(This post once again brought to you by Brian, who is now tired and worn out and probably losing steam, so apologies if none of this makes sense.)
Every time we get together for a family reunion, we do family pictures together. Hence the formals:
And the not-quite-as-formals:
Almost all of the grandkids together with their Nana and Papa. We were only missing Ella who was working in Alaska over the summer.
Everyone doing their best impression of Papa. Ok not really, but I think it was hard not having at least one kid in total meltdown mode so they all pretended to have one for old-time's sake.
The magnificent original 7. Not pictured: my left foot. Also Lara's left foot. We apparently have a lot in common.
Haha, we're so funny. But seriously, we really love each other, it's always awesome to get together.
With the spouses, I don't look nearly as tall. Thanks, Jared. We'll always look up to you.
Still in love after 49 years.
The Nelson clan: purveyors of "have you seen this" and "you should eat this".
The Dahls: always up for anything. Well, one of them at least. Probably not Lara.
The other Savilles (it always gets confusing when they're around since we can't just say "Savilles are leaving now, we have to be a little more specific..."): the ever moving and ever improving. We just can't keep up with them, mostly because they beat us in everything except wearing pants (and we love them for it).
The Lybberts: the always working (parents) and always playing (kids).
The not-other Savilles (seriously, it's confusing right?): we're a bunch of posers. Literally, the kids can pose on demand now. It's great.
Me and my mom. Yes, I got her smile.
Here's Devri and I. What could I say more about us than that she is the love of my life and more? That felt weird to end that sentence with a question mark, but it felt more grammatically accurate and now I have regrets, but it's too late now and I'm not fixing it even when Devri reads this and asks me to fix it.
My girls. Could they be cuter? Nope.
I sure love my boys, they just make life fun for me.
What would I do without these kids? Vacation all the time and relax more? Probably. But it wouldn't be as fun or fulfilling without them, that's for sure.
I love it when Michael gets down on their level. He is an awesome big brother to them.
Big shout-out to Devri for taking all of these photos in the hot and muggy Florida morning. She was a champ. Here's a behind the scenes shot just to prove that she did do it.
14 going on 34.
11 going on 16.
She gets two shots because we only have one girl.
8 going on 8.5. His age feels right somehow.
Now for the best part of the post where you have to find the hidden Nelson family members in the foliage. This was 100% their idea that they wanted for their family picture.
This one was too easy, Hunter wasn't very good at hiding.
It's like where's waldo but easier.
The elusive Nelson clan in their non-native habitat.
Our house was amazing, it even had a motorcycle arcade game. I don't know what chain of events brought this to pass, but I love it.
Most all of us went to church after pictures, and by sheer luck we happened to find the local congregation that was in Spanish (no, we don't really know Spanish), and one person even spoke in Portuguese (no, we don't really know Portuguese either). Only Shayne and Lea really understood much since they spoke those languages on their missions, and I pretended like 4 years of high school Spanish made me fluent.
Google translate definitely got us further along than we could on our own. We're not sure the translation was 100% accurate, but I'm pretty sure this guy was definitely talking about feet and us all being pirates. I took a screenshot to remember the very spiritual lesson he was trying to teach.
Clearly the only thing we could do after that is spent the next hour arguing outside of the church about whether we are all pirates or not.
Back to the house to dye eggs for Easter. This was so much less messy than it used to be. Even for Hunter (I pick on him because I like him...).
I think just about everyone joined in on the fun.
Dad leading us in the customary drinking of the egg dye water after we were done. Here is toasting to our health.
Eh, maybe he was just talking with his hands and I was making that up, can't be too sure. I, for one, wouldn't really believe anything I said at this point. I had just found out I was a pirate, after all.
Eating cherries the only proper way: by laying down on a couch and looking extra content.
Still dying eggs, but from the back this time. Gabe also lost his shirt again.
Side view of the egg dying showing that we can't keep all of our cups in a neat row.
I can neither confirm nor deny if we ever found the last 6 eggs. They're probably still in the house somewhere.
We decided the best gifts for our major egg-dying awards should be light and fit in our luggage, so the natural choice was balloon hats. Here's Maiya who nobly won the "egg with the most colors" award, and Rachel who won the prestigious "wettest person holding an egg" award.
Julia with the "most like humpty dumpty" award.
[Devri's note: Kirt and Julie were tasked with judging their favorite egg, but they couldn't only choose one, so they picked these three and did have reasons, but we don't remember what they were]
May I present the most epic egg rolling event ever hosted anywhere in the entire world: the Saville egg roll 2024.
Only 2 children were harmed in the rolling. They recovered just fine though.
Tragically, we lost Samantha though. Or, if we had a Samantha, we probably would have lost her. Seriously, it was kind of dangerous in there. Eggs flying everywhere.
We started putting an egg in the middle everyone could aim for. Did they hit it? Nope. Did they at least aim for it? Also no.
One of my top 3 reasons that Easter is one of my most favorite holidays. I love the pure chaos of this. We go until every egg shell is beaten to a pulp and then...
...we start the next phase of eggs: making the "egg stuff". Yup, that's what we call it. Probably should have come up with a better name, but that's all we have. It involves a lot of egghausting peeling...
Eggtremely well done toast.
And meat/cheese platters? Seriously, this isn't usually a thing for us with the egg stuff, not sure how or why this happened. Edit: oh yeah, this was our snacking dinner since egg stuff is usually just a late lunch.
Top three reasons I love Easter: 1) Rolling the eggs, 2) Egg Stuff, 3) Jesus was resurrected (not in priority order).
[Devri again: It's really hard to get everyone together for the holidays, and I knew these Savilles would love to share some of their traditions together, and we had to go full-out for Easter because it is the most Saville tradition out there. I hoped that everyone would really get into one giant egg rolling fest together, and it really was magic seeing all the grandkids in a circle rolling eggs. Today (April 20, 2025) is actually Easter, and we did the egg rolling and egg stuff with Nana and Papa. Papa brought up this egg rolling session from the reunion, saying that he will never forget it. It really was special and came together even better than I could have imagined.]
And here's what everyone said the best and worst was, recorded right after it happened instead of on Easter day in 2025 like the rest of this blog post:
Best
Gabe: jumping in the pool
Rachel: swimming in the pool
Michael: (chose not to answer, probably because we couldn't find him)
Devri: Epic egg rolling and seeing Kirt’s delight in it
Brian: Egg rolling and egg stuff, hilarious and good about the Spanish ward (posted wrong online, so we were not expecting that and Google translate was hysterical) and good because the spirit is universal
Worst
Gabe: taking family pictures
Rachel: Spanish ward - it was confusing!
Michael: (seriously, he's good at disappearing and staying hidden, like a baggy clothed ninja)
Devri: taking photos in the heat!!!!
Brian: taking family pictures—Hot!
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