My life

This is an e-mail I just sent to Mitch. After reading it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded. I thought I would share:

Mitch,

Marin just discovered that all of the brownies were gone. She said, "Mom, were there only 3 brownies in the pan?!" Oops, I guess I ate the other 12. We just made more because she was so devastated. She said, "It's not very nice for moms to eat all the brownies!"

Kate discovered how to open the baby powder, you can imagine what followed. But don't worry, she cleaned up the mess with a whole box of wet wipes. She is currently in her crib for the 5th time this morning for pulling hair.

So how's you morning going?

Per Jaren's Request

Ha ha, my brother Jaren just posted on my Facebook wall that I needed to blog about Christmas. I was actually right in the middle of this post so he had perfect timing!

This year for Christmas we made the great trek to Wyoming to spend time with Mitch's family. It was chaotic and wonderful and all of us, especially Marin and Kate, had a great time. I tried to really soak everything in, because most likely we will be spending our next Christmases as a family at our own home. Of course, we'll have to go visit family immediately afterword or I would go nuts, but soon we'll have 3 kids and we'd like to start our own Christmas Eve and Christmas Day traditions.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I am SO lucky to have married into the greatest family. I scored in the in-law department! Here are some pictures:



The McNiven family nativity play. Marin was Mary and very pleased with herself.


The loot:


Opening presents


Kate's favorite gift-- a vacuum!


Mitch and his new Skull Candy helmet and Marin's Rapunzel wig (Marin was pretty much closing her eyes in any of the pictures where I could actually get her to hold still).


It is crazy to think that next Christmas there will be some major differences for our little family. We'll likely be at home for the first time, in a (hopefully) finished basement, Marin will have started Kindergarten, Kate will be almost 3, and, of course, there will be some boy toys to even out our pink stash! Hope you all had as merry of a Christmas as the Moncurs!

Boy oh boy!

So yes, for you Blogger/non-Facebook friends out there, we are having a boy. Most definitely a boy, he was not shy. We are very excited, and thought all along this would be a boy. Mostly because I was so much less sick with this one than with my girls. When we first got married, Mitch predicted we would have all girls. When we found out Kate was a girl too, I asked him if he was disappointed and he said we could have all girls and he'd be fine. He really, really loves his girls. But when the doctor said this was a boy, he had a pretty huge smile on his face! Now I am trying to wrap my head around all of the boy stuff we'll need, since everything we own that is kid-related is pink. Even our Legos are pink. So here's to a little more blue around our house!

Merry Christmas!

I must face the fact that today being December 22, I am not going to get my Christmas cards mailed in time. I know you will all be devastated. Here is the card that my sister Avree made for our family. Maybe next year I will not be such a procrastinator!

The Windy City

So Mitch had a little training in one of the most lovely spots you could imagine to vacation in December. That's right... Chicago! Okay, so the weather maybe wasn't ideal, but we still had a blast. The point being... NO KIDS! We dropped the kids off at my parents' house in St. George and flew out of Vegas. My sister Avree was down there as well to help hold down the fort. She has decided not to have any more kids forever, ha ha. Here are some of the things we did:

The first night there was our 7th anniversary. We always eat at a seafood restaurant for our anniversary and we were not disappointed! We ate at the best seafood restaurant I have ever been to called Shaw's Crab Shack. They gave Mitch this sweet lobster bib. The food was seriously amazing.


The next night we went to Wicked. This was Mitch's idea, he even got the tickets for me. It was at the Cadillac Theater and was way fun. The only embarrassing part was Mitch singing along so loud to every song (ha ha, for those of you who know Mitch, you know this was not really the case).


Of course, sampling some Chicago deep-dish pizza!


Ha ha, I'm not sure why I'm standing so weird, but I was so freezing I don't think I could feel my legs! Downtown Chicago is really pretty.


There was some great shopping, great food, and well, we just relaxed and enjoyed our 3 days there. Thanks so much to Avree and my mom for watching our girls. It was a much-needed little getaway!

Turkey Day, etc.

All of these pictures are stolen straight from my sister's blog. I happen to have forgotten my camera (surprise), so luckily she took some cute pictures. We had a great Thanksgiving. My parents came up here and we ate at my sister's house (I had to work for a few hours in the morning). I made my first ever pumpkin pies. The great thing about my family's Thanksgiving is we like to keep the pie to person ratio about 1:1. The pies are pretty much the most important part of the meal. We had several pumpkin pies, banana cream, chocolate cream, blueberry, cherry, and apple. Avree, my mom, Callie, and I all contributed a bit to the meal and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself!








This picture cracks me up. Spencer already ate before the actual meal. So he sat here in the living room by himself watching TV. He looks like such an outcast! Then he came and dumped a bazillion goldfish crackers in Kate's tray and she loved it!


The Saturday after Thanksgiving we decorated our tree. Marin was DYING to decorate it and couldn't wait for that "boring" Thanksgiving holiday to be over with so we could put up our Christmas decorations. She loves our tree, especially when it's dark and just the lights are on. I've always loved that too. We watched some Christmas movies by the tree that night and had hot chocolate and popcorn. It was a fun day!
You can see that little Kate quickly began un-decorating the tree. Ha ha, we'll see how long before this tree is completely undecorated where she can reach!

A Good Man

This last week my Grandpa Sandberg (my dad's dad) passed away. Our family traveled down to Southern Utah to attend his funeral this weekend. It really wasn't a sad, sad funeral or death because my grandpa's health was failing and his quality of life was really declining. My grandma, the absolute love of his life, passed away just under 4 years ago and he seemed a little lost without her. During the funeral some wonderful women from his ward watched all of our nursery-age children. So I was able to really listen to the speakers and have no distractions. As I sat there listening and thinking of my own memories I truly realized how blessed I was to have such a good example of a man as my grandpa. He was just solid, and good. He worked hard, he loved his wife and treated her like a queen, he loved his family and put them first, he was patriotic to his core, he served and took care of other people, he had a hilarious sense of humor, he was kind and slow to anger, in fact my dad or any of us have never heard him curse or lose his temper. He was just that good, and I sure loved him. He and my grandma loved to dance. Like really loved to dance. They were great square dancers and took every opportunity they could to go square dancing. They wore the matching fancy outfits and just loved it. They took me with them several times and my grandpa danced with me. My grandma used to let me dress up in her older square dancing dresses. So when dad called and told me my grandpa had passed away that morning, I thought to myself, "Oh good, my grandma and grandpa are square dancing in heaven now." What an amazing reunion!