Webbie at the Wedding

This is a pretty random video but here's why I decided to share it:

• I bought Matt a Sony Webbie for his birthday and he's been too busy dissertating to use it much or post any videos so I figured I'd do it for him. He's the one behind the camera on this clip as you will probably gather.
• It shows how cute my neice and nephews were at the wedding.
• It shows how cute James and Ada are.

You will surely see many more videos from our handy lil' Webbie when we get our puppy (more on that later). Matt and I hope to start using the Webbie more and more because videos are fun. Oh, and speaking of fun videos, I promise I will share video of us rapping soon!

Holiday JOY

Christmas 2009 was pretty exciting. It was Matt and my first Christmas as a married couple and we got to go back to the PNW and see our families that we love and miss dearly. The whole trip just FLEW by. I have much more I could tell you, but I'll focus on one of the highlights: the excitement of Christmas through the eyes of my nephews! Megan wrote about the Christmas Crazies here. If you read her blog, you know that there was quite the build-up to the holiday for the Sarvela family, Corbin especially. Here's the excitement in action when Corbin and Trent opened the gifts from Matt and I.

Excitement Abounds

Tomorrow Matt and I are boarding a plane to head West! I am so excited! We start off our visit home in Vancouver & Battle Ground to see my family.
And then head North to Federal Way on Christmas day to be with Matt's parents. After spending some quality time with our families, we'll be heading down to San Diego for NYE and a friend's wedding. I'm so excited for all of it! But I am especially excited to see the little ones because they can change so much in just a few months.

Home Sweet Home

I read this on a blog while back and it really resonated with me. It's something I plan to put up in the house some where. And since the holidays are a great time to celebrate love, family and friends, I decided I would also post this on my blog:

May your home be filled with laughter and the warm embrace of a summer’s day,
May you find peace and beauty,
Challenge and satisfaction,
Humor and insight,
Healing and renewal,
Love and wisdom.
May you always feel that what you have is enough.

I love it! I love the home Matt and I have in Knoxville. And I love going to my other two "homes" for the holiday (my parents' house and Matt's parents' house). Ever since I've been with Matt, my whole idea of home has changed . It’s no longer one apartment or townhouse that is home. Home is wherever we are. This of course, is top of mind as we are looking ahead to a move in the summer and will have a very different home than we do now. Plus, home just got a little more exciting now that we’re married. We just got our very first Christmas tree together and got to make new memories of decorating it while playing Christmas music and wearing holiday headgear! I tried new Thanksgiving recipes that could very well become part of our traditional Thanksgiving meal every year.

Happy Holidays! I hope your home is bursting with love, happiness and memories!

Darth Vader crashed our wedding!

As a gift to our two ring bearers (our nephews), we got them Darth Vader costumes since they both are VERY into Star Wars. It was getting to be the end of the wedding and we still hadn't given the boys their gifts. Trent started to have a slight meltdown. I don't blame him! It was a LONG day, lots of posing for pictures and he had all that pressure of bringing the ring pillow (sans rings) down the aisle! That's a lot for a four year old to handle! So he was in the back room, crying while Mark, my awesome brother-in-law, cuddled him up. I broke out the gift in hopes that it would be enough to cheer up little Trent. He tried to resist the excitement and continue to be sad, but that only lastest for about 15 seconds before he was ecstatic and HAD to get the costume on right away. Resulting in awesome pictures like this:

(thanks for the photo Josh!)

Corbin happily put his costume on too so we had two little Darth Vaders roaming around...a priceless memory from our wedding!

We're BACK!

Whew! The past two weeks were the fastest two weeks ever. I keep dreaming that the wedding hasn't happened yet and have even woke up one day thinking it was the morning of the wedding and we had accidently slept in the same bed together. I loved the wedding, and all the events leading up to it and wish I could do it over and over again. Okay, maybe not, truely I was completely exhausted by the time we got on our honeymoon.

I didn't want to blog about the wedding too much leading up to the wedding so that things would still be a surprise for our guests. But now that it's over, I get to blog about it all I want!

Matt and I were really excited to have kids at the wedding. Afterall, they bring an extra boost of energy and cuteness to a wedding and who doesn't want that!? And our ring and tiger bearers and flower girls were oozing cuteness all night. But this blog is all about the Dancing Machine, aka Corbin aka our Ring Bearer. He was dancing ALL night long. He made quick friends with all the adults dancing and even busted out some sort of break dancing! At one point Corbin ran over to me to tell me that "they" are calling him the Dancing Machine. He was so proud of himself. It was adorable, or as Matt might say, darling. I even got a few slow dances in with Dancing Machine. I'm one lucky Auntie!

Of course I didn't take any pictures of the dancing, but I did steal a few from Facebook. I'm guessing we'll have a few from the photographer when we get those pictures.

You can tell Corbin is having a blast here!Look at him bustin' it and sweating from all that dancing!

Megan and Becca visit Knoxville!

I'm really behind on blogging so I'll try to catch up and will fall back on my standard "high fives."

Megan and Becca made the trek out to Knoxville earlier this month. It is so incredible that Megan was willing to make the journey out to visit. We had so much fun with her and Becca! Here are a few highlights:

1) Just hanging out! I love that just being at home and visiting can be so fun! It was perfect considering how immobile I was. I wish we could have gone on some walks and such, but it didn’t take away from our fun!

2) Having a vivid picture of what Becca is like. Holding, watching and interacting with Becca gives me such a better idea of who she is. Now when Megan tells me she is doing something I can more vividly picture it. I love that.


3) Showing off our home. No one from home has seen Matt and my place since I’ve been here. We have put in some work and added little details to make our house a home and that was really fun to share with Megan and Becca.

4) Getting Megan’s help on the Save the Date cards. We amazingly tracked down every address we needed and I got the save the date designed and printed just in time for Megan’s visit. Coincidence? Definitely not. As Maid of Honor (MOH in bridal speak) Megan was more than willing to help me address all the postcards so we could get them in the mail. It went so quickly between both of us addressing!
5) Playing host! Megan is my older sister who always seems to be the one taking care of me and hosting me whenever I visited. There have been very few opportunities for me to payback the favor. It was fun to plan out meals and outings and make sure Megan and Becca had everything they needed to be comfortable during their visit—which of course included Tennessee gear! Here is Becca in the swimsuit I eyed for weeks before the visit. Megan hasn’t taken any pictures in here UT gear or I’d share that too.

Skype Central

We LOVE skyping with the Sarvela family! We have so much fun talking with Megan, Mark, Corbin, Trent and Becca. Mom and Dad Gish have even come and visited with us on Sykpe too. In the beginning, Matt and Corbin were the goofballs and camera hogs. We have all taken a few notes and now our Skype calls get a little crazy! As you can clearly see from these pictures it is a party at the Sarvela house!

Trent and Becca both being crazy

Starring Trent
Starring Becca
And even Zoey joins the fun!

Proud Auntie

I meant to post this awhile back but kind of forgot about it...

Megan (my sister) has been wonderful with keeping in touch ever since I moved to Knoxville. I get regular emails with stories and pictures plus she blogs and we also talk on the phone. But this piece of mail has to be one of my favorite "updates" I've gotten:
It says: "Auntie Cara...I love you!...Are you having fun...Hi Matt...Love Corbin" And the picture is pretty clearly labeled that it is Corbin and me. This card itself is pretty stinking cute. But the cutest thing about it is Corbin's attempt to mail it. He made the card, sealed it in an envelope, wrote my name on it, put a sticker where a stamp normally goes and tried to put it in the mail just like that. Megan got to it and put it inside a bigger envelope with a real stamp and my address.

So cute! And I'm so impressed that Corbin wrote the card and drew the pictures without any help at all! This blog is the first that Megan has seen of it. Can't wait to go home and see the fam!

Trent the lion

Meet Trent the lion.




He's just about the cutest lion ever! (And no, its not just because I'm his Auntie, he really is the cutest.)

Meet Becca Rose!

Megan had a healthy baby girl on August 21. We're all thrilled to have a little girl in the family (she won't be spoiled at all!). I'll upload more pictures soon.