Christmas!

We had three days of Christmas, because we're THAT cool. 

First day: December 22. We had a wonderful Christmas program at church. I sang in the ward choir, and sang tenor, alto, AND first soprano. Not at the same time, but still. My high notes weren't super awesome since we had 8:30 a.m. church, but I still hit them. It felt nice to stretch my voice again. It's been awhile. 

After church, we finally took our official family picture for our 2013 ornament. 

(Did we mention that Rachel loves her uncle Ethan? We'll miss him so much when he moves out next fall!)

Then we headed south to have Christmas with Nana and Papa Saville, since they decided to head to Oregon for Christmas. We had Mom Saville's special spaghetti, and then got to open presents. 

The first present to be opened had a lot of anticipation surrounding it. We Saville kids had been working on this present since May, and we were excited to finally give it to Dad Saville. The kids were super patient while we got three video chats going with Lara, Ben, and Alisa so they could see Dad open his present. Yeah, it was a big deal. 

 We made him a family history book of his parents (and quite a few of their ancestors), complete with tons of photos and some amazing stories. And, as expected, we made him cry. This was probably my favorite part of Christmas this year.

 Lea did TONS of researching--calling relations, visiting relations, emailing, driving, typing---and she found so much gold. I helped organize the information and make it look pretty. The other siblings contributed memories and pictures. I loved getting to know Kirt's parents, who both died before I even met Brian. It's amazing how much influence a person can have. I was amazed to find so much of them in Brian. I can't wait to meet them in the next life!

 Rachel LOVES Lea's dog Maggie. They like giving each other kisses.

 I tried not to remember this the next time I gave Rachel kisses. After Dad opened his present, the kids finally got to open theirs.

 Pillowcases

 Cool toys

 And books. 

 Gotta love the Christmas Carnage. And, as always, Mom and Dad Saville spoiled me again this year. They got me BEAUTIFUL pink crystal earings from a famous crystal place in Europe. I LOVE them. I also got these cool nesting boxes from Bolivia, and "the best peeler ever". I still have to try that one out. Brian got a gift card. It was fun spending the evening with family, and we were sad when it was time to go.

Day 2: Christmas Eve, we each got to open a present:

Matching jammies, a Christmas movie, movie theater candy, and popcorn.  

Then we had a pajama party. Well, all of us except Rachel, who went to bed. After the movie, we did our traditional identifying of Christmas symbols and read the Christmas story from Luke 2. Michael put food on the lawn for the reindeer, and then he was off to bed. We joined him a few hours later. And Santa came!

Day Three: Christmas:
We woke up the next morning Michael's excited noises in the other room. It was so cute; I wish we could have captured it somehow.

We looked at our stockings and then went in to get Rachel.

She didn't really get the whole Christmas thing, so it was good that she had a brother eager to help her open her presents and explore her stocking contents.

But, she was excited to find this food pouch in her stocking. She knew what that was for!

Gotta love the Christmas carnage!

Michael loved his new tractor from Santa, his new race track, books, and clothes from his Mom and Dad, his Iron Man costume from his sis, and his periscope from his Grandma and Grandpa. 

Rachel got the cutest outfit from her Chadwick grandparents, as well as a doll. She got Bell (the interactive storybuddy) from Santa, books, clothes, and a Cutie Cabbage Patch Kid doll from her mom and dad, and a new bath toy from her bro. 

This year, the only real sewing project I had was this dress for Rachel. I couldn't find one I liked in the store. They were all red! (or black). So, after searching who knows how many stores, I finally broke down and made her this one. I love how it turned out. She debuted it today at church.

I got a new watch, a book, a hood and filters for my camera, and a necklace from Brian. Michael got me "Holiday Inn", and my dad made us this sweet chair/ladder. Santa also brought me some chick-flicks. Woo hoo! Santa brought Brian a 4-slice toaster, and some awesome argyle socks. I got him an X-box controller for his gaming computer, as well as some games, and a desk-top calendar. Brian and I also got the Dominion Big Box from Santa. We had a great Christmas.

We had Christmas dinner with Lea and Shayne. It was pretty low-key, but Lea busted out her fine china and a table cloth for the occasion. We had pie first, which was brilliant. We also played a round of Dominion with Lea, Shayne, and Hunter. 

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We are so grateful for our Savior. He is the source of everything good in our lives, and we loved having extra reminders of Him this Christmas Season. 

Christmas Card

Dear Family and Friends,

I (Brian) have been at Adaptive Computing for 3 years and am still loving it.  In between my software architecture and engineering responsibilities, I try to find time to play with the kids and even see Devri once in awhile.  My company even sometimes sends me to hot vacation spots such as Belarus.  This year, I've spent countless nights and weekends trying to finish the framing and electrical in the basement.  In September, Devri and I finished a room for Ethan (see below).  It didn't turn out great, but it's a room that we made with our own hands (with help of course!). We've been excited to get back to work on it again eventually.

Devri has been finding all sorts of projects and hobbies to keep her busier than ever before.  This year she's had a baby (which is a big project mind you), rotated teaching preschool for Michael and friends, joined a photography club, edited exactly 1 bazillion pictures in Photoshop, and chased both Michael and Rachel around the house all day.  She loves seeing our kids laugh and play with each other.

Michael is now 4 and is more fun than ever.  He has no fear unless we want him to show off to our friends and then he suddenly gets shy.  He has tons of friends in the neighborhood and has started to play with them all day almost every day.  I personally feel like he is very popular, but then again I don't remember having any friends at the age of 4 so I may be a bit biased.  He still loves to make people laugh, loves his little sister (see below), and loves playing Kirby on the Wii with the family.  He also started a more structured preschool this year as well as music lessons.  He often sits at the piano on his own and names the keys in Solfege, and he is always right!

We consider it a great honor and blessing to announce that this year we finally bought a roll (just one) of Press N Seal, and it felt good to live the high life for a bit.  Also, we had a baby girl who we named Rachel.  She is a redhead, much to the delight of every person that has ever seen her, but especially to the delight of her red-headed grandparents.  She is almost 11 months now and is crawling everywhere, standing up on her own, clicking her tongue a lot, and trying to grow teeth.  She loves playing with her big brother and gets lonely in the back seat of the car whenever he is not there.  We are so happy to have her in our life and count our blessings during the day when she's smiling and wonder what we were thinking at night when she's crying (just kidding, sort of).

This year Devri's brother, Ethan, moved in with us in order to maintain residency in Utah while he gets ready to go back to school at Utah State.  He is a single, white male who enjoys romantic evenings of killing zombies and long walks on the beaches of Normandy (both on the Xbox).  He is hard working, smart, and great with kids (seriously, Rachel and Michael adore him).

We are still loving Saratoga Springs and the beautiful view of the Wasatch front.  We miss and love all of our friends and family we live apart from and hope you are having a wonderful Christmas time and year.

Love, the Savilles

I made our Christmas card back in November, and they were all printed before Thanksgiving. I was ahead of the game, and feeling pretty proud of myself. And then, well who knows happened? Next thing I knew, it was a week before Christmas, and I still hadn't addressed a single envelope! I decided to do a mail merge in Office and print the envelopes on our computer. I thought it would be faster than doing it by hand. It would have been too if the printer hadn't kept "jamming" (I put that in quotes because the printer wasn't actually ever jammed. It just kept flipping out about trying to print on envelopes). Anyway, on Saturday, December 21, I enlisted Brian's help to finish printing the rest of the envelopes so we could get them in the mail. I headed off to other things, and before long, he found me and said, "Funny story. Our address is wrong on all of the ones we printed. I just caught it." So, Ethan brought us home some address labels, and we tried that route. It should have been a straightforward print job. We used the right template, but they printed wrong. An hour later, we finally got them to print correctly, and then started putting them on our envelopes. We finally got them all stuffed and ready, and we were off to the post office. A half hour of standing in line later, I madly put the stamps on them and dropped them in the mailbox. And amazingly, I think most people got them before Christmas. Whew! At least we got them out before Flag Day!

And, we got our neighbor presents all ready to go before Christmas, but we'll be delivering them today. Oh well. At least we did something this year for our amazing neighbors. 

Eleven Months

Can you believe that Rachel is already eleven months old? Because I can't. She is so much fun, and she has us--and total strangers--smiling all the time. 

I love taking her out shopping because I'm sure to catch at least one person grinning at our little redhead, and then telling me, "She is SO cute!" People stop to talk to her, and she freely rewards them with her crooked little smile that lights up her entire face. And I love all the redhead comments, but I'm surprised how many people ask me where she gets her red hair. I guess to me, it is so incredibly obvious that I forget most of the people I associate with aren't familiar with my redheaded mother and the household of redheads I grew up with. My two older sisters and the brother just younger than me all have red hair. For the first five years of my life, I was the only non-redhead out of the kids, until my little sister and baby brother came along. Once, when I was in eighth grade, I asked the principle of the high school to relay a message to my older sisters. He asked who my sisters were and I said, "Emily and Chelsea Chadwick." He replied, "You're not a Chadwick; you don't have red hair."

And since it comes up all the time, and because I'm learning the importance of recording things like this down in writing, the answer about Rachel's hair color origin is this: "My mom is a redhead and Brian's dad is a redhead. She gets it from both sides." And after hearing from my dad all growing up about how beautiful redheaded girls are, I'm happy to finally have somewhat of a claim to a redhead, and I have to say, Dad, you're right. Our little redhead is the most beautiful girl I know.

She loves playing with her brother. They are still the best of pals.

We love waking up to scenes like this one. Lately, Brian's been finding Michael in her room reading to her. We love it! Also, one day, Brian looked around and couldn't see Rachel. He asked, "Where's Rachel?" Michael quickly made a baby noise like Rachel makes and started clicking his tongue. From the other side of the kitchen island, we heard an answering click of the tongue. It's their own version of Marco Polo.

Rachel loves to laugh. She loves Peekaboo type games. She's really good at playing back, and even pausing before her big reveal. A few weeks ago, these three were just cracking up about putting these rings on their heads. Rachel just giggled and giggled every time her ring fell off.

This month, she got three top teeth in, and one is about to break through. She loves eating crackers with her new teeth. She's also learned how to clap her hands and how to wave hello and good bye. She's kind of lazy about her waving though. She doesn't really lift up her arm at all. She just waves her hand with her arm down at her side. She also loves climbing over things (like pillows and people), and she never takes the path of least resistance. She would rather climb under rows of folding chairs at church or the bar stools than take the wide open aisle or path around them.

Her hair is quite straight, but when she gets out of the tub, it is super curly. We've left it some nights thinking that maybe she'll have curly hair, but it always goes back straight. Of course, my hair was straight when I was a baby too, but it sure isn't anymore, so I guess we'll see how it pans out in the next ten-fifteen years.

Here is Rachel's official eleven month picture. Ethan was tickling her to get her to laugh and then pulled away so I could take the picture. I love it! This is her cute little crooked smile, and if you look closely, you can see her teeth. We're so grateful to have her in our life. And even though she still isn't sleeping through the night, we wouldn't trade her for anything in the world.

Getting Ready for Christmas

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, and subsequently the first day of December, we busted out the Christmas decorations and started decking the halls--well, at least the family room and office. 

 Michael really got into the advent calender this year. He COULDN'T WAIT until Christmas, especially after those first presents made their way under there. Most mornings, he had the thing from the calendar pocket up on the picture before I even got out of bed! It was a lot of fun. 

 We were lucky this year to have a white December. Michael loved it. He didn't care if the temperature was in the single digits--he was out enjoying all that snow! One night, we all headed out to play in the snow with Michael. Rachel didn't know what to think about it all. She must not have hated it though, because she didn't really cry. She just sat on this little sled and watched the action. 

 Brian and Michael shoveled out the driveway, and we were grateful that we found that $2 kid snow shovel at DI this past summer. Totally worth it!

 I showed Rachel how to make a snow angel (aka I made her do it).

And we had Michael make one too. Too bad the picture we got was all blurry, but you get the idea.

After this venture, we decided that Rachel needed a girl coat. She now has a very cute white coat (yeah, I couldn't find another color in her size at any of the four stores I checked out). I know you were all worried about it, so I thought I'd let you know.

 Rachel was really good about leaving the tree and the presents alone. My visiting teachers came over one night mid-December, and one of them expressed amazement that I had presents under the tree and that my kids left them alone. To be honest, I was a little surprised myself. Yay that Rachel is learning boundaries finally! We're still working on the DVD shelf in the office, but that's another story.

Michael got to do lots of fun Christmasy activities in Preschool. One of the things they did is make ornaments for their parents for Christmas. I took all their pictures for the ornament, and here's Michael's. I think it is funny that he's wearing a "Beach Bum" shirt for this Christmas picture. Hee hee.

I wish there was some way to capture the essence of his Christmas excitement and wonder in words, but alas, I lack the talent. I will just say that each year gets even more magical than the next as Michael gets older, and we love it.

Thanksgiving

This year, we got to host two great Thanksgiving parties at our house. The first one was Michael's preschool's party, held the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  They played lots of games, like "Pin the Feather on the Turkey"

 And we had a feast of favorites--every kid brought their favorite food to share. Michael's was Mac and Cheese.

 Late Tuesday night, Taryn, David, and Aaron made their way to our house from Southern Utah. We had lots of fun with cute Aaron, who reminded us both so much of our Baby Michael.

 Rub a Dub Dub--two redheads in a tub! 

My parents arrived Wednesday night, and everyone else came on Thursday, except for Em, who couldn't swing it this year. We missed you, Lou. 

The kids at the bar loved getting their own special goblets again, 

 And in keeping with the tradition Thomas proposed two years ago, we took our cranberries in the form of juice this year.

 Before we dug in, I insisted on a picture. That's all I'm going to say about that.

 I was halfway through the meal before I had to remind myself to enjoy it. We had fantastic things--awesome rolls from Chelsea, salad, peanut butter M&M Oouflay (formerly known as Floouf), which was surprisingly amazing (nice work Ethan!), yummy veggies, cream cheese stuffed celery, stuffing, corn. Brian and I brined our turkey, injected our turkey, and gave it more attention than any food item I've ever prepared. It was good, but I'm not convinced that it was worth all the effort. Maybe we just cooked it too long. Regardless,  it was all fabulous. And it was nice to be together with my siblings.

 I tried to get a good picture of this group, but it was hard since they were in the corner. These three were so cute playing together.

 A few hours after dinner, we made cookie/candy turkeys. I think the kids enjoyed them.

 We also enjoyed pie--lots and lots of it! All too soon, Cal & Jess, and Chelsea and Thomas and their crew headed home.

The next day, after some serious lounging,

 we headed out to lunch at Five Guys (because we didn't have enough leftovers)

 caught a train

  

and joined in the craziness that is Temple Square the day after Thanksgiving. 

 It was quite cold, but we all had a good time. My wonderful dad kept stopping and talking to every set of sister missionaries we passed. We kept having to wait for him, so instead of getting upset, we decided to place bets as to how many sets he would talk to by the end of the night. I think my mom would have won with her guess of 14 sets if someone hadn't told my dad about it. In the end, Ethan won with his guess of eight. My dad has never met a stranger in his life.

 And then, we were back on the train, catching the Trax line at the perfect time to catch the 7 pm train home.

It was a fun adventure, and it was really nice not having to deal with finding parking downtown.

Everyone else left the next day. We really enjoyed having everyone around. We're so grateful to have such wonderful people in our family, and for our many, many blessings.