Sandberg Talent Show

I forgot to include this in the post about the Sandberg Reunion. Towards the end of the traditional Saturday night talent show the MC (Steven) asked if anyone else had a talent they wanted to share. I think someone specifically asked Julia (my dad maybe?) if she wanted to sing and she said yes. She wanted me to go up with her and I wondered if she would really sing once she got up, or if she would blank out once she got in front of all the people. So I went up with her, and then she said she wanted me to sing with her, but she didn't blank out and sang the whole song.



And since I havn't posted much videos lately here's another one of Julia "reading" to Micah. I just got the tail end of it, but before she really was going through the book and pretending to read it. Since it's her favorite book she's got it pretty well memorized.

One Day I'll Look Back at this and Laugh...

...but this is still not that day.

Last week that was my Facebook status after Julia had a meltdown before bed. She was tired and didn't want to go to bed and everything I said to her made it worse.

"Do you want a glass of milk?"

"No! I don't want any MILK!"

"Then what do you want, water or juice?"

" I want MILK!"

*Sigh*

But this is not the day I'm talking about now. I can already look back at that tantrum and laugh about how absurd she was being.

No, now I'm talking about a day that I'm sure we (or Julia and I at least) will look back at and say, "Hey, remember that day when...we were locked in your room for seven hours?" And then we will laugh and laugh.  Yeah, someday.

Last Friday we really did get locked in Julia's room for seven hours. It was right after we finished a late lunch and we went up to the kid's room to change a diaper. We still hadn't finished putting all the groceries away from when we went to the store earlier that day and the dishes from lunch weren't cleaned up because I was planning on coming right back.

On the way up Julia said she wanted me to lock her in her room again. A few nights earlier she kept getting up out of bed after I had put her to bed. Our old renters had changed the knobs on the upstairs doors so the lock was on the outside and we hadn't switched them back yet. So that night I locked the door from the outside to keep her from coming out. It worked, once she realized she couldn't get out anymore she stopped crying and went to bed.

But I felt a little guilty for doing it. So when she told me on Friday she wanted me to lock her in her room I told her that we weren't going to do that anymore. After I had changed Micah's diaper we played in their room for a while and then I decided it was time to go finish cleaning up. I tried to turn the knob, and it was locked! I tried turning it again and rattling the door, as if that would would unlock an obviously locked door, with no results.

Then I asked Julia. "Julia, did you lock the door."

"Yes, because I wanted you to lock me in my room"

"Well sweetie, how are we going to get out of your room?"

"Daddy will unlock it for us."

This was about 3:00 p.m and Robert was obviously at work. "But Julia, Daddy is at work. He can't unlock the door for us because he's not home. Now we are stuck in here."

"Oh."

And then she went back to playing with her toys while I looked around the room for something that I could use to unlock the door. I rummaged around the closet, but there really wasn't much. I came up with a safety pin and a nail that I took out of the wall. I tried for a while to get the door unlocked with those, but they just weren't long enough.

I was really mentally kicking myself for not having my phone with me. I normally carry it around in my pocket when I'm at home, but the phone was still sitting in my purse from when we went to the grocery store. Otherwise I could have called Robert and we could have been out in a couple hours, tops. I figured trying to yell out the window for the neighbors wouldn't work because they had no way of getting into the house to unlock the bedroom door since I always keep all the outside doors locked. Same thing with me trying to get out through the window (the bigger problem with that though is that we were on the second floor).

So, I kind of resigned to wait it out until Robert got home. It's busy season for him, so I knew it was going to be a long wait, but I wasn't exactly sure when he would be home since he always comes home at different times. We did pretty good just playing around except for one fifteen minute stretch when Micah was tired and crying. While I was trying to get him to sleep Julia accidently kneeled on one of her toy cars and got a little cut that started to bleed. I think that's when it hit her that we really couldn't leave because she wanted to go get a Dora band-aid, but I told her we couldn't because we were stuck. Then she started to cry too.

Soon they were both asleep though and we all took like a three hour nap. When we woke up it was almost dark and I was hoping Robert would be home soon. The time passed when he would have been home on the 7:20 pm (meaning leave downtown LA at 7:20 pm) train, so I knew it would be at least another hour. More playing with toys, reading books, and dancing to the music on the radio. Julia started to complain she was hungry and thirsty. When it was time for Robert to be home if he took the 8:20 pm train we started looking out the window a lot, and one of the times we looked we saw a light on in the garage. Yay, he's home!

So we waited and waited for him to come out of the garage. I figured maybe he was writing an email in the car before he came out. More waiting, and then the light went out. Augh, did we just imagine it? I rocked Micah to sleep and put him down in his crib. I tried picking the lock again with the safety pin. A few minutes later Micah woke up again and started crying. That's when I started feeling really claustrophobic decided that maybe Robert had come home and just hadn't come upstairs.

So Julia and I started yelling from the door and then figuring he might be watching TV I yelled down the air vent. After a couple minutes I was standing by the crib giving Micah his binkie and Robert opened the door.  It was 10:30 pm. "Finally," I said, "we've been stuck in here for seven hours."

"Have you really?" Robert said. He had indeed been downstairs watching T.V. for the last hour, thinking that we were all asleep (did he not notice the groceries and the dishes? I never leave things out like that before I go to bed) and had heard a faint voice calling his name. But he was confused because if I was calling him, why didn't I just open the door so he could actually hear me? He did feel bad that he had just been sitting around for an hour while we were stuck upstairs.

So that's it. I still am a little irked that I had to spend most of the afternoon and all evening stuck in a little room. Luckily though, nothing catastrophic happened while we were in there and Julia got some Mom time with nothing (such as a little pink iphone I tend to look at a lot) but Micah to distract me. One day I am sure we will laugh about it.

Sandberg Reunion 2012

This is our last catch up post from our very busy June. In June right before we left Utah we went to my Dad's annual family reunion in Southern Utah. 

Setting up our campsites

Climbing trees to do it.

Visiting relatives 

Friday night we had our traditional hot dog roast and s'mores. Julia, of course, went for the giant pink marshmallows. 

And thoroughly enjoyed making a giant mess of her face.

We passed out glow sticks after it got dark

Ranch sky

They made stick horses for the craft. Julia loved hers. She loved it so much that a little while later she tried to take it up on the slide with her. While she was trying to get it over the ladder and onto the the slide she slipped and fell five feet off the top of the ladder. Luckily she landed just right and didn't break an arm or her neck! 

She was just a little scared, so she wanted to snuggle with me for a while before taking off again on her many ranch adventures. So we sat and watched the horseshoe game for a while.

Waiting for the dutch ovens.

 Julia had fun playing in the sprinklers.

 There were scouts from my uncle's ward there who set up a new horseshoe pit. Here Michael tries it out.

 Robert went with some of my cousins to Mossy Cave.

James and Julia

Robert practices on the whip.

Summer Fun in Claremont

These are mostly my Instagram photos, but they show what we have been up to since we got back to Claremont. 

We unpacked 90 or so boxes (this is about half of them) and sold them all on Craigslist. Yahoo!  Julia looks sad here because she is shocked I ate her string cheese (in my defense she gave it to me so I figured she was full, but apparently she just wanted me to hold on to it)

We have been loving using our pool. Julia, Micah, and I usually go out a couple times a week. Julia has a floaty vest and swims around by herself like a fish. She goes around the the entire pool deep end and all if I can swim around with her, but I make her stay in the shallow end when I have Micah with us. Micah loves to splash and kick his legs in the water.

Grandpa and Grandma Wheat happened to be here on July 4th fixing up their West L.A. house. They came out to Claremont to watch the fireworks with us. We didn't even have to walk anywhere. You just drive your car up to the Metro parking lot and watch the show out in front of your car! 

Julia started out watching the fireworks with Grandpa and ended up with Robert. I thought it was funny they looked so much alike. 

When it was still cool in the morning after we would eat our breakfast and get dressed we used to go to the park. Not so much in August now...

We made the annual trip to the Hollywood Bowl last week with Daniel and Amanda and friends. The performance was  the music of Pixar played by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. They went through every Pixar film and did a mash up of the music from the film and played a series of clips from the film so each one almost felt like a short film in itself. I think the only film I hadn't seen for real was Brave, we'll have to get out and see that one someday.

Claremont does a series of movies in the park nights over the summer. One week the park they did it at  was just around the corner from our house, so I figured I could tough it out with the two kids past their bedtime by myself (it's busy season for Robert so we don't see him a whole lot during the week) if we were so close to home. But Robert surprised us and got home in time to walk over and see the movie with us! We saw Kung Fu Panda II. 

Hiking in Park City

After Micah's baby blessing we spent a couple days in Park City with Robert's parents. 

He is so snugly, I love it.

We went on a hike that ended up taking most of the day because we decided we would rather do a loop than hike up and back, but the loop turned out to be a little long. We definitely felt like we got our exercise in for the day. 

Micah's Baby Blessing

On Sunday, June 24, 2012 we finally had Micah's baby blessing. We decided to do it in Utah so more of our family could be there and we knew we were going to be in Utah at the end of June anyway. We decided to do it at my parent's house because it didn't make sense to bless him at a random ward full of people we didn't know. There was a little confusion between the three bishops (our Virginia bishop who said we were no longer in his ward, our California bishop who said he had no idea who we were since we had not been to church there yet, and the bishop of my parent's ward who said one of his counselors could be there to preside, but he couldn't give us "permission.") but we finally got it all squared away the night before (or was it the morning of..?).

Micah did wonderful during his blessing and they told me he was looking around and smiling at everyone in the circle.  Julia decided during the blessing was the perfect time to try to get some attention and tried to talk through it all, so I spent half of it trying to keep her quiet and I had to ask Robert later on what was said. Afterwards we enjoyed a luncheon with everyone who attended.

The best family picture we could get

Julia kisses Micah

Sandbergs

Wheats

With Grandma Wheat. He really loves his binkie.

Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Ramiro

Priesthood

Just Mom

She kind of reminds me of a sad '80's prom queen.

With Aunt Lauren.

So lucky to have so many people that love him there.

Quince Años

Friday evening we went to my cousin Hillary's Quince Años, a large coming out party traditionally held at age 15 in the Hispanic culture. It was a a beautiful party and they did a great job with all the dances. Julia also had a part in the program. At the beginning of the program my cousin came in and her parent's changed the tennis shoes she had been wearing for high heels, and put a tiara on her head. So Julia and another one of my little cousins got to carry the shoes and tiara over to Hillary and her parents.

Getting ready for the big moment.

They did so great carrying their pillows over! We practiced a tiny bit before hand, but I wasn't so sure how they would do in the spotlight. They did great though. 

She started getting a little bored after a while standing there, but did a good job beside fidgeting.

Congratulating her for a job well done.

Dump Fire

We flew back to California from Baltimore on Sunday and went right to our Claremont house from the airport to do a walk through with our renters. The next day we spent cleaning, painting and getting the house ready for our stuff to arrive. Tuesday the movers came and moved all our stuff in. By Wednesday both of our cars had arrived, and on Thursday we drove up to Salt Lake City to visit family.

As we were driving through the California and Nevada desert Julia remarked, "I can't tell if it's windy because there aren't any trees! Maybe the trees got broken and fell down." That's when I realized this Virginia girl who is used to having a million trees around had never been in a desert before.

As we were driving up to Utah I saw on my smartphone that my Dad had posted pictures on Facebook of a fire that had broken out in the hills above their home.

He took the pictures soon after the fire started, but as we drove up to their house later that night we could tell the fire had spread. I went to bed half thinking we might get a wake up call in the middle of the night to evacuate. Robert took these pictures late that night.

Morning came and we had not yet been evacuated. I slept in and woke up to find a very smokey outside. My mom wanted to take Julia for a walk, but we all told her it was way too smokey outside to be going for a walk. I went to get some breakfast, but before I could even get some syrup on my pancakes my brother Richard came in from outside and told us he had just talked to a Saratoga Springs firefighter who was going door to door telling everyone they were issuing a mandatory evacuation for everyone to get out ASAP. 

In the next twenty minutes everyone gathered the stuff that was most important to them. Most everyone packed an overnight back. Since we had just gotten there the night before all Robert and my stuff was still in bags so we just packed everything we brought back up into our car.  My Dad grabbed the important documents. My Mom packed up the pancake breakfast and snacks to go. My brother Chris grabbed all his electronics and my little brother Michael grabbed just his fishing pole. Soon, we were all out of the house. We knew the firefighters would do everything they could to stop the fire from getting closer to the homes, but there was still that small fear that maybe everything we left behind might be gone when we came back.

This is what it looked like as we were packing up and leaving. There was ash coming down on us and firefighters all over warning people to leave.

This is the video I took on my phone as we were leaving the subdivision. At first there was a long line of cars to get out since no one was directing traffic, but while we were in line a cop showed up and started getting things moving. I submitted my video to an online Utah news organization, who later told me the Weather Channel picked it up and would be playing the clip. I never saw it (or got a chance to even try to look for it), so I don't know if they ever used it or not.

What my parent's subdivision looked like as we were driving away. Their house is way at the top in all the smoke.

We decided to go to my grandparent's house since we had planned on visiting them that day anyway.While we were there I realized that we all smelled like smoke! So we spent the day there (and everyone took showers) until it was time to go to my cousin's Quince Años, which will be the topic of another post soon to come. That night they still had not lifted the evacuation order, so we spent the night with Robert's parents at a hotel room they had reserved since they were in town for Micah's blessing. This was all on Friday, and we were planning on having Micah's blessing on Sunday at my parent's house. Yeah, the place we were all evacuated from. So we were hoping they could get the fire under control soon so we could still have the blessing there and meanwhile brainstorming for other places we could have it.

The next morning they had still not lifted the evacuation orders, so Robert went golfing with my cousin Steven and then we hung out with their family for a while and then joined up with my family that afternoon. The city of Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain held a press conference at 5:00 pm that day and announced that everyone could now go back to their homes. Yay! My mom really did cheer. 

This is what the mountain looked like on Saturday, everything was burned.

This picture is from my brother later on that week after the fire was all out and they drove up to where it had been. The closest houses that you see there is my parent's subdivision, and they are right on the back side of it closest to the fire.