Our weekend

Just another fun weekend...

we hung out at home...

took a ride around the Marina...

and saw a sunset at the beach...
Too bad it was all last weekend, and the weekend before. Oh well, better late than never.

Collage Crazy

Last night after Julia went to bed I figured put how to make collages with my pictures and went a little crazy with them.











The collages are of our wedding five years ago, Seattle vacation last month, and Julia through the months

4 Month Stats

Julia had her 4 month checkup today. She's still a chunky baby, but she also had a growth spurt so she isn't a shorty anymore.

Weight- 17.8 lbs (97 percentile)
Height- 25 3/4 in. (87 percentile)
Head Circ.- 16 1/2 in. (66 percentile)

Her current interests include drooling like mad, sticking everything in her mouth, and laughing when I say "seriously" or blow bubbles on her tummy. It's seriously cute.

My turn to video edit

I've been messing around with our editing software and thought I'd try making a video montage. Here is the video montage of my sister-in-law Lauren's wedding last week.

In Loving Memory of Grace Lefevre Sandberg

Last month while we were in Utah for my brother's wedding my grandma passed away. She had been battling cancer for a few years and her health had been slowly degrading, so her passing wasn't a surprise. We are all going to miss her though. She was the mother of 12 children (10 still alive), grandmother to 50 grandchildren, and great-grandmother to 15 little ones. Julia is named after her, Julia Grace Wheat. Robert and I extended our stay in Utah long enough to attend her funeral. I want to just share a few memories I have of her.

Grandma Sandberg loved family history. When I think about her now I picture her at the Sandberg Ranch telling us stories about our ancestors, like where they used to live and how they came to America and settled in Southern Utah. She was co-head of the committee that oversees the small cemetery where a lot of her ancestors and family members have been buried and just a few months before her death she put together a binder of all the people who were buried there. Now we will have to add her to the binder since it is the same cometary she is buried in. Grandma Sandberg also did a lot of temple work. I'm sure there were a lot of thankful people who welcomed her in the spirit world after she died.

Grandma Sandberg wasn't the type of grandma who would make nice meals for everyone, I guess with 10 kids there wasn't time to make many nice meals, but she did make fantastic rolls. She was very loving though and at her memorial service one of my aunts said she always made you feel like you were special.

A few years ago I did taped interviews with all my grandparents of their lives with the intent of transcribing the interview so everyone can read it (so far I have only finished one, Grandpa Sandberg). During that interview realized that Grandma Sandberg and I have a lot in common, mainly our love of reading. I think everyone in my Dad's family who loves to read can thank Grandma Sandberg for it. My dad says one of his memories of his mom when he was a kid was that she was always reading. I even found out during the interview that we had the same favorite book, Pride and Prejudice.

Like I said, we have a lot of family in the same cemetery where Grandma Sandberg was buried. After the graveside service we got to walk around the cemetery and see where our family members were buried. Here are Julia and I at the tombstone of Julia's other namesake, Julia Ann Orton.

Julia and Eli Video

Here's the video of Julia and her second cousin Eli.

For those of you who missed our wedding four years ago...

here's a recap of my brother's wedding, which was a lot like our wedding. My brother Richard married my new sis Ashley on July 23 in the Salt Lake Temple. I love going to temple sealings. It always makes me remember how I felt the day Robert and I got married and be reminded that we are a family forever.Julia fell asleep for all the pictures. She was in them, but just asleep on my shoulder the whole time. So here she is with her face showing in her pretty dress.
After pictures we went to a chapel in West Jordan where they had the party! Er, I mean the reception. Ashley so kindly agreed to have a traditional Mexican wedding, so we served rice and beans and tortillas for dinner and did all the traditional crazy party stuff my family usually does at weddings. Some of the highlights:

Mariachis


The Dollar Dance



La Vibora de la Mar aka The Serpent


The Walk of Death


And I can't resist throwing one more picture of Julia in here. There were so many people the gym started getting quite hot and Julia started getting pretty fussy. So I stripped off her dress and ta da! She was happy again!

Other Trip Highlights

We went to Utah for my brother's wedding, ended up staying longer for my grandmother's funeral. I'm doing separate posts for those events, but here are are the highlights of everything in between.Julia met Eli. Eli is the son of Robert's cousin, Jeremy and Sarah Nowland. They were due just a few days apart, but Julia came early and Eli came late, so they are 15 days apart. They were so cute together! Julia kept whacking Eli on the arm or holding his hand.

Julia got her first golf lesson and Robert greatly improved his game by playing 5 times (at real golf courses).

We visited the Oquirrh Mountain Temple with my family. The celestial room is beautiful and has an awesome chandelier!
Julia met her Great-Grandma Whitehurst. And finally, Julia put daddy to sleep

New Windows

It took us four months, but we finally got our new windows installed last week! We got new energy efficient windows in the entire house. Looking at the pictures I can already see three other benefits. One, they have screens (yeah, no bugs!), two, they are much easier to open (and they all do open, some of the old windows wouldn't open at all), and three they look nice. These aren't the best pictures, but it's good enough to tell how much nicer the new windows look.

Before

After