Birthday Bash

Well Kate the great turned ONE YEAR last Thursday. I really cannot believe how time flies. It seems like she was just my tiny little newborn with a squished face and huge blue eyes. Luckily, she's kept the huge blue eyes. I think they're gorgeous, but I am a bit biased. We celebrated in sunny St. George. My mom is a school teacher and she was on spring break so I went down with the girls on Wednesday and Mitch came down later for the weekend (still tax season). The weather was so nice and warm. The grass was green, the trees were blossoming. Oh... why did I leave St. George? I'll remember during July. Anyway, on Saturday night we had a little bash for Kate's b-day. My mom's uncle died and the funeral was on Saturday so some of her family from far away happened to be down and they came and celebrated with us. We all had a great time telling stories that we've all heard millions of times and laughing very hard (standard for my mom's family get-togethers, we laugh the hardest at our own stories or jokes).

Kate really is my special little sweetie. When I had Marin I couldn't imagine loving any child as much as I loved her, but I love both my girls and can't believe how different they are already! My mom always says Kate is our "little gift from heaven," which is true. She is happy and smiling all the time, but quite mischievous too! Here are some pictures of our fun week:


Jaren and Marin blowing out the mega candle (we put 4 together)

Kate was fascinated by the flame. Sorry weird editing, but these inside pictures were pretty bad. This was the best I could do.

Kate liked her cake but didn't like getting her hands messy. She kept screaming about it! Wonder wear she got that from?

Random Bits

I realize that I haven't been posting as often. It's because not a lot of anything new has really been going on in our lives. We're all doing great and having a nice winter, but nothing new and exciting. Like our neighbor's 2 week trip to Hawaii. Now that would be something lovely to blog about in the middle of winter. But alas, no Hawaii trips for the Moncurs. We still enjoy life though. Marin continues to ski every weekend with her dad. She got poles last week and is pretty thrilled about them. Kate is walking and tearing my house apart as I type. I continue doing all of those wonderful mom things like cleaning the house, cooking food, trying to entertain Marin inside while it's still freezing outside... let's see, my big accomplishment last week was getting Kate's and Marin's scrapbooks up to date (I don't scrapbook as a hobby, I scrapbook purely for journaling purposes... as in buy cute paper, slap the pictures on the cute paper and label them-- every so often adding a sticker or bit of ribbon so someday my kids will feel like I put a little effort into it). Oh, and I figured out how to make the most adorable little fabric roses for headbands and hair clips. I'll blog about that later with pictures if I'm feeling ambitious. Mitch works 60 hours in 5 days so he can ski with Marin on Saturdays. I trained in the NICU at the hospital so I work there occasionally now. We had a nice Superbowl party with the usual crew and lots of good food (pictures below), my parents came to visit, a little Aggie basketball, and, let's see..a few illnesses of course....and that is about it. Hey, reading over this post I realize it sounds like a Christmas card update. If I just would have added all of our church callings it would be complete. I will now post a video of Kate walking, for Nicole and any other family members who may be interested. Sorry it's so short, apparently my blog can't handle me uploading a video longer than 10 seconds!


Rueben... I specifically said,"Smile!"



Kate makes these growling/screaming noises constantly. Mitch always calls her the Gremlin or Tasmanian Devil because that's what she really sounds like!

Well folks...

I've gone and topped my previous most embarrassing moment. My sister-in-law Nicole was right, as long as I blog, you will never be done hearing embarrassing stories from me. This embarrassing story is actually so embarrassing I can't share the details on the web, it is along the lines of way too much information. I will give you all a warning though. If you've ordered something on the web and had it shipped to your parents' house previously (like for Christmas or something), be sure to change the shipping address when you order something again from that sight. Otherwise, you may ship something to your parents around Valentine's Day that should not be. The end.

Kate the Great

This is our nickname for Kate. Marin came up with it, actually, when she was frustrated with Kate for knocking down her toys. She said,"Ohhh, Kate the great!" in her very most exasperated voice. Well the nickname has stuck. So Kate the great is almost 1 year old. She is 11 months and I just want her to stay tiny. Well, she actually is pretty tiny still... she only weighs 17 lbs (20th %ile). She can run across a room now. That just blows my mind. She has the tiniest chicken legs and I can't believe they can wobble her all the way down our hallway. She's very busy of course and yesterday got into both bathrooms' toilet paper rolls twice (that's 4 times being caught with a mouth full of TP). Here is a picture of the little stinker:

Kate is great!

Ski the Beav

I've been a pretty lazy blogger lately. It's not that I'm so extremely busy that I have no time to blog (I kind of hate when people go on and on about how busy they are and how they haven't updated their blogs because they're SO busy, like the rest of us who update often must have way too much time on our hands). Anyway, I just have been lazy. I've enjoyed reading others' blogs, and it's winter and we're hunkering down in this frozen tundra of Logan and trying to survive tax season (where Mitch works 60 hrs in 5 days so he can ski on Saturdays). The good part is, he takes Marin with him skiing most of the time. They've gone 5 or 6 times and, for the most part, she loves it. Here is a clip of some video Mitch took of her:

Well actually, let me first refer you again to her season pass picture. It totally cracks me up!


Despite the fact that she looks like she'd rather be dragged across a bed of nails than go skiing, she actually likes to ski.


Ha ha, the part I love about this little video clip, is that Mitch totally trips at the end :) Oh, and if you're like me and rarely watch videos that people post of their kids on blogs, here is a picture of Marin skiing:

If you look close, you can see that she is smiling. Ahhh, Mitch is so proud...

What we've been up to lately...

I have been so busy posting deep thoughts and embarrassing moments I haven't really posted about anything our family has been doing for awhile now. I don't feel like going into incredible detail about the last month or two, so I'll give a brief synopsis-- outline style. Brings me back to my college days (he he, like they were so long ago).

I. Thanksgiving
a) Went to Mitch's parents' farm in Wyoming
b) Marin had a blast playing with cousins
c) I ate insane amounts of heavy whipping cream
d) No pictures available, camera still broken

II. Decorated Christmas Tree
a) Marin decorated bottom
b) I decorated top
c) Marin kept saying how "beautiful" our tree was
d) Tree was subsequently un-decorated from Kate-height down



III. Cara and Mitch's 6th anniversary
a) Still love each other
b) Took kids to Temple Square
1. Froze
2. Remembered what Christmas is really all about
c) Ate at Iggy's
1. Ate there because we had $25 gift certificate from a 25 yard field goal Mitch made during halftime at Aggie game. What a stud! (oh, and the Iggy's in Logan closed the week after so we wanted to use it in SLC)


IV. Went to St. George for Christmas
a) Nothing like being home for Christmas!
b) Went to cousin's wedding
c) Annual Sandberg family Christmas party/talent show a hit
1. Marin actually sang "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in front of lots of people into the microphone without being shy-- truly a Christmas miracle!
d) Santa decided to visit
1. Santa was a big hit with Marin
2. Kate enjoyed the wrapping paper more than the presents of course
3. Had a very happy holiday season! Hope you did too!

My new most embarrassing moment up to this point

Yes, I have topped my "old" most embarrassing moment. If you have forgotten about this, please click here.

It all started when I got called to be my ward organist. You may know I play the piano. Well I don't really play the organ. But the organ has this fun little button called the bass coupler that makes it so you don't have to play the foot pedals. It just takes the bottom note (the bass line) from the bass clef and booms it out as if you played it with your foot. Kinda cool. So I've been playing now for about 2 months. I really enjoy it actually. A couple of problems though-- One, I don't know anything about all those little buttons that change the sound of the organ. You know, the ones where it can sound like bells or horns or other cool stuff generally not used in sacrament meeting. Another problem, ANY note you play, whether it's wrong or right, is very very loud, and if it happens to be a wrong one it's very obvious. Playing a wrong note is not my embarrassing story. I do that frequently. What is my embarrassing story? Well I'm about to tell you. So yesterday at church I was playing a nice, quiet sacrament hymn, "Reverently and Meekly Now" (pay attention to the name, it will make my story more embarrassing). I'm about halfway through the last verse, and suddenly my finger slips a little. No problem, except that, Lo and Behold!, glory Hallelujah!, the 9th ward suddenly gets treated to blasting, blaring trumpets for the last verse of their sacrament hymn. Apparently I bumped some type of pre-set and all these little buttons light up, the organ gets very, very, very loud-- and of course, there's the trumpets heralding us. Of course I couldn't turn it off, I didn't know how I turned it on. So, I finished the song, what else could I do? When I finished, the Bishop turned around with a smile on his face. He asked me later if I was having a seizure! The chorister said I should have seen everyone's faces. The thing is, the closing song was "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains." Couldn't I have slipped during that one instead? Well I had a pretty good laugh about it. Luckily I don't take myself too seriously most of the time. Let's hope I don't top this one for awhile yet!