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