Selfies

Robert "surprised" me with a trip to Paris for our ten year anniversary! I say "surprise" because he planned it and arranged for everything, but told me about it two weeks before we left. I'm a planner and I kept bugging him about making plans for our anniversary (like, choosing a restaurant to go to for a nice dinner...) so he finally told me one night, "We aren't going to be around on our anniversary," and also we need to renew your passport. He didn't tell me where we were going until the next day though after I had been guessing all day. Paris, here we come! 

Robert knew Paris was #1 on list of places I wanted to visit so I was very excited. I've taken six years of French in middle school and high school so I've heard a lot about French language (and yet I speak French pretty awfully), French culture, French architecture, French history, etc. It was so cool to see it all in person!

I blog mostly so I can remember things we have done, and so our families can keep up with what is going on with us. So I'll be blogging a lot about our four days in Paris because I want to remember everything about this trip. Sorry if it's a bit of overload, but this is mostly for me! It was a fantastic, dream come true trip. To start off my Paris series posts, here are all the selfies we took in the various places we were at. (I'll be coming back to blog about each of this places individually)

Selfie in the Catacombs

Selfie in front of Versailles

Selfie in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles.

Selfie in front of the Arc de Triomphe

 Selfie in front of the Louvre.

Selfie in front of Notre Dame.

 And of course, selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower (on the actual day of our anniversary).

Merry Christmas from the Wheats!

About our 2014

Our family theme this year

Weekend Christmas Festivities

 We had a busy weekend in the Wheat household this weekend. Saturday Robert and I spent most of the day at the church helping to get ready for the ward Christmas party, while my parents watched our kids. Then we had our ward Christmas party that evening and my brothers and cousin came to help with the kids as well so we could do stuff during and after the party.

We had a photo booth (above), a magician (Micah and Julia are together in the middle of the picture here), short Christmas message...

...then the kids sang Silent Night. Julia almost sang a solo because the first time through the kids were suppose to hum the tune, but she was so excited to sing she was belting it out all on her own until a boy came and told her to hum. Robert said he was disappointed she stopped! Micah was up there too, but after a minute he got bored and tried to climb under the table, then came and saw me. After they sang the bishop spoke and then introduced a special guest...



Santa! Julia was excited to tell Santa what she wanted (roller skates).

 Micah was excited to tell him too (a monster truck), but shyness got the better of him and he didn't want to look up at the camera or at Santa, so he told the fireplace what he wanted for Christmas.

 Camden was super excited and hyper to be line with a whole bunch of other kids, until we got close to Santa and I pointed him out to Camden. Then he got really quiet and serious wondering just what exactly was going on with the scary looking guy in front of us. As soon as I put him on Santa's lap he burst into tears.

He cheered up once we got to the dessert table. All the pictures were taken by a volunteer photographer from the ward. He walked past Camden and said, "Oh, that is adorable. Can I take his picture?"

Sunday morning Julia and I and my parents went to Music and the Spoken Word with guest performer Santino Fontana (voice of Prince Hans from Frozen), followed immediately by a mini-concert with the same performers plus the Muppets! It was pretty cute, but a little too early for Julia. I had to wake her up to get there in time and she was a little grumpy about it. 

Afterwards we sped back to our church building in Draper and Julia gave her first talk in Primary on 

following Christ's example.

Then this evening Robert's Mom flew into town and joined us for our traditional car drive looking at Christmas lights. We stopped at Draper Park for a few minutes to look at their uber lighted tree now dubbed the "Tree of Life" by Mormons in Utah. Then we continued on to look at the neighborhood lights and ended up at the Draper Temple, which you can just barely see off in the distance here (it looked a lot bigger from here in real life).

Robert carrying Julia and Mom Wheat carrying Camden silhouetted in the light of the tree.

Santa Letters

Camden

Micah

He "signed" it at the end

Julia

Complete with a picture of our family with our Christmas tree

And a Nativity picture on the back.

Camden's One Year Pictures

Camden is a very happy, very active boy right now. As you can tell from the pictures he just can't sit still for very long. He loves chasing after his siblings and is starting to understand sentences and follow directions. He is also getting good at demanding things by waving his arm and bouncing up and down. He likes to chatter too, so I think he will be talking in no time.

These were all taken in our backyard, we tried not to get the houses in the pictures, but this face was too cute even if the neighbors house is back there.

 Always on the move.

 Couldn't get him to hold still even if I was holding him

And we also took a couple with all three since they were all playing outside too.

Julia's Ballet Recital

After we moved to Draper I decided to enroll Julia at an actual dance studio since she loved her little tap class that she was in before. We compromised since I wanted to to keep doing tap and she wanted to do ballet, so she is in a ballet/tap combo class. She has a lot of fun doing it and takes it pretty seriously.

For her big recital yesterday they just did one ballet number, Wrapped in Red. There are only three girls in her class and they all did a great job. Julia worked hard on it, and even practiced at home a few times. We especially worked on her leap because she didn't know how to do a leap. I guess it's one of those things we can do as adults that we take for granted as being easy, but for a child it actually takes a lot of thought and coordination.

When I picked her up from backstage after the show she was pretty famished and cranky, and surprised to see so many people who had come to support her. We had 16 adult family members there- both sets of her grandparents, my grandparents, four of her aunts and uncles, two of my aunts, and two of my cousins, and Robert and I (and Camden and Micah). So she wasn't in much of a mood to take pictures, but we got a few good ones out of her.

 Getting fed some strawberries.

Showing us how she took a bow when she came back out with all the dancers at the very end of the show.

 She loved her flowers, she said that was the best part of the whole recital. Both grandmas got her a double pink rose boquet.

Thanksgiving 2014

For Thanksgiving this year we chose to drive out to Elko and spend Thanksgiving with Robert's parents. 

Camden was all set for the big meal

Grandma helps Micah get his two year old portions

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without some Martinelli's.

The sweet potatoes were a BIG hit with Camden.

Later on Julia and Grandma made chocolate covered reindeer marshmallows, and Micah benefited from their craftiness by getting to eat them,

The kids loved playing with Robert and his siblings old toys that Grandma and Grandpa still have around. Robert also loved playing with his old toys...

Besides that we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of Black Friday shopping in Elko, It was a small town, but it meant the crowds weren't as big or aggressive (and the short lines were great). We got almost all of our Christmas shopping done with the help of the Grandparents to watch the kids while we shopped.