We went to the zoo on Friday with Robert. Our zoo passes are going to expire next month, and Robert had still never been to the zoo with us. In fact, he's never been to the zoo in Salt Lake City and doesn't remember the last time he went to a zoo. So even though it's busy season, he took the morning off and join us on a beautiful Friday at the zoo.
They have a baby giraffe! Willow was born less than 2 months ago, and is just getting her chance at be outside these past couple weeks that the weather has been warmer.
A random morning moment, Dad was playing a video game on his tablet and the boys were both crowded around to see what was going on.
One afternoon after school we went to the zoo. It wasn't crowded and it often felt like we were the only ones there. Some of the animals were less active, but some were very much active. The polar bear was the happiest I've ever seen her.
We went to the Provo City Center Temple Open House. The kids were not quite as excited for this open house (actually Camden was excited still) and this is the third temple open house we have been to in the past yearish. So I reminded them that it is a privilege to be able to see inside a temple and that I had only been to one temple open house when I was growing up.
We also went to see a new IMAX 3D movie at the planetarium, National Parks Adventure. Micah started off the movie by spilling a large soda all over the floor, but then he spent the rest of the movie on Grandpa Sandberg's lap eating popcorn. He kept taking off his glasses to see what it looked like without them. Camden on the other hand sat in his chair with his lemonade and popcorn and was mesmerized by the movie. He never once tried to take off his glasses during the show.
Julia and I went to the Norman Rockwell Exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. Julia's school has an original Normal Rockwell hanging in their school library so I thought Julia would like to see some more art by the same artist. The painting is of Ichabod Crane and Rockwell painted two versions of it, a later more detailed version that the school has and an earlier less detailed one that was on display at the exhibit. The explanation next to the painting talked about Julia's school and how the students had acquired it!
We went to the Midway Ice Castle this year. These pictures make it look like it was really cold, and maybe it was, but we prepared in our snow clothes.
It was fun to look around and find all the hidden tunnels
Cute family picture? The kids started to get grumpy at the end. We couldn't get Micah and Camden to stand and you can see by Julia's expression she was done.
On Dia de los Reyes on January 6 we went out to my parent's house and ate rosca de reyes. Julia found two baby Jesus's in her slice and Camden found one, which he promptly stuck in his chicken nugget and called it a boat.
Julia has been sick a couple times and had to stay home from school.
Camden was not sick but wanted all the extra attention that comes with sitting on the couch all day.
Julia stared a Mandarin dual immersion program at school this year, which will continue in some form or another pretty much until she graduates high school (the format changes in middle school and again in high school). For half of the day she has an English teacher that teaches them in English and for half of the day she has a Mandarin Chinese teacher that teaches only in Mandarin. The kids are never supposed to hear their Chinese teacher speak in English and the kids are only allowed to speak in Chinese when they are in Chinese class.
For this semester's parent/teacher conference Julia needed to have a conversation with the teacher to show us what she has learned. She was pretty nervous since everyone in the room (just her two teachers and our family, but still nervous) was staring at her. She talked very quietly so turn up the volume. The teacher asks her about her family, then about colors, then about food she likes to eat. Julia told me later that when he asked her what color the Chinese flag is she wasn't sure what to say because it looked Orangish redish, so she didn't know if she should say orange or red. She ended by singing a song about numbers.
This week for Chinese New Year the school put on a performance and all the dual immersion kids sang a couple songs. Here are the first graders singing. Julia is on the front row on the far side, almost even with me so sometimes it's hard to see her. All the performances were so cute and I love hearing their Chinese intonations as they sing in Chinese.
Winterpalooza is an event in Utah for kids held each year just at the time that kids are supposed to be going stir crazy in the winter weather. My kids sure have been.
One of the highlights for them was doing this ropes course. Micah was the smallest one we saw do it, and once he got to the top he looked down and decided it was really scary up there. So he just climbed up and then went back down. But afterwards he told me it was soo fun, so he still enjoyed it. We saw much older kids, even older than Julia, get up and start crying and go back down.
Julia did great! I thought she might have trouble crossing the first couple step bridges but she breezed past those. She hesitated when she got to the single rope going across, but I yelled to her that it was just like the balance beam in gymnastics and she was able to do it pretty quickly as well. The next one was an X and after a couple seconds examining it she just decided to skip that one altogether. The last one was the toughest for her. She couldn't just skip it because she needed to get across in order to get down. She had a little trouble getting her lanyard to go in the right direction, then it was difficult for her to balance. I could see tears in her eyes as she tried to get it. But I was proud of her that she didn't give up and kept going and as she finally made it across.
Some of the other things they liked
Olympic Bobsled driver Jeremy Holm was super nice and let my kids climb all over his $20,000 bobsled. For some reason my kids were really fascinated by the bobsled. Maybe we'll have to take them to watch a practice sometime.
We got there right as the event opened and there weren't too many people there yet. We got to do face painting and get animal balloons without waiting in a line. This toy was supposed to be for older kids because it spins really fast, but since there wasn't a line the operator was nice and let Julia, Micah, and a couple other kids their age go and he just spun them around to the speed they felt comfortable. You can see Micah had a huge smile on his face, he loves rides that go fast.
Micah said his favorite part was the truck full of sand with a bunch of trucks to play in the sand with. That is what he always does outside at our house when the weather is nice (except in dirt since we don't have a sandbox) so it makes sense that that's been what he has been missing.
Besides that they spent a lot of time bouncing on bounce houses and going down bounce house slides. Early on there was no line, but later we had to wait ten minutes or so to get into each bounce house. Even Camden surprised me by climbing up to the top of the bounce house slides and going down. He has always been our most cautious child, and I could tell they scared him, but the promise of fun in spite of the scary was enough for him to go again and again.
There is a new Mini Wheat on the way! My due date is July 22, so maybe I will get a new baby for my birthday this year (my birthday is the 19th). I'm 16 weeks now. We weren't going to say anything except to close family until we found out the gender at 20 weeks, but I have been showing very early this time and it's pretty obvious even now that I am pregnant. I started thinking of going to a 3D ultrasound place at the mall and doing one of their basic gender reveal packages so we could find out earlier. And once I started thinking about it I got too excited to think that we could find out what we were having already, so we went for it. The doctor said there was absolutely no question, it was very obviously....another boy!
Robert and I both have 3 boys and 1 girl in our family so it fits. Julia was hoping for a girl, but she said that Cameron (her cousin) is cute so maybe our baby will be cute and then she would be okay with a boy. I've been feeling nauseous and tired since about Thanksgiving but it has started to ease up this week. Usually it's manageable until it is late at night, so I usually put the kids to bed and just go to bed myself before bad things start to happen ;)
We've been able to see my family a lot since we have moved to Utah which has been a real blessing. On New Years Eve we went to my parent's house to ring in the New Year.
Reah got a selfie stick for Christmas so we took a bunch of selfies.
We played a new game that Michael gave to Robert for Christmas, it took a long time for us to set it up and figure out how to play. I was surprised that I actually made it to midnight, but it was because I was focused on the getting through the game. We finished just before midnight. Guess who won? Actually, it wasn't Robert, it was Michael. So of course we had to play again the next week.
