Wendy and Woody Visit (but not Buzz)

Last week Robert's Aunt Wendy and Cousin Woody came to visit us. Every time I would tell Julia they were coming to visit she would ask "and Buzz?" Luckily she wasn't too disappointed that Buzz didn't come as well. Wendy and Woody had both been to D.C. before so we got to accompany them to some of the less visited places in the D.C. area.

Saturday we went to the Newseum (ie. News Museum) in D.C. It is a a private museum so it costs money. For you future D.C. visitors I would say there are plenty of cool things that are free to see in D.C. so if you're not here for very long go ahead and skip this one. But, if you have some spare time, there are really cool things here. They have an exhibit with a section of the Berlin wall, an exhibit with the antennae from one of the World Trade Center Towers, newspaper front pages from some of the biggest events in history, and a really nice view of the Capitol building (and more).

On President's Day we drove out to Gettysburg, the site of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. We learned a lot about the battle. I was amazed at just how much detail historians know about the battle; they know every major move made during the three days of battle down to the minute. It was really cool to hear about it as we were seeing right where it all look place.

We also finally made it out to the other Air and Space Museum located about 40 minutes outside of D.C. by Dulles Airport. This is where they keep all the planes and space artifacts that don't fit into the museum in D.C. Some of the cool things there are the Enola Gay(dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, its the large silver plane in the picture with Wendy, Julia and I), a SR-71 Blackbird (the fastest jet in the world), and the Space Shuttle Enterprise.

Christmas 2010

We spent our Christmas vacation in Utah this year and had a great time.

On Christmas Eve we had a big family party with my mom's family. We had dinner, sang Christmas carols, had a pinata, danced, and played basketball. Julia loved the pinata. After her turn was over I had to pick her up so she wouldn't run in the way of the people hitting the pinata. I would let her down in between turns and she would take her little spoon and run up to the pinata and hit it again. We spent Christmas Day at my parent's house relaxing and happy to have all my family together for Christmas.

After Christmas we had my Grandpa Sandberg's funeral. He has not been in good health for a long time, so his passing was not a surprise. In fact, I think I was almost more happy for him to out of pain and back in heaven with my grandma than sad. We will miss him, but he lived a long fulfilling life and it was time for him to go back to our Heavenly Father.

He was a Korean War Veteran so we had a military funeral for him. All his sons and grandsons in the military wore their military dress uniforms, his coffin was draped with an American flag, a bugler played Taps, and the Panguitch Honor Guard gave a gun salute.

It was snowing during the entire graveside service.

After the funeral and luncheon we had a white-knuckle drive back home in a giant snow storm and then the next day headed up to Park City to be with Robert's family. We had opened our presents in Arlington before we left, so by the time Christmas came around Julia felt like a pro. She wanted to help everyone else open their late Christmas presents at the cabin.
Julia and Tyler are so cute together. I'm glad she has a cousin her age to play around with. Everything one of them did, they both had to do. We took them out in the snow a couple times and neither of them were crazy about it but they were at least calm when they sat together in the sled.
We had a Wheat family Olympics, but only ended up having two events, Memory (the game) and Ultimate Sledding (meaning slide down the hill and race back up). Robert and I won both the events, so I guess we are the Gold Medal winners! The second event kicked our butts. This is me collapsing at the finish line, which I think everyone did at the end. It was a big hill and the air was just so thin we could all hardly breathe.
Robert had fun carving a couch out of the five feet of snow on the back porch, but first he had to shovel off all the rest of the snow on the porch.
And of course we had fun snowmobiling and snowshoeing. This is Robert going through some fresh powder (which he had to do a lot of to make us a trail all the way into the cabin).

I ♥ NYC

Well, not so much actually. I thought it was gloomy, crowded, and dirty. But we did go there over Thanksgiving so I am going to blog about it even though it's been a month and a half. And, for the record, I thought it was pretty cool to see all the sights. I just would probably never go back and definitely would never want to live there.

Here's some of what we did.

Statue of Liberty. The one thing I really wanted to see in New York, it's such an American icon. We went up to the base and got to see the inside of the old lady and the spiral staircase going up to the crown. Even Julia was impressed by looking up.

Ice skating at Rockerfeller Center. None of us were very good at it, but we took a couple rounds around the rink. In the picture is Robert in the front and Jen and Tyler just coming around the corner.
Robert and I went to a taping of the the David Letterman show. Before the show we went over to the Hello Cafe (the owner is occasionally featured on the show) to get a bite to eat. Before the show they tell you to just laugh at all the jokes, even if you don't think its funny. I have to admit, I did a lot of fake laughing because the show wasn't all that funny. But it was very interesting. The only guest was Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, the man who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. He seemed like a very nice, regular guy.

Here's a clip from the show.

Philadelphia

Over Thanksgiving we headed up to Philly before taking a bus up to New York. We forgot to take our camera so we don't have a lot of pictures, just what was on Robert's phone. This time in Philly we saw Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the Liberty Bell. Julia and I and Dave and Tyler sat out the presentation in Independence Hall and blew bubbles in the hallway instead.

Afterwards we went out to Valley Forge again.

Supreme Court Building

I'm finally getting the rest of our Thanksgiving pictures together. This one made me laugh.

And these ones were just pretty. Robert took these ones of the Supreme Court building while I went to Costco with his mom and the babies to get our food for Thanksgiving.

Merry Christmas!

December 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

Seasons Greetings! We hope you are doing well and thought we would write a quick update to let you know how we are doing.

In June we moved from our home in Claremont, CA to Arlington, VA where we will be for the next two years while Robert is doing a rotation in the National Tax Practice at PwC. We’re feeling settled in here and love our neighborhood in Arlington and the beautiful greenery and fall colors throughout the area.

Robert has transitioned to his new office in Washington DC. He enjoys working closely with the technical experts of his firm and learning daily. The shorter commute and better work / life balance in the office has allowed him to spend more time watching his daughter grow up. He particularly likes the D.C. area and the countless places to visit with his family.

Melarie has her hands full at home running after Julia, literally. Melarie has started running almost everyday while Julia sits like a princess in her jogging stroller and watches the dog walkers. Melarie likes that it gets her out of the house and into shape and Julia likes stopping at the park afterwards. During the winter months when its too cold to run with Julia she hopes to take advantage of the free admission to the many museums in D.C. Melarie’s church calling helping to plan the monthly Relief Society enrichment meetings has also helped her make friends with a lot of the sisters in the ward.

Julia (19 months) has entered toddler hood with gusto. She definitely has a mind of her own and is sweet and well behaved, as long as no one gets in her way. Then, watch out! She really is a lovable little girl and enjoys giving hugs- to mom and dad, to her dolls, to random kids at the park, and even to the bonze statue of a turtle at the latest museum we visited.

We love visitors and have a guest bed in our basement available, so just let us know when you’d like to come for a visit! Have a very Merry Christmas.

Love,

Robert, Melarie, and Julia Wheat

Utah Fun

We've been having a lot of fun in Utah visiting my family. They all adore having Julia around since she is the only grandchild, so she has been getting pretty spoiled with all the attention. You might say she gets treated like a princess. That's okay with me though, it makes my job a lot easier.

Some of the fun things we've done:

Saturday night we started the evening off by going out to dinner at a Filipino restaurant in Salt Lake. Then we went to temple square to see the lights, and then the boys took Julia home and all the girls went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert. Sunday we had a lot of family over and Julia stayed up late playing with (second) cousins.Then on Monday we went to the Christmas Carol Sing-A-Long at the Energy Solutions Arena with a live orchestra and performances by Jon Schmidt. My family has gone for the past three years, but this was our first time going. Here is the row Robert and I were sitting on. It is entirely made up of my family members- uncle, cousins, aunt, more cousins, siblings, and finally another aunt and a teeny tiny Julia standing on a lap at the very end with a Santa Clause hat. We had fun and Julia loves to sing so she had a lot of fun too.
This was one of the songs Jon Schmidt played (but not actually last night's performance obviously). At the sing-a-long Jon Schmidt talked about how surprised he was that this video got over a million hits, so of course I had to look it up when I got home.


Finally, we woke up to a bunch of snow this morning and decided this snow looked inviting enough to go through the trouble of bundling up enough to go play in the snow. Julia hated being bundled up so much and she could hardly walk at first. She kept whining while trying to walk through the snow. I guess she got used to it though because after a while she loosened up and starting jumping into the snow and throwing snow up into the air. We played outside for close to two hours this morning and went back out again this afternoon after Julia's nap. Julia was introduced to the wonders of snowmen, snowballs, and even a snow slide that her uncles made for her.Checking out the snowman we built. She wanted to give him a hug. Then when she did give the snowman a hug she buried her face into him and realized that he actually tasted pretty good. She kept going back to him and trying to eat him.
This is a video of the first run down the snow slide. We later expanded it and the snow melting a little naturally made it more slippery and smooth, so it turned out to be pretty fast.



I figured out Julia gets more out of it if she goes down with me, so here are Julia and I going down the the snow slide together.
Unfortunately we found out my Grandpa Sandberg passed away on Sunday. He has been in constant pain for a while though and has not had a very high quality of life from being so sick. He has also really been missing my grandma who passed away last year. So although we will all miss him a lot, we know that he is happier where he is now. My grandpa's last gift to my Dad was in the timing of my Grandpa's death. He died just in time for my Dad to come home from Iraq for Christmas. My dad gets to leave Iraq for 15 days (including travel time) to come to the funeral. He has already left Iraq and is probably in Kuwait someplace now. We are hoping he makes it to Utah by the 23rd or 24th. It really is a Christmas miracle. The funeral will be next Wednesday in Panguitch, UT.

It's Christmas Time!

Julia got to see Santa at our neighborhood Christmas party on Saturday. Last year Julia was too young to know what was going on and she really didn't care who was holding her. This year she didn't want to go to Santa at first, but he offered her a candy cane she decided he could hold her, but she was still a little unsure about the whole thing.

A Bryant Park Santa

While we were in New York we went to Bryant Park and Microsoft was doing free Santa pictures to showcase a new photo editing program they have that makes it easy to get the "perfect picture." They took three pictures of us, then they showed us how to replace people's faces who weren't looking or had their eyes closed in one for the best face in another. We were pretty much the best group for the product because someone was doing something wrong in every picture, but we still got our perfect picture (Tyler never looked at the camera- at least we can see the side of his face right?)

You can see the rest of the photos here