cara has already mentioned her superb mothering skills twice, but people often remark to her what a “super-mom” she is. She’s very humble about it though. Cara also runs several successful side businesses including photography and hairbow-making (she’s so lucky her husband is such a big-shot tax CPA). In her spare time she knits bandages for lepers.

Mitch (32 years): Besides being the Bishop and both counselors himself, Mitch is the owner of an EXTREMELY successful online winter sports business, Teton Wasatch Sports. Next year it is going to be publicly traded, since it grossed over $2 million (shhh, don’t tell him I said that, he’d be so embarrassed), in case you’d like to buy stock. Besides keeping himself in excellent physical shape by doing P90X twice each morning, he still finds time to be the BEST husband and father in the whole world (when I say “best,” I mean better than yours).  

We hope you all find yourselves almost as blessed as we are this holiday season!

Love,

Mitch, Cara, Marin, Kate, & Andrew Moncur

 

School Lunch Love

Whoa time! Seriously slow down. I know every mother says this over and over but my goodness my little girl cannot really be in first grade. I dropped her off to school on the first day with a bit of a heavy heart. She was so excited she was literally bouncing off the walls in our house. That made it a little easier for me. My sister and I discussed this. It's not that we're not excited for our children to grow up and have new experiences and learn and mature--just that it is hard to imagine they are really old enough to do things like eat school lunch. It makes me want to snuggle Andrew and enjoy that his knuckles and elbows are still dimples and that Kate still says "basketti" for "spaghetti" because soon she will be able to pronounce it correctly, and I'll miss "basketti." Well, enough rambling, I'll get to what I wanted to document in this post and that is Marin's school lunch quotes. She LOVES school lunch. It is hilarious! She is totally her dad's daughter (he was also a lover of school lunch) and she loves P.E., recess, and school lunch the most (although my--or I should say my mom's--genes may have surfaced somewhere because she really likes Art too). She has been to three days of school so far and when I pick her up and ask her about her day, the FIRST comment she makes has been about school lunch.
Day 1: "Mom, I loved school lunch so much! There was even cheese to put on my hamburger!"
Day 2: "Mom, the nachos were so yummy!" -- a few minutes later -- "Mmm, mom, I can still smell those nachos." (Side note: Marin and Mitch have decided that on nacho days Mitch will come eat school lunch with her)
Day 3: "Mom, my corn dog was the best one I've ever tasted! Also the chocolate chip cookie was the best one I've ever tasted!"


Today is sliced ham or something so I sent a lunch with her. We'll see if she is like my nephew and starts crying when his mom sent him a lunch from home because he wanted school lunch so much. I'm so grateful she loves school so much. She has a wonderful teacher this year (with red hair just like her!), and I'm excited for her to learn and grow in school. I love my little red-head so much!

P.S. Do you think I should be a professional photographer? My use of shadows to completely hide facial features and expression is superb. Also, having my subjects look directly into the sun really gives them a nice stressed-out look in the photos.

We're back!

I took a little break from blogging over the past few months. It was one of those things that I'm so behind on, I didn't even want to start. We've had so much going on and I have just LOVED this summer! I don't think I'm going to try and catch up today (or maybe ever), but I had to post these lovely pictures that my cute sis-in-law Callie took of our family.... right before she and my brother moved to Spokane, Washington for him to attend law school for THREE YEARS. Man, we are going to miss them around here. Kate has already been asking where "Ca-wie" and "Je-win" are. Anyway, back to the pictures. Pretty sure the ones of my kids will be hanging on my wall forever :)

Life is good!

Small Town Fun

There are certainly disadvantages to living in a smaller town, but the advantages far outweigh them in my opinion (partly thanks to online shopping, ha ha). We've had a very fun, summer-y week. We kicked the week off with a family reunion on my dad's side. It was so great to see so many cousins I was close with back in the day, but I never get to see now. I have such a great family. Spending time with them reminds me where I got my weird sense of humor, ha ha. My mom stayed up here with my sister for a few days and we packed a lot in. We took the kids to several parks, the local swimming pool, up the canyon to roast marshmallows, and just had a great time.

Marin also got to be in her first play. The local Children's Theater put on "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" this year and Marin was a munchkin. Oh my goodness, she was THRILLED! She loved every second of it. I'm so glad she's not as shy as I used to be when I was her age. I think I missed out on more than a few fun opportunities because of it. Anyhow, it was a wonderful experience. I learned how to tie-dye (that was my big contribution since I don't own a sewing machine) and Marin had a blast. My sister's family came to watch it with us on Friday night. We had a barbecue and then headed over to the play. It was in an outdoor theater so it was perfect for our little ones. Then we came back to our house and ate ice cream cones. Such a fun night.

Today we had a parade down our little main street and Marin got to ride on the children's play float singing songs from the play. The city had a big party with bounce houses and slides and things at the park around the corner from our house, so we ventured over there for awhile and ended the afternoon with a shaved ice.

My cute mom with Kate, Marin, and Spencer at the reunion

Marin in the parade

Kate was not one bit scared to barrel down this huge slide

My sister Avree bought Marin these flowers and Marin was beyond thrilled. She just kept looking down at them and smiling all evening.

She could be Dorothy with her cute red pigtails!

 I love summer so much! 

Oneida Narrows

Well we braved the woods of Idaho and camped for a night up in the Oneida Narrows area. We invited Mitch's brother and family and a great time was had by all. I was a wuss and got cold and sore from sleeping on the hard ground, but the kids did better than I thought they would. We brought our boat up and boated on Friday evening, then of course roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. The next day we fished a little and let the kids play, then packed up and headed home. I think camping is one of those things that is a lot of work for the adults, but kids love it :) One night was perfect for our little family. I hope to make it a summer tradition!

Andrew likes to sit on Mitch's lap and "drive" the boat (and Avree I didn't crop my weird face in the background off just for your personal enjoyment)

The lake was so beautiful!

Marin found this caterpillar and played with it for awhile. Then when she got bored of it she made a big to-do about deciding to let it be free

Mitch slept with Andrew in this little tent

My two little blondies

Mmm, sausage, bacon, and pancakes cooked in their grease! Camping breakfasts are the best!

Kate and her little cousin

The Zoo!

I have to start this post out with a sad, sad story. I brought my camera with me to the zoo and was actually good about taking pictures of my children for once...and somehow I lost 80% of them. But we did have a great time. My cousin has a family pass and was able to get my sister Avree and me and our kids into the Hogle Zoo free. We also got unlimited train and carousel rides so that was a nice bonus! It was so fun to see my cousin Emily and her darling girls. Emily, Avree, and I used to spend hours and hours just playing make-believe games when we were younger and sometimes I can't believe we're all grown up with SEVEN kids between us! There was a really neat bird show that kept the kids pretty entertained. These huge birds were trained to fly right over our heads from one trainer to another. If you go to Hogle Zoo I don't recommend missing it. Anyway, Avree and I said the endeavor was a pilot test for Disneyland and all of the kids but Kate passed. Kate failed with flying colors, running away from me multiple times and getting down and licking the ground several times or eating dirt (at a zoo, no less!). A bag of Cheetos kind of saved me finally. Good think Kate will have about six months of growing up to do before we attempt Disneyland! What a fun day! Thanks Emily Bemily!

Memorial Day Weekend

Wow, this has been a busy weekend! Before I start, I do have to say that although our family did not visit any graves (we have no family graves even remotely near us in Cache Valley), we did have a great discussion with Marin about why everyone had flags in their yards today and why we celebrate Memorial Day.

On Saturday we went to the Hill Air Force Base air show. It was SO amazing. Thanks to Mitch we timed it perfectly and got there right after the huge downpour. There weren't a ton of people there (they all left because of the rain!) and so we got pretty good seats to see the last few hours of the show, particularly the Thunderbirds. I totally got chills seeing our fighter jets with red, white, and blue colors and thinking how proud I am to live in America. Kate plugged her ears (see picture) the entire time. Even as we were walking to the car after the show was over she wouldn't take her fingers out of her ears. I don't blame her-- it was loud! Then we took the kids to Chili's and besides Kate climbing the booth seat and peeking on the people next to us, it wasn't as crazy as I expected it to be in a sit-down restaurant without a playplace.

Sunday was nice and relaxing (well, when we weren't wrestling our children during the worst church time ever- 1 to 4). The Ethingtons came over for a little apple pie. It was the best crust I've ever made, if I do say so myself. Spencer had to bring his preschool graduation certificate for all of us to see. He was very proud and who can blame him? It's a big accomplishment to graduate from preschool!

On Monday Mitch started the day with a mountain bike ride with some neighbors and I cleaned bathrooms (woo hoo!) and then we met up with our good friends the Nelsons for a little picnic up the canyon. Whenever I go up Logan Canyon I seriously can't believe I get to live so close to such a beautiful place! It was a little chilly, but fun. The kids had a great time climbing trees, collecting rocks, and getting their feet wet in the river even when we told them to stay away. On our way home, on a total whim, Mitch and I decided to hike up to the Wind Caves. We did not think we would actually make it to the top since it's basically switchbacks straight up a huge mountain, but Marin was a little trooper and we did! Mitch and I took turns hauling Kate on our backs and Andrew on our shoulders. I carried little Andrew the whole way down while he slept in my arms. My arms were a bit spent, as were my quads (I have a feeling I will be more than a little sore tomorrow), but we made it home in one piece! All in all a great weekend. I love my cute little family!