July 6, 2022: Kirt's Birthday Party and Family Pictures

Spoiler alert: July 7th didn't make it into this post. Sorry for the suspense from the post about the 5th.

On July 6th, the Saville clan arrived! We packed 12 adults, 1 adult kid (he's an adult, but he's a kid, I have a hard time with letting him grow up apparently), and 18 kids into this massive house that was pretty amazing. Most of the original Saville kids (who are adults now, is this getting confusing yet?) got there early to decorate for dad's birthday. His birthday was actually on the 5th, but it was for the big 7-0, so we figured we could make a big deal out of him anyways.

Who left the boys in charge of decorating? I'm pretty sure one of our wives came after and fixed whatever we did anyways. But we tried.

We decided to do a 70s theme (70 years old, 70s theme, see what we did there), and it was groovy.

Little Alaina is just the cutest little thing. Rachel couldn't get enough of her the entire time.

The entire original 7 plus their spouses! And then there's Rachel looking like she's in the middle of a bite. I'm sorry Rachel, that's awkward.

Jenny special ordered this cake a month or two before the actual date. It was just amazing, all about going fishing (which is one my dad's favorite things to do).

Next door was an indoor/outdoor pool. It had a giant garage door that could be shut when it was cold. Not that we know that for sure, since the coldest it got was 5000 degrees.

That night we decided to do family pictures, before all of the burns, I mean tans, started and everyone was tired.

The original 7. I'm the tall one. Well, the tallER one. I think they were all uphill from me too to make it look better. Originally I started on my knees, but Alisa complained that I shouldn't be as tall as she was still.

Saw too much of this growing up too. It's just disgusting.

Ok, ok, I'm kidding. Dad taught me everything I know about how to treat a wife.

The spouses were even invited into a picture.

The entire Saville crew. That's one good looking family.

A rare sighting of us being our true selves. People were headlocked, shoulders were ridden, and a shirt even got lost somewhere in there.

The grandkids picture has significantly less crying than last time. Even Nana and Papa didn't cry.

Gotcha.

The "final score, boys: 4, girls: 0" Nelsons.

The "went from 1 to 3 kids faster than they thought they would" Dahls

The "who thought shorts could look this good" Savilles (also affectionately known as the "other" Savilles since it's confusing sometimes when we get together!)

The "I have no idea where this red hair came from" Lybberts

The one, the only, the "hey, that's us" Savilles

All of the girls.

Is this height order? I feel like I should know this, but I realize I don't because I just consider the girls in the family to be same height except for Alisa (sorry Sis).

Ow ow! Isn't she gorgeous?

Rare behind the scenes photos of the actual shoot. You could easily sell these on eBay for pennies.

Singing in true (extremely musical) Saville family tradition: as badly as possibly. It takes real skill to sing that bad, trust me. I know you can't hear it, but just imagine cats suffering on a cold winter night with a dog howling along for fun.

Happy Birthday dad! If you are unfortunate enough to not know my dad very well, he pretty much gave me my sense of humor. At least he feels bad about it. 

The moment the kids had been so patiently waiting for all night: cake and ice cream.

Rumor has it that he still has some cake on his nose.

July 5, 2022: Liberty, Independence, Kansas City, and Branson

After the wild ride that July 4th was this year, we (the Nelsons and us) decided to take July 5th a little easier by taking our time getting to Branson, where the Saville reunion would start on the 6th.

We stopped by the (relatively) new Kansas City, MO temple.

Rachel and Gabe toured around the temple with us. Michael wanted some time alone. I think everyone was pretty tired by that point already, and we hadn't even started the family reunion, so we gave him his time.

We had always dreamed of a temple this close to us. Before I remember, they went to Dallas for a temple (7 hour drive), then to St Louis (5 hour drive), then to Winter Quarters when I was in high school (3 hour drive). This temple is about an hour away from my old house, and it's amazing to see a temple so close to home that we had dreamed about for so long.

After the temple, we visited Liberty Jail in Liberty, MO. This is where Joseph Smith, the first prophet in our times, was held with others during the winter of 1838-1839. They built a museum around the jail itself and dismantled part of it so you can see into it. You can see here how I'm pointing at something interesting (not pictured).

The door to the jail.

This is one of the holes they got air and a little bit of sunlight through. It's pretty small. The person next to it is for size reference.

Looking into the side of the jail. The lower part is where prisoners were held, the upper part is where the jailers were held present. The ceiling on the bottom was not tall enough for most of the men to stand up in, and it was cold enough that ice would form. They weren't able to build a fire, however, since it would get too smoky.

Another, better look into the jail. See the description above that I probably should have put on this picture.

Our families and the jail. Disclosure: we're happy because we did not have to actually stay in the jail. We would probably look sadder if we did.

The full view. The ceiling on the top floor had rocks on top in case someone overpowered the guards and tried to escape through the ceiling. The door was bolted shut from the outside too. They thought of everything, except that prisoners could escape through the wall that was missing.

The kids took some pictures of what their "luxury windows" looked like.

The best part of the day was when we decided that we wanted to see the temple built by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (or RLDS, now known as the Community of Christ), but we really didn't want to stop and park and such. So we decided to hold a competition between the two families to see who could talk a selfie the fastest with the temple. 

We felt that we had been preparing for this moment our entire lives (or at least since Devri was in the picture, which includes our entire lives for some of us), and we absolutely destroyed the Nelsons. For our prize, we won bragging rights for a lifetime, and here we are. Later we noticed that Gabe's face is only half there, and Michael is only about 2/3 present. But we still won, that's all that matters.

The Nelsons really wanted to try a BBQ place called Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, and since we had time to kill before we could check into the house in Branson, we decided to humor them.

I'd like to tell you what we got there, but I can't remember a thing about it except it was good. Looks like sandwiches, fries, BBQ pork. Probably some other sides. And a line that nearly went out the door, but thankfully not completely out the door since it was 90+ degrees out there, which in Kansas/Missouri is basically "you're swimming in your own sweat, and it's not refreshing".

Not pictured: driving with exhausted kids for 5 hours to Branson. Trust me, you don't want to see it. I wish I hadn't.

Finally we arrived in Branson, where the temperature went up to 99 degrees but the house was nice and cool. Seriously, no one wanted to go outside, it was ridiculous.

We had a night to just our two families before everyone else arrived on the 6th, so we relaxed some, including watching TV in this little nook.

We were in the Game Day Lodge, so every room had a theme around sports teams. Our room was decorated with KU/K-State things, and our K-State quilt included this gem. Note: I was a KU fan growing up, but once I discovered I didn't actually care about either school that much and realized I was basing that on the red/blue color scheme only, I was free to just laugh at with both sides.

And that was July 5th. Also my dad's birthday, but he wasn't there yet so we just celebrated later...

(Read in the movie trailer man's voice) Next time on "Our Own Eden", we see what happens on July 6th. Maybe even July 7th.