The {GRADUATING} Sandbergs.

Would you ever believe that Jaren made it through college?  He graduates this Saturday, May 5 with a Bachelor's degree in Political Science.  He is a smart kid.  He has been accepted to Gonzaga University School of Law and we will be moving to Spokane in August.

I finished my first year of nursing school and will be able to take my LPN test in May.  I will probably be done with school for a while unless I can find a program willing to let me in up in Spokane.  We are both excited to move, but sad to be leaving behind all of our family!!

Other News of Note:
I planned a party! My best friend is getting married in June and I threw her a bridal shower bash!  There were TONS of people that came and we all had a blast. Here is the spread and the guest of honor!

Now that the year is almost over, I guess I should catch up a little on what we have been up to.  We finished up Fall Semester and have been LOVING Christmas Break.  Whoever decided that college kids should get a 3-4 week Christmas Break should get a prize.

We spent HANKSGIVING in Brigham City with about 50 family members from the Hanks side of the family.  We had enough food for a large army. Grandma and Grandpa Hanks were able to join us after returning home from Samoa at the beginning of November.  I hung out around the dessert table all afternoon. It was great to get together with family and to see how big all the kids are getting!

 We got a new nephew!  Little James Ethington was born early in December and we absolutely love him already!  Avree let me do a little photo shoot of him when he was about a week and a half old.  It was harder than I thought it would be, but he is SO handsome!  

 

 

 

Jaren injured his foot while playing church basketball and got a full set of foot and ankle X-rays, a CT scan and a consultation with an orthopedic surgeon just to determine that yes, Jaren injured his foot/ankle, no he did not break 2 bones in his foot, yes one bone was chipped, yes he tore some tendons/ligaments, and yes he is one of 10% of the population with a bone in his foot that does not fuse correctly which is why they thought he broke his foot in the first place.  Poor Jaren.  He had to turn in his Beaver Mountain Season Ski Pass so he can recover over 6-8 weeks. As of this morning he can finally walk around without his walking boot a bit so I think we might be able to turn in his crutches!

Christmas this year was awesome! Dalyn was part of a great choir concert put on by Box Elder High School.  I am so glad  he loves choir just as much as I did!  Jaren, Kennady, and I were able to visit my dad on Christmas Eve morning.  We hoped it would be a good Christmas surprise for him. We spent Christmas Eve at our house watching the kids play with Spencer's new criss-cross-crash toy.  It was definitely a crowd pleaser.  Even little Andrew was excited about it.  Jaren and I opened presents at our apartment Christmas morning and then went over to Cara and Mitch's house for an awesome Christmas Breakfast.  Marin and Kate showed us their awesome train set and Spencer told us about his tunnels that Santa brought him.  After breakfast, we went to Brigham City to open presents at my moms house.  She never fails to impress. :)  It is always fun to see everyone open presents!  After Brigham City, we headed back over to Avree's house for a delicious dinner and a Christmas Music Program led by Matt.  I showed off my awesome guitar skills on my brand new guitar.  We got to sing Christmas carols (which is secretly one of my favorite Christmas traditions).  Matt and Cara were able to play the guitar and piano, and Matt, Jay, and Matt's dad sang a beautiful trio.  It was a fun night to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

Jay and Jeri Dell treated us to dinner at Firehouse Pizza last night.  Spencer showed us how he could be a garbage truck to drink his water, and Kate enjoyed her crayon appetizer.  Marin learned about the rule of throwing salt over your shoulder if you spill it and we all enjoyed pizza!  We even got a free dessert because we had to wait a little longer than normal.  Afterwards we went to Cara's house to play games.  We played Just Dance on the Wii and got to see everyone's mad dancing skills.  I must agree with Jeri Dell that Cara is a very talented dancer. Avree and I will have to practice up to match her skills.  

We have such a great family and loved spending so much time with them over Christmas!  Hopefully this next year will be just as fun as this one has been.  Jaren has heard from 4 Law Schools so far (Tulsa, Albany NY, University of Idaho, and Northern Kentucky) so as much as we hope to stay in Utah, we could be headed just about anywhere next summer!

So to all we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

A song.

Just loving this song right now. 

Summer 2K11 Part 2

 In July, we went on the annual river trip hosted by Kiley and Kennan!! We had a blast!  The water was really high and REALLY COLD.  Cold enough that I felt pretty good about not pushing anyone in until one of the last trips.  We had a big group of people come up and we made some good runs!  Jaren and Kennan brought their GoPro cameras, so we were able to REALLY capture ALL of the action. ;)

One trip down, I was riding in the little kayak with Kennan's brother, Brandon.  I was SO nervous the whole time because I had never been through Lunchcounter in something that small before.  I kept making Brandon promise he wouldn't let me drown when we tipped over.  As we were dropping down in the HUGE hole, I was sure we were goners.  But then... we hit it perfect!! And we didn't even tip over!  And then we bragged about it for the next fifteen minutes.  And the GoPro caught it all.  :)

Well, all was still well, and Brandon and I were still reminiscing about the awesome run, when we realize that Champagne rapid is coming up.  Eh, just Champagne, no big deal.  We got through just fine and took on a good amount of water.  Just after the rapid, a big whirlpool came and flipped us around pretty quick. Brandon stuck the paddle in to turn us around but the current caught it just right, sucked him and the back of the boat down, and I feel him go out.  Luckily, (or so I thought), I stayed in the kayak.  Brandon started floating down river and then I realized... I was stuck in an eddy.  With. No. Paddle. The rest of the group was way down river.  .  .  .  .  .  Great .  . . . .

So I did the only logical thing.  I hunkered down and started paddling with my hands.  After a minute or two, I finally got myself turned around and caught the current.  I could see the boat up ahead pulling Brandon in with an escape rope.  As I got closer, one of the boys on the boat grabbed a second rescue rope, wound up, and..... was only about 50 feet short.  Ok, no big deal, I think to myself.  They will come catch up to me in just a second.  I look ahead and see that I am quickly headed towards Cottonwood, one of the longest rapids on the river, which at this water level has some pretty good sized waves.  Oh no.

The boat in the meantime, had fished Brandon out of the water, almost left Nathan Spencer on the banks of the river, but was headed my way.  I hit the first little rollers of Cottonwood, still steering with my hands trying not to let myself flip sideways cause I knew I would flip.  The people on the boat were paddling hard to try to catch me.  We all cheered as they passed off the paddle and I was rescued!

Summer 2K11 Part I

Well it has only been a little while since I posted last.  It has been pretty crazy here at our house lately.  Jaren and I both started school at Utah State again.  Jaren is a senior majoring in Political science and is getting ready to apply for a bunch of law schools here in the next couple of months.  I am heading into my fourth week of Nursing school at the Weber/USU cooperative program.  I made it through the first and second week breakdowns and managed to get a fairly good grade on my first test.  I have been studying basically every spare moment, so hopefully it will continue to pay off. I am taking a guitar class. I am pretty bad.

I am going to recap our summer a bit.  Mostly for memory and scrapbooking sake.

May
We got back from Washington DC at the beginning of May.  We were pretty proud of ourselves that we made awesome time: 2 days to drive across basically the whole country.  We both took alternating 5 hour driving shifts.  I should have never let Jaren know I was capable of driving that long.  Now he makes me drive more on long trips.  We got to see some of the flooding that was happening along the Mississippi River as we drove through.  It was pretty intense.  We stayed at my mom's house in Brigham City for a couple days until we got all of our stuff moved back into our apartment in Logan.  Everything seemed so wide open compared to Washington DC.  I was amazed that 2nd east in Logan would probably be a 6 lane street in DC.  (Ok probably not that many, but it seemed HUGE!)  We love that there are no speed humps here.  LOVE.  It was so great to be home and to see our family and friends again!  We got to meet Andrew James Moncur who was born just a few days before we made it home.  He is so cute and we love him! We both started back at work full time and were lucky to both get our previous jobs back.  That month we played a lot of sand volleyball with friends.  Jaren went undefeated for at least a month and was pretty proud of himself for it, but don't worry he lost a few times once his streak was broken.

Goodbye Washington DC!

Towards the end of May, Kaitlyn graduated from high school.  We all celebrated by going out to Olive Garden for dinner.  She is now going to Utah State as well!  We love having her so close!

 For Memorial Day weekend we went camping at North Fork with my Hanks family.  Its tradition.  (Although, a crazy one.)  We got there and pitched our tents and played with Dalyn's airsoft guns while more of the family arrived.  A big moose kept walking through the field and through the trees just across from the campground.  Dalyn and Jaren got some pictures of it and Moe had to run down to make sure they didn't get too close to the thing. I can't remember for sure, but it seems like we had somewhere between 50-60 people up there all together.  The first night, it was SO COLD.  Impressively cold. But we woke up to yummy pancakes and hot chocolate to warm us up.  That day, some of the cousins and I started playing soccer in the field and soon after we had a pretty good game of soccer going.  It was so fun because the youngest player was probably 6 and the oldest was 24 (Jaren).  Everyone was actually pretty good!  We had a lot of fun!  Aunt Sandy brought her Consecutive Reader boards for everyone to make.  What a great idea!  Saturday night, was even colder than the first night.  It was raining so Moe and Jaren set up a shelter under the shade canopy thing and we all sat by the propane heaters to try to get warm.  We even roasted marshmallows over them to make s'mores.  Jaren and I borrowed an extra sleeping bag that night and we stayed a lot warmer than the night before.  About 2 hours after we had fallen asleep, I woke up to Jaren calling out, "Hello?  Who's there?!"  I was instantly terrified.  And confused.  Our nice new tent was gone and we were in some tiny tent that was very close to our faces.  But then Jaren realized what was going on.  He started to hit the sides of the tent and something started to slip off and fall to the ground.  He started laughing a little because it was snowing and the weight of the snow made the tent twist in on itself and collapse enough to where it was just inches from our faces.  We were awake about every 1/2 hour the rest of the night to a collapsed tent and had to keep hitting snow off the tent.  Needless to say, everyone who was still there in the morning began to pack up and head home early.  Bethany and Dave left during the night with their kids and their poor tent was destroyed by the snow.  The poles had snapped under the weight of the snow.  My mom's shade canopy was completely mangled and everything was a soppy, muddy, snowy mess.  The funny thing is this type of weather isn't an abnormal occurance for us.  We have had our fair share of awful weather at North Fork over Memorial Day.  After 20 years of carrying on this tradition, I think people are finally realizing that perhaps another time and another place might be in order.  But rain or shine ... or snow, we have had some great times and have many memories at North Fork!

Well, in case you haven't heard....

We're home from Washington DC!

Yeah, I really haven't posted anything substantial since the end of April. I started a few posts... but they went something like this,

Oh sweet summer,

we really thought you would never come,
and that would be a bummer.

But here you are with sun and all,

our pasty winter skin will be burned

as we camp and boat and play softball.

Even though you took a while to join us here this year,

we have already traversed up a treacherous mountain

taking brats, cup of noodles and our gear.

We have discovered the true volleyball master,

made a trip to the on call, after hour opthamologist.....

But then I thought that was not that cool. So I thought I would share a story about when I accidently cleaned my mom's bathroom with Shout Laundry Pre-Soak instead of 409 but got bored typing the story.


So, I think it is about time for an update.

We made it home from Washington DC in 2 days. We took turns driving in 5 hour (ish) shifts. We are both SO glad to be home. We missed all of our friends and family.

Here is a quick list of what we have been up to since we got home. (In no specific order).
1. Work
2. Marin's dance recital
3. Getting snowed out of our Memorial Day camping trip
4. Sand Volleyball
5. Boating
6. Bombing up Green Canyon Mountain
7. Dinners with our family
8. Andrew's baby blessing
9. Painting my moms house
10. My cousin's wedding
11. Softball (work & ward)
12. New Callings!
13. A Sunday Boxing match.
14. Puddle Jumping
15. Jaren turned 24!!!
16. Kaitlyn graduated High school. Congratulations!


Here are some pictures of our summer so far.



Happy Summer Everyone!

Family Tribute Part 2

I realized I missed a few important people in my last tribute.

1. Kaitlyn
The most amazing girl ever. She's beautiful, smart, funny, and can always make you smile. you better watch out because her nice church girl personality will fool you, once you get to know her your will find that there is a wild women inside waiting to show herself. Every guy envies her boyfriend..


Dwight
Someone who you should fear because of his or her physical power; or more specifically, someone who has a purple belt in karate.




Dalyn
a historical blacksmith with supernatural powers. Or A girl child.




Kennady
pretty dang good lookin, exceptionally clever and strong. Shy yet secretly funny at times. They know how to make you smile and are very hard to stay mad at.


Moe,
A word that was once used to describe a cute anime character. A Japanese name that was popular in the late 1990s. Its meaning, contrary to popular belief, is "young flowers blooming."


Love you guys!