Utah Fun

We've been having a lot of fun in Utah visiting my family. They all adore having Julia around since she is the only grandchild, so she has been getting pretty spoiled with all the attention. You might say she gets treated like a princess. That's okay with me though, it makes my job a lot easier.

Some of the fun things we've done:

Saturday night we started the evening off by going out to dinner at a Filipino restaurant in Salt Lake. Then we went to temple square to see the lights, and then the boys took Julia home and all the girls went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. Sunday we had a lot of family over and Julia stayed up late playing with (second) cousins.Then on Monday we went to the Christmas Carol Sing-A-Long at the Energy Solutions Arena with a live orchestra and performances by Jon Schmidt. My family has gone for the past three years, but this was our first time going. Here is the row Robert and I were sitting on. It is entirely made up of my family members- uncle, cousins, aunt, more cousins, siblings, and finally another aunt and a teeny tiny Julia standing on a lap at the very end with a Santa Clause hat. We had fun and Julia loves to sing so she had a lot of fun too.
This was one of the songs Jon Schmidt played (but not actually last night's performance obviously). At the sing-a-long Jon Schmidt talked about how surprised he was that this video got over a million hits, so of course I had to look it up when I got home.


Finally, we woke up to a bunch of snow this morning and decided this snow looked inviting enough to go through the trouble of bundling up enough to go play in the snow. Julia hated being bundled up so much and she could hardly walk at first. She kept whining while trying to walk through the snow. I guess she got used to it though because after a while she loosened up and starting jumping into the snow and throwing snow up into the air. We played outside for close to two hours this morning and went back out again this afternoon after Julia's nap. Julia was introduced to the wonders of snowmen, snowballs, and even a snow slide that her uncles made for her.Checking out the snowman we built. She wanted to give him a hug. Then when she did give the snowman a hug she buried her face into him and realized that he actually tasted pretty good. She kept going back to him and trying to eat him.
This is a video of the first run down the snow slide. We later expanded it and the snow melting a little naturally made it more slippery and smooth, so it turned out to be pretty fast.



I figured out Julia gets more out of it if she goes down with me, so here are Julia and I going down the the snow slide together.
Unfortunately we found out my Grandpa Sandberg passed away on Sunday. He has been in constant pain for a while though and has not had a very high quality of life from being so sick. He has also really been missing my grandma who passed away last year. So although we will all miss him a lot, we know that he is happier where he is now. My grandpa's last gift to my Dad was in the timing of my Grandpa's death. He died just in time for my Dad to come home from Iraq for Christmas. My dad gets to leave Iraq for 15 days (including travel time) to come to the funeral. He has already left Iraq and is probably in Kuwait someplace now. We are hoping he makes it to Utah by the 23rd or 24th. It really is a Christmas miracle. The funeral will be next Wednesday in Panguitch, UT.