Just Another Neighborhood Grocery Store

The bad economy hit the Inland Empire, where we live, pretty hard. Our house was a bank foreclosure when we bought it, pretty common for this area at the time. Just down the street from our house there is a shopping center that was almost completely vacant when we moved in. The anchor store looked like it had been an Albertson's before it closed, and without an anchor store most of the smaller store spaces went vacant too.

While we were in Virginia a new supermarket moved into the space. I was so happy! Now I could just go down the block for grocery shopping.

And, even better, this supermarket is not a national chain, it's a Southern California chain that advertises itself as having "international food and super king prices" and I love it. I would much rather have one of these near my home than another Albertson's.

Some of the top reasons I love it are
1. They have fantastic deals on produce. 39 cents a pound on oranges, 20 limes for 99 cents, 4 lbs of carrots for 99 cents, those kind of deals. I no longer feel like I have to choose between fresh produce for my family or saving money. And they have a big produce section with lots of variety.

2. I love international selection of food. They have all the Mexican brands my mom uses, plus a good selection of Mediterranean and Indian food.

I share all that to let you know that I really do love my local grocery store for legitimate reasons. But I also love it because of the stuff I see there while I'm shopping. I always get a giggle out of...

Beef Feet Skin On

Lamb Brains (pretty expensive if you ask me.)

Their rice and dried grains aisle, the entire aisle (on one side.) The store has most all the American food we are used to, but the variety is all different from a regular American store. You would find like a fourth of an aisle devoted to this in a regular grocery store, but here you've got all sorts of variety of rices and brands. But the canned soup section in this store is tiny, where in other grocery stores it would be a full half aisle of soups.

All the selection of Bimbo bread. It just makes me smile because it is THE brand of bread in Mexico.

Baby Octopus, yum!

And, the kicker. Giant gun shaped flasks of alcohol right before you walk out the door. This one makes me smile all the time. I wonder how many of those they sell?

Pink-alicious Eyes

 Warning: If you don't want to see pictures of pink eye, don't scroll down!

The week we left Utah was a momentous week in the Wheat household, our first battle with pink eye. Julia and Micah both fell victim to it, twice. They are both better now, but we are still waiting and hoping to see if Robert and I come out of it untouched since it can have up to a two week incubation period.

The Wednesday before we were suppose to come home from Christmas break Julia woke up with a little goop in her eyes. I cleaned her up and she was mostly fine the rest of the day. In the afternoon she got some more goop and was feeling tired so she took a nap, unusual for her. The next day she couldn't open her eyes when she woke up because of the goop. Not knowing what was wrong with her and since we were away from home we wanted to wait a little and see if she would get better on her own or could wait until we got back home to see a doctor.

That day her eyes just got worse and worse and by that evening it was clear we would have to take her into a clinic in Park City somewhere. Oddly for us though, she didn't really feel bad. I think her eyes were bugging her a little, but I think she looked much worse than she felt.

So first thing Friday morning she got to visit the IHC clinic in Park City with Robert and watch movies until she got called. Luckily we got her in before the slopes opened because Robert said by the time they left the waiting room was full of skiers. Pink eye, they told us, confirming what we had guessed since looking up the symptoms the night before.

Pink eye is very contagious so Dad Wheat and I tried to sterilize as much of the cabin as we could think of that Julia had touched. Luckily the day before she mostly sat upstairs and played with a few toys and watched movies. But who knows who touched what or who in the day before we could sterilize everything.

After their appointment Micah and I met Robert and Julia down the hill from the cabin and headed over to my parent's where we would stay the night before heading home. I told Julia she had to stay in the "playroom" (their front room) and put away some of the toys so it would be more manageable to clean once she was done playing there. A few minutes later she came streaking out of the front room and to my germaphobic eyes it seemed like she was touching everything she could. I was keeping a mental note of everything I needed to go back and sanitize, and in the coming days I felt like I needed to follow them around with a can of Lysol  We teased Julia that she must really like pink to get pink eye. That's even more pink than Pinkalicious!

Julia was looking much better the next morning and much much better by that evening. We spent the entire day in the car driving home, so it was pretty easy to keep her contained and know what we would have to sterilize later.

The next morning Micah woke up with a goopy eye so he couldn't open one eye. I think he was a little confused about what was going on, but he was happy the entire day. In fact, Julia and Micah were both pretty happy through it all.  We gave Micah some medicine right away, so his eyes never got too bad.

After they were all better we gave them medicine for a couple more days like we were suppose to, then stopped. Two days later the pink eye was back for both of them. So we were back to restricting what they could touch (this time by putting up baby gates and barriers to block them from certain rooms) following them around with Lysol, and washing lots of clothes and blankets.

Around the same time they were also starting to get cold or flu symptoms, so a few days later, after the pinkeye had cleared up again, we took Micah into the doctor because he seemed to be having a tougher time getting over it. We found out it was RSV, but luckily Micah was doing well enough that he could just get over it on his own. We are still trying to shake the last of the symptoms, a lingering cough. And that pretty much sums up our January 2013.           

Here are the pictures:                                                         

 Friday night at my parents house. Probably about six hours after starting her antibiotic eye drops. Actually already a little better than earlier in the day and most of the goop is cleaned off, but the worse of the pictures.

  

Saturday night on the drive home. 30ish hours post medicine. Much better. Eyes were mostly clear, just some irritation and puffiness around her eyes, probably from rubbing her eyes.

Micah wakes up with goopy eyes on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning Julia looks almost normal. 48 hours after first getting her medicine.

 Someone forgot to tell Micah he was sick. 

Looking much better on Monday.

Let's see those eyes together one last time. Poor Julia!

Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year 2013 with family at the cabin in Park City. I figured I would let Julia stay up as long as she could, and considering she went to bed at 11:00 p.m. the day before it looked likely she would make it to midnight.

I brought some balloons to help pass the time and some of the kids had the idea to play a game with the balloons where everyone ties a balloon to their leg and then try to pop the balloon of the other players. They all loved it, but there were tears when some balloons popped. For Julia, the tears came because of something else.

Here's a video of the chaos. Watch a minute or so, then move on to the 3:00 minute mark.

 Julia and Meg ran right into each other. Meg started crying and stopped playing, which is why Julia started crying. Julia was upset not because she was hurt, but because her friend wasn't playing with her anymore.

This game prompted another game, the get the Oreo from your forehead to your mouth game without using your hands. There were only a few people who could get it (myself included :)). Micah thought it pretty funny. Julia was determined to get it. She tried and tried, but just couldn't get it. Finally, she started getting frustrated and started crying a little, so Robert told her, "Why don't you just pick up the cookie with your hands and put it in your mouth, Julia?" Julia said happily, "Oh, okay," and popped the cookie in her mouth as if to say, "Why didn't you just say so?"

Robert's Mom got there from Elko around 11:00 p.m. and we set off fireworks that Mom and Dad Wheat brought with them. At 11:50 Julia turned to me said, "I'm ready for bed now." At this point though I wasn't going to let her give up so close to midnight, so I rallied her to make it another ten minutes.

At midnight we celebrated,

Julia popped a balloon that had made it to midnight too,

 and then soon after she asked to go to bed again.

Okay then! Happy New Year! Welcome 2013!

Sledding

Julia spend considerable more time outside over Christmas break this year than she did last year. Last year she loved it for ten minute intervals. This year she could stay outside playing for hours. The cold almost never bothered her (except when her glove would come off), and I'm gonna go ahead and take some credit here for bundling her up every time she wanted to go outside. 

Which was a lot.

Pretty much anytime she could convince someone to go outside with her she would go. And then I would have to find her two layers of pants, three layers of socks, two shirts, her black snow pants (so Micah can wear them when he's three, otherwise I'm sure she would have chosen pink), her pink princess hat, her pink boots, her pink gloves, her purple coat, her rainbow scarf, and some hotties hand warmers. Sounds warm enough right? 

There were a lot of girl family members (Kent's family) up there this year and Julia had a blast with them. They were all older than her, but they did a great job helping her keep up with them and feel involved. She went "extreme sledding" with them a couple times. Extreme sledding is sledding down the snow covered road for a long time. The Holiday girls named it that the year before when the road was basically ice, so according to them it was pretty extreme. This year it was long, but the snow was oh so powdery, so it's was a safe speed for Julia to go down.

Here is a video of the Holiday girls racing down the hill.

The first time she went out without me and sled a little bit, but mostly just rode the snowmobile with Robert and brought the other girls up the hill.

The next time I left Micah with Grandma Wheat and went out with Julia. I went down the hill with her and we made it halfway down before Julia started asking to stop. So after a while longer we stopped when Julia started crying and waited for Robert to come get Julia on the snowmobile while I finished going down the hill.  Then we all got back on the two snowmobiles driven by Robert and his Dad. Well, all the girls got on the snowmobile with his Dad because he had the sled for some of them to ride in.

Julia said she wanted to go again, so on the next time down the hill I told Julia to just tell me whenever she wanted to stop and we could stop. We went about 1/3 the way down and Julia asked to stop. So we stopped.

I made us a little bench out of our sled and snow and we made snow angels and watched the other sledders go down, and get pulled back up. Then Julia was ready to keep going, so we started going down another 1/3 of the way, stopped again, made another bench, watched the sledders go by again, made snow angels again, then continued on our way to the end.

At the end we sat and waited for the sledders to come back down, so we burned time by taking pictures. Julia was tired by then and didn't want me to take her picture. As I tried to take her picture she knocked the phone out of my hands, but not before I got her picture. Time to go back to the cabin and take a nap!

Julia at the Dentist

Julia had a dentist appointment today. It was her third dentist cleaning ever. The first time she did great. The second time she did okay until she starting thinking it was fun to gently bite the dentist every time she tried to put her fingers in Julia's mouth. That visit was more of an uncooperative visit. So this time I wondered how she would do.

I guess she has matured a little more now because she was the perfect little patient. She loved chatting with the dental hygienist, was very cooperative, and wasn't afraid of all the things getting poked into her mouth.

The dentist was a counselor in our bishopric when Julia was born and when he came in he said he couldn't believe she was already old enough to be seeing the dentist. He also said her teeth are very close together because she has a narrow bite so her teeth don't have a lot of room, so she may need orthodontic work after her adult teeth come in. It all depends on how they come in. This doesn't surprise me because I had the exact same thing, big teeth and a little mouth, and I had to have extensive work done.

Also, they said Julia had no cavities. Good brushing Julia!

Afterwards we went to McDonalds for ice cream and playing at the play place because she had done such a good job. Julia liked that so much she asked when she could go to the dentist again!

Lots Still to Come

I still have a lot more blogging to do about our New Years and post-Christmas activities. They are in the works and will eventually get published. In the mean time we have been sick in some way or another since we got back from Utah, so there haven't been much more bloggertunuties to fall behind on.

Here is Micah practicing his "walking." It's hard to believe with how mobile he is now that he just learned to crawl last month!

Living Planet Aquarium

On one of the last days we were with my parents my family met up with my cousin Steven and his family and went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Utah. It's pretty small as far as aquariums go, but they have some neat things. They will be moving to a new bigger location next year, so it looks like we'll have to go check it out again next Christmas.

They had some cute penguins

A nice shark tank, the opening was just too small so not a whole lot of people could look at once. Kind of problematic when everyone in the entire building wants to see when they feed the sharks.

This kids had fun running around and seeing the animals.

Christmas Morning

 We spent our Christmas at my parent's home in Saratoga Springs. Now that we have kids Christmas mornings are a little more fun again seeing the how excited they get for Santa Clause. Well, how excited Julia gets for Santa Clause. Micah was very excited and intrigued with everything going on, but he of course, had no idea

Julia and Micah check out what they got, and we start getting out Julia's tea set. We had asked her what she wanted for Christmas months ago and she just kept adding to her list of what she wanted: a doll, a tea set, a hula hoop, and a jump rope. We told her she had to choose just one thing to ask for Christmas and she chose the tea set. She was just expecting a tea seat and was surprised to see a few more gifts she had asked for.

Micah didn't care what he got, he was happy with everything.

 Eating breakfast with our giant new mugs.

 Julia let Micah help her open a present.

Funny thing about this present. Julia was so excited to open the present that she picked up the box and the stuffed dog fell out without her noticing. So she got it all unwrapped and found nothing inside. "A box!" she exclaimed happily. Then we told her to look around for the present on the floor. She loves her new puppy!

 Micah was pretty excited to open presents.

A little too excited.

 My brothers and Dad playing with their new toys.