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.