Best... Christmas... Ever

That's what Robert said on Christmas this year as we were snowmobiling back to the cabin we were staying at after an afternoon of sledding on a remote hill near Park City .

We had a ton of fun last week with Robert's family. His mom's cousin owns a cabin in the mountains around Park City and graciously let us stay there this year for Christmas. We were there for a week and and loved having all of Robert's siblings there with us. We had so much fun snowmobiling (this is Robert and my younger brothers Richard and Michael, who were there for an afternoon. My favorite quote of the week was by Robert's younger brother Kevin, who served his mission in the Philippines. When he found out my brother's Filipina fiancee was coming up for the afternoon he said "What?! a Filipina is coming here? She's going to think this is HELL because Filipinos think hell is frozen over."), snow shoeing (Bro. Kevin and his wife Ellen, Robert),
sledding (the pic above is the finish line to our awesome sledding hill, we're waiting for the next 'athlete' to come sledding down the hill. We had the Wheat Family Olympics. David and Jen won the sledding event. Sis Lauren, Sis-in-Law Ellen and Sis-in-Law Jen), playing games with family, playing with the cute babies and eating lots of good food (thanks Mom).

The cabin is high enough that the roads up there get snowed in, so we had to snowmobile in to get to it. Even the babies had to get strapped to their parents and take the 20 minute ride up on the snowmobiles. Julia rode up last Monday (she was content to just look around) and didn't leave the cabin until this past Monday when she rode back out (and fell asleep two minute after we left).

Also check out Melarie vs. Mom in the forty yard snow shoe dash. It's harder than it looks.

Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends and Family,

We thought we would write a quick note to let you all know how we’re doing since we’re feeling all grown up sending out our first Christmas cards and such.

We’ve been living in our house in Claremont, CA for over a year now (and two and half years in the L.A. area) and have really started to feel at home here. Although we really miss our Utah family and friends (and being semi-close to our NV and ID family), we have to say, we don’t really miss the cold Utah weather! Spending a couple weeks in Utah for Christmas each year has been enough to satisfy our desire to see a little snow and we like being able to come back home to some warm weather.

The biggest news this year was that in April we expanded our family by welcoming our little Julia Grace into the world…and our lives will never be the same again! We absolutely adore her, of course, and think she is the prettiest baby in the world, even if she is an overachiever in the weight category. Chubby babies are the cutest babies, right? She is now eight months old and has just started mastering her crawling skills. Therefore, she is now getting into everything and is learning that things with handles, like cupboards and drawers, are really fun to open and close and have surprises waiting inside.

Melarie quit her job at the Salvation Army in April to stay at home with Julia. Melarie has been loving being able to watch this little miracle grow and develop and is really grateful that she is able to be a stay at home mom. She likes to say it is the best job in the world, but like any job, it’s still a lot of work! Taking care of Julia (and Robert) keeps her plenty busy.

Robert is still doing tax accounting for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in downtown Los Angeles. He has taken on a lot of responsibility lately and we’re proud of how well he has done. In November we found out that Robert was accepted for a two year rotation within the firm in Washington D.C. That means next June we will be packing up and moving to D.C. for two years! It will be quite a change (and here comes the cold weather again…) but Robert is excited for the opportunity he will have at work to gain more experience (the rotation consists of three eight-month segments, each doing different type of work) and Melarie is getting excited to experience life on the east coast. Let us know if you’d like to visit, we'd love to have guests.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Love,

Robert, Melarie, and Julia Wheat

Merry Early Christmas

We had a very Christmasy weekend. On Saturday we went to the ward Christmas party and Julia told Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She was her usual social self and relished the attention she got when she was on Santa's lap. No criers here!

Since we'll be celebrating Christmas in Utah this year we decided to have our own early Christmas on Sunday and open up our presents under our tree here. Robert's comment was, "It's not nearly as fun when you know what everything is." Yeah, but it's still fun to finally get to use what you bought yourself for Christmas =).
It's also fun to teach Julia how to open presents.All ready to learn to walk! Julia also quite enjoyed rolling around in Mom and Dad's new fluffy comforter. Who could resist this face?We finished off the weekend by going to a Christmas Carol Sing-A-Long at a friends house in Claremont. Now we are all ready for the holidays to go to Utah and see our families!

For the Grandparents

Cheer on Julia as she shows you her newest talent

Late Thanksgiving Post

I was a little busy this week with some projects (making bridal shower invitations and sending out Christmas cards- e-mail me your address if you'd like one wheatthin@gmail.com) so I just got the Thanksgiving pictures uploaded. We spent Thanksgiving along the Colorado River again near the CA/NV/AZ border (To get to the movie theater we would drive from CA into AZ and then to NV where the theater is at) with the Wheat family. Robert loves this place because there is a golf course literally across the street, so he spent a lot of time out there. L-R Dad Wheat, Me, Mom Wheat and Julia, Robert, and Daniel. (photo by Wendy)

Notable firsts of this trip for Julia included the first (two) time(s) in a movie theater (She did pretty well. She ate, then slept through most of the movies. She did get taken out once during each movie, but it wasn't as bad as I had thought it might be), first time eating baby food turkey, and first time dipping her foot in a river.

Julia's Crawling Progress

She's hasn't quite perfected it yet, but here's her current progress. (P.S. Can you guess what she's going for?)

Last week I tried on my wedding dress for the first time since we got married(my brother's getting married in January, so I was feeling nostalgic). The most disappointing part was that I couldn't even get my arms to fit in the sleeves!

I'm telling myself it's because of all the muscle I've built from carrying Julia around. Man, I must have been scrawny when I got married.

Sometimes this feels like my family...

Come What May and Love It

This was such a great talk, and since I have nothing exciting to post this week about us I thought I'd share this. Enjoy!

What an amazing child!

Attention all grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousin, close friends, acquaintances, and random people who lurk on my blog, I would like to announce another astounding accomplishment by my adorable offspring. Julia has taken calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals to form...a tooth! Such talent!

Happy Halloween!

For Halloween my cousin Katrina and her family came up from San Diego to celebrate with us. We had a BBQ (that's right, we ate outside, because it was 80 degrees!), and went Trick-or-Treating for twenty minutes in Claremont's little shopping area, The Village. Every time someone would put a candy in Ali's bucket she would take it out and want to eat it. Then we went to our ward Halloween party, then came home and and handed out candy (we had a good stream of trick-or-treaters come by), put the kiddos to sleep and played games. That's probably the most we have done to celebrate Halloween since Rob and I have been married!

ESPN College Gameday

Last week Robert spent all week reading on the Cougarboard about ESPN's College Gameday coming to BYU and wishing he could go. So when his uncle let him know on Wenesday he might have an extra ticket to the game for him Robert started making plans to go to Utah. He still didn't let me know for sure we were even going until a few hours before we left on Friday though. We drove half the night Friday, got to Utah at 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Robert didn't even sleep and left for College Gameday at 5:00 a.m. Meanwhile Julia and I slept until 9:30 a.m., woke up and watched the Tivo'd version of Robert on ESPN! He made it onto the front row and had a great time.
Turns out his uncle did give him a ticket and he got to go to the game too. Thanks Jerry!
Julia and I spent the day with my family, and Sunday we headed back to California.

All About Me- Julia 6 Months Stats

Weight-19.6 lbs (95 per.)
Height-26 " (50 per.)
Head Circ.- 17 1/4 (75 per.)

Favorite Activities: going for walks, sticking my feet in my mouth, blowing raspberries, rolling around, creeping backwards until I get stuck halfway under the couch.

Favorite Food: Sweet Potatoes (so far, she only has a diet of six foods)

Favorite Toy: Rubber Pretzel Teether

6 months

Hard to believe this cutie is six months old today! Happy half-Birthday Julia!

Thanksgiving Point

On Friday we went out to Thanksgiving Point to check out the corn maze and whatever other stuff they had there. Julia fell asleep during the corn maze, I guess walking around seeing only rows and rows of corn wasn't that interesting to her. The corn maze this year was in the shape of Larry H. Miller's head, and I thought it was a pretty good maze. I was lost, but then, I wasn't really paying much attention to where we were going. I mostly just followed my brother's as they tried to figure out where to go. I think it also helped that we went during the day, so there weren't very many people there and most of the time in the maze there wasn't another person in sight.

We also took pictures with the pumpkins, went on a hay ride, saw pig races (they were cute little piglets, so it was cute), and went through some fun houses they had there. I think the target age group for almost everything besides the maze was like 4-12 years old, but we had fun and it kept us entertained for a couple hours. Then it got dark...and cold...so we went home.

Julia didn't want to look at the camera, she was way more interested in trying to get the hay (unsuccessfully) and corn husks (successfully) in her mouth.

Ramiro Pictures

Four Generation Picture- Me, My Mom, My Grandmother, and Julia

On Sunday after the first session of general conference a lot of my mom's family came over to eat lunch, watch the last session, and hang out together. Julia had good two hour nap during the last session and woke up ready to play with the houseful of people who came to visit.

Cousins with grandpa and grandma

Cascade Springs

Julia and I are in Utah this week visiting my family. On Saturday we went up American Fork Canyon to see the fall leaves. We stopped at an outlook to take pictures and it was cool, but mostly it was WINDY! When we got back in the car Julia was like "what was that?" These photos are from when we stopped. Afterwards we headed a little lower to Cascade Springs to walk around and take pictures with the colorful leaves. I had left our baby carrier at my grandparent's house a few days ago when we visited them, so we all took turns carrying Julia. She is one heavy baby now.

Havasupai and San Diego

Last weekend Robert went with some of his friends to Havasu Falls near the Grand Canyon, so Julia and I took off for the weekend too and visited my cousin in San Diego. We had so much fun with my cousin Katrina and her husband Bret and little one year old girl Ali. Ali was especially excited to see us every morning. She loved looking at Julia and figuring out what Julia was all about. I guess that's a good thing since she is going to have a little brother in a couple months. Anyway, so we visited the temple grounds, saw the beach at Torrey Pines, saw the beach at La Jolla Cove, went to the beach at Coronado Island (cool jets), ate lunch and flew a kite at the beach at Mission Bay (all on different days)...sensing a theme ? It was awesome!
All Robert's pictures were so beautiful, I had a hard time picking which ones to post. I don't think it's possible to take a bad picture at Havasupai. Sounds like they had a great time hiking all over the canyon. There is no road down to the bottom of the canyon, so you either have to backpack or ride horses in for ten miles to the campground, or pay for a helicopter ride in. After you get to the campground you hike around to see all the waterfalls too. It looks like it's worth it though. I hope I can go and see it all someday too!

Finally, she rolls!

Julia rolled over yesterday! I had just finished feeding her so I laid her down on her back instead of her tummy so she wouldn't spit up everything she had just eaten. Then I looked away for a minute, and heard her making muffled noises like she does when she is on her tummy and is putting her face down. "Wait a minute, but I just put her down on her back!" I looked at her again and sure enough she had rolled over while I wasn't watching. So I flipped her over on her back again and she rolled onto her tummy again for me (then I made her do it again and again and again).

You can hear me talking to Robert on the phone telling him about it. I called him right away because I was just so excited she finally flipped. She's been getting pretty mobile lately, reaching for toys on her side and moving around by kicking her legs (she just needs to start using her arms and she might actually get somewhere), so I had been expecting the roll any day.

Our weekend

Just another fun weekend...

we hung out at home...

took a ride around the Marina...

and saw a sunset at the beach...
Too bad it was all last weekend, and the weekend before. Oh well, better late than never.

Collage Crazy

Last night after Julia went to bed I figured put how to make collages with my pictures and went a little crazy with them.











The collages are of our wedding five years ago, Seattle vacation last month, and Julia through the months

4 Month Stats

Julia had her 4 month checkup today. She's still a chunky baby, but she also had a growth spurt so she isn't a shorty anymore.

Weight- 17.8 lbs (97 percentile)
Height- 25 3/4 in. (87 percentile)
Head Circ.- 16 1/2 in. (66 percentile)

Her current interests include drooling like mad, sticking everything in her mouth, and laughing when I say "seriously" or blow bubbles on her tummy. It's seriously cute.

My turn to video edit

I've been messing around with our editing software and thought I'd try making a video montage. Here is the video montage of my sister-in-law Lauren's wedding last week.

In Loving Memory of Grace Lefevre Sandberg

Last month while we were in Utah for my brother's wedding my grandma passed away. She had been battling cancer for a few years and her health had been slowly degrading, so her passing wasn't a surprise. We are all going to miss her though. She was the mother of 12 children (10 still alive), grandmother to 50 grandchildren, and great-grandmother to 15 little ones. Julia is named after her, Julia Grace Wheat. Robert and I extended our stay in Utah long enough to attend her funeral. I want to just share a few memories I have of her.

Grandma Sandberg loved family history. When I think about her now I picture her at the Sandberg Ranch telling us stories about our ancestors, like where they used to live and how they came to America and settled in Southern Utah. She was co-head of the committee that oversees the small cemetery where a lot of her ancestors and family members have been buried and just a few months before her death she put together a binder of all the people who were buried there. Now we will have to add her to the binder since it is the same cometary she is buried in. Grandma Sandberg also did a lot of temple work. I'm sure there were a lot of thankful people who welcomed her in the spirit world after she died.

Grandma Sandberg wasn't the type of grandma who would make nice meals for everyone, I guess with 10 kids there wasn't time to make many nice meals, but she did make fantastic rolls. She was very loving though and at her memorial service one of my aunts said she always made you feel like you were special.

A few years ago I did taped interviews with all my grandparents of their lives with the intent of transcribing the interview so everyone can read it (so far I have only finished one, Grandpa Sandberg). During that interview realized that Grandma Sandberg and I have a lot in common, mainly our love of reading. I think everyone in my Dad's family who loves to read can thank Grandma Sandberg for it. My dad says one of his memories of his mom when he was a kid was that she was always reading. I even found out during the interview that we had the same favorite book, Pride and Prejudice.

Like I said, we have a lot of family in the same cemetery where Grandma Sandberg was buried. After the graveside service we got to walk around the cemetery and see where our family members were buried. Here are Julia and I at the tombstone of Julia's other namesake, Julia Ann Orton.

Julia and Eli Video

Here's the video of Julia and her second cousin Eli.

For those of you who missed our wedding four years ago...

here's a recap of my brother's wedding, which was a lot like our wedding. My brother Richard married my new sis Ashley on July 23 in the Salt Lake Temple. I love going to temple sealings. It always makes me remember how I felt the day Robert and I got married and be reminded that we are a family forever.Julia fell asleep for all the pictures. She was in them, but just asleep on my shoulder the whole time. So here she is with her face showing in her pretty dress.
After pictures we went to a chapel in West Jordan where they had the party! Er, I mean the reception. Ashley so kindly agreed to have a traditional Mexican wedding, so we served rice and beans and tortillas for dinner and did all the traditional crazy party stuff my family usually does at weddings. Some of the highlights:

Mariachis


The Dollar Dance



La Vibora de la Mar aka The Serpent


The Walk of Death


And I can't resist throwing one more picture of Julia in here. There were so many people the gym started getting quite hot and Julia started getting pretty fussy. So I stripped off her dress and ta da! She was happy again!