Totally naked and vulnerable

Two days ago, on a total whim, I decided to email out a link to my blog to everyone. Up until then, this blog had been my dirty little secret and I wasn't sure that I would ever share it. I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking, but within seconds of hitting send I was consumed with this horrible feeling not unlike being naked in public (or at least what I’d imagine that feeling like. I’ve never actually been naked in public- thank goodness!)

But now you all are here so WELCOME. Thank you to everyone who has told me that they enjoyed reading my postings. I’m sure you’re lying, but I’m OK with that. If you decide to keep coming back, I promise to try to make it worth your while.

Merry Christmas from the Savats

Christmas is almost here and I couldn’t be happier about it -- I have been especially in the Christmas spirit this year! There’s one thing I didn’t do, though, and that’s write my annual Christmas letter. I just couldn’t get motivated to do it in time to send it out with my cards. So here it goes: here is my 2008 Christmas letter to the Internet!

Christmas 2008
This year, more than ever, I am very aware of all the blessings I have in my life. 2008 will be remembered for the collapsing markets and record job losses, but life in our household has been fairly stable. Sure our retirement accounts have taken a hit, but we still have our jobs, home, family and each other. I am truly grateful!

During the first half of the year we traveled a lot. In January we ditched cold St. Louis for the beaches of Punta Cana. In August we drove up to Wisconsin to visit our good friends Mark and Chris Keller and their adorable daughter Katie (who has become my pen pal). And this fall we took a long-weekend trip to Branson for a little R&R.

The best trip by far, though, was our anniversary trip to Napa Valley. We stayed in this fabulously quaint bed and breakfast on a small vineyard in Calistoga and had a great time winery hopping through Napa and Sonoma. If you ever get a chance to visit Napa, make sure to stop by the mountain-top Sterling winery and the castle winery, which were worth the trip alone. We also loved Hess winery, and the scenic drive through a red wood forest to get there.

This fall we tackled the biggest house project yet – the kitchen. I’m happy to report that we survived and now have a beautiful, modern, and most importantly, WORKING kitchen! Check out the before and after pictures. The difference is amazing.

On the family front, everyone seems to be doing well. Here's a brief update on everyone:

• We’re looking forward to Dereck and Jennifer’s wedding on June 20, 2009 (we’re both in the wedding).
• Erin’s starting cosmetology school in January.
• There’s been a mini baby boom on Allen’s side of the family – both Tina and Dusty are pregnant and expecting this spring/early summer.
• Mike and Stephanie bought a house recently that's less than five miles away (which will make it easy for us to spoil Ella as she gets older!)
• And most importantly, our parents and grandparents and everyone else is healthy and happy.

This year we will be spending Christmas with my family and then heading down to Cape on the 26th. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a 2009 that's filled with hope, joy and love.

Love,

Sara and Allen Savat

Happy birthday Ella!

Today is my niece Ella’s first birthday! I really can’t believe how fast this year has come and gone. From her first smiles, to laughing, sitting up, crawling, babbling and now walking, it’s been so much fun to watch Ella grow up over the last year.

It doesn’t hurt that Ella’s one of the cutest little babies, either. She loves to be the center of attention and is always smiling that huge smile of hers and babbling. She’s also one of the few kids who Allen is comfortable around, which is saying A LOT. Allen has said more than once that if we had some kind of guarantee that our kid would be like Ella or Elisa (my adorable cousin) he would have no hesitations about having a kid!

I really love being Aunt Sara and I am looking forward to doing special things with Ella now that she’s getting older. So happy birthday Princess Ella – I love you!

No freakin' excuse

Ever since I started working at SLU, my excuse for not working out has been that the gym is too far away. This isn’t just a lame excuse – it really is too far away. Depending on traffic, I may have to drive 30 minutes OUT OF MY WAY to get to the gym, which is a long way to drive for something you really don’t want to do anyway. And sure I could go back to working out in the morning, but without the wedding to motivate me that’s just not going to happen. Needless to say, working out has been sporadic at best.

Well Allen’s been all health conscious lately and wanting me to go to the gym with him (he swears it just because he wants the company, but I have my doubts!) So over the weekend we signed up for a new gym that’s like two miles from the house. Now I have no excuse not to work out and burning legs – great!

Blaming it on the holidays

So I’m not off to the greatest start with this blog – I blame it on the holiday busyness. Maybe I’ll make posting more regularly my New Year’s resolution this year (of course that means this blog -- like many past diets and exercise plans -- is pretty much doomed!)

Life in the Savat household has been very busy and cheerful lately. I love the holidays and this year is no exception. Jeanne and I braved the stores on Black Friday and had a blast. Since then I have kept busy with shopping (I am nearly finished with my list already!) decorating the entire house, completing the Christmas cards and wrapping the gifts. I can’t believe how much I already have finished, which means I’ll have plenty of time to bake cookies in my new convection oven!

Last weekend Allen’s dad and Freda came up for a nice visit. We kept them very busy with a trip to the St. Louis Mills Outlet Mall (which I had never been too), going out to eat and a fun night out at a local dueling piano bar (that was a lot of fun). Allen’s dad is one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet. He always has a new joke to share and he usually starts them off with “did I tell you about the guy who…” so the punch line is even more unexpected.

In addition to the general holiday busyness, I am also busy preparing to teach next semester! Teaching has always been a part of my distant future plans, but this opportunity was too good to pass up. I’m going to be teaching an intro to public relations class at SLU. It’s a junior/senior level class so hopefully the students will be really engaged and interested in the material.

I met with the former teacher yesterday to get all of the classroom materials, but now I have just one month to get my lesson plans (and my act!) together. I’ve already had a nightmare about teaching (I was dressed in the dream, but that's about the only thing I had going for me!) Fears aside, I'm really excited to get in the classroom and see if this could be a good fit for me.

Thanksgiving Blessings

When I started this blog I didn’t intend for it to be sappy and yucky! But for some reason I have been in a particularly sappy mood lately, so please humor me :)

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which got me thinking today about all the things for which I’m thankful this year. With the economy in the gutter, just having a job and a roof over our heads is a blessing.

But I’m fortunate to have so many more blessings in my life. I have great friends who I can share great times and secrets with. Recently we have been doing a lot together – everything from club hopping to a New Kids on the Block concert (seriously) and I have had a blast with each and every one of them. The best thing about my friends is that they’ve seen me at my worst, helped me through it and then laughed with me (or at me) when it was over. Hopefully they know they can count on me to do the same

Of course I also have an awesome family that only got bigger and better when I married Allen. There are few things I enjoy more than hanging out with my family or having ALL 10 of my younger cousins over for a slumber party. I realize not everyone has this and I am so thankful for each and every one of them. I’m also thankful that I will be able to share them with my children some day.

But more than anything or anyone else, I am thankful for Allen. Over the last five years, Allen has not only showed me how intense love can be, but how to love someone completely with no exceptions. My favorite days are the days where I spend my time with him playing around, teasing, relaxing, working together – whatever. It doesn’t matter, because as long as I have Allen everything is OK. So when I count my blessings, I count him twice!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Analytical thinking

While Allen loves children and is a devoted big brother in the Big Brother Big Sister program, the idea of having a baby is a little bit too much for him, which has made for some pretty comical conversations.

It’s the engineer in him, really. Babies are not “practical” – his words, not mine! They don’t do anything, they cost a lot of money and they are a lot of work.

The more he tries to convince me that his reasoning is sound, the more I laugh and anticipate how he’s going to melt when we have a baby and he holds him or her for the first time. There’s not a doubt in my mind that Allen is going to be an unbelievably great dad. I’ve known this from the beginning and it’s one of the things that attracted me to him. He’s going to be the first to brag when our baby “smiles” (aka passes gas), rolls over and laughs. And he’s going to have so much fun teaching him or her how to ride a bike or drive mommy nuts :)

So in the meantime, I just laugh when he tells me that he’s not really interested in kids until they are old enough to do something – you know, like 10! Boy is he in for a world of surprise.

I'm not too good for my home!

I’ve always been a social butterfly, but the last few weeks have been ridiculous. I’ve left Allen home alone more times than I care to count to attend meetings, appointments and girls-nights-out. Yea, I’ve had a lot of fun, but I’ve noticed lately that it’s wearing on me. For the last several days I’ve woken up with a headache (that’s generally lasted most of the day) and I’ve been craaaby!

Well yesterday I finally said enough is enough and I skipped the meeting I was supposed to attend last night. Instead, I made dinner for my hubby, went shopping for a dryer with him and then went to bed a 9 O’CLOCK (I know – who goes to bed at 9?) And then the most amazing thing happened – I woke up this morning feeling happy and sans the headache! So I figure the moral of this story is that being away from Allen too much makes me sick :)

Reliving a piece of my childhood

First concerts are a big deal. Mine was New Kids on the Block in 1990. My mom took me along with my friend Libby and her mom. I had a major crush on the New Kids and seeing them in concert definitely ranks up there in my top childhood memories. That night my mom was the coolest and she danced and screamed like a maniac with me, making the night even more special. The next day I proudly wore my concert T-shirt to school and bragged to all my friends!

Last night I had the opportunity to relive that memory. NKOTB recently reunited and my girlfriends and I bought tickets to their reunion tour. I was skeptical going into it, but it didn’t take long for me to start screaming along and feel like a kid again. And let me tell you, 18 years later … they still have the RIGHT STUFF!

What was your first concert?

Just an average night in the Savat household.

For those of you who know us well, it should come as no surprise that Allen and I are very playful with each other. A day rarely goes by without one of us chasing, tickling or “getting” the other in some way or another. On the brightside, we're always laughing and having a good time. Of course, the downside is that this also can have unintentional consequence :) Here’s what happened last night.

Ever since I started spending the night at Allen’s (if you’re reading this Dad, of course I mean when I moved in) we’ve had this ongoing struggle to NOT be the one to turn the light off at bedtime. The general rule has been that the last one in bed has to do it, which has resulted in some very “cat-like” attempts to jump in to bed as fast as possible. That issue was resolved, or so I thought, when we bought lamps for both nightstands last year.

However, always the opportunist, Allen has managed to find other ways to torture me at night. Now, he leaves the lamp on just long enough to get me to turn off the main light. Then he quickly turns off the lamp and usually gets on my side of the bed to “get me” when I get in.

Last night he was in a particularly playful mood and I knew what was coming. So I turned on my lamp and the office light (which is close to my side of the bed) and then turned off the main light. Sure enough, he turned off both lamps on me. So I got the bright idea to turn off the office light while holding the lamp, but I pulled it too far and ended up unplugging it. My only other option was to quickly turn off the office light and JUMP into bed faster than he could turn off his lamp.

Unfortunately, I wasn't too "cat-like" last night and the sound of my head hitting the headboard sounded a little like a cartoon “boing.”

Our kids are going to think we're CRAZY!

A night I’ll tell my children and grandchildren about someday

As a social liberal, I’ve always been envious of my parent’s generation. They grew up during a time where young people believed in important causes like ending the war or women’s rights and they did something about it. They marched, they protested, they listened to Beatles’ music, they came together.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a generation that can be pretty much summed up by John Mayer’s song “Waiting on the World to Change.” Sure we see injustices in the world, but we haven’t done much to change them. Maybe that’s because we haven’t believed we could.

More than once this year, though, I have experienced moments that gave me insight into what it must have felt like to grow up in the 60s and 70s. I have been in awe of my generation and my sister’s generation as we came together, much like our parents did, to fight for change and to rock the vote! :)

But no moment was as powerful as Tuesday, Nov. 4, when we elected Barack Obama – the first African American president – by a landslide!

What’s most impressive to me is how he was elected. Sure, some people voted for him because of the color of his skin and some voted for him despite it. But many, many more people (myself included) voted for him because he was the best candidate, which had nothing to do with the color of his skin. And that – my friends – is real change.

Today I am full of hope. The enormity of this election means even more to me as I plan and pray to bring children into the world. I hope that their generation will be the first to truly see beyond race and gender and instead focus on what unites us.

Of course I realize that racism, sexism and all the other injustices will not end today. But this morning I have this renewed, overwhelming belief that YES WE CAN! Thank you Obama. Thank you America.

Five years ago today...

I would have never guessed that a Halloween party could change my life, but that’s exactly what happened five years ago today. Not only did I win the best costume award for my Madonna costume (circa Vogue), but I also met Allen.

Marc and Jody had mentioned Allen to me in the past, but I wasn’t interested in being set up. I was loving my life as a newly single girl and I wasn’t in a hurry to give that up. But as fate would have it, we met on our own at their first annual Pimps and Ho’s party.

I will always remember that party as being one of the most exciting and fun nights. With my pointy cones, I was definitely a hit at the party. Of course, Allen likes to point out that it was a good night for him, too, because I wasn’t the only girl into him there! But I know he only had eyes for me :)

The real excitement, though, was the chemistry brewing between Allen and I. Throughout the party we flirted and talked, but we were both doing a good job of playing it cool. In fact, at the end of the night when Allen asked me for my phone number, I boldly told him that I was in a hurry to leave with friends and if he wanted to he could get it from Jody.

Man, was I kicking myself the next day for that. I was so worried that I blew it. But as you can probably guess, it totally worked and he called on Sunday to set a date for the following weekend. As the saying goes, the rest is history.

Making history

This story is being circulated around the Internet. It made me smile. I'm glad I'll be able to tell my children I helped make history

Upon arriving at the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Cincinnati to vote early today I happened upon some friends of my mother's - three small, elderly Jewish women. They were quite upset as they were being refused admitance to the polling location due to their Obama T-Shirts, hats and buttons. Apparently you cannot wear Obama/McCain gear into polling locations here in Ohio .... They were practically on the verge of tears.

After a minute or two of this a huge man (6'5", 300 lbs easy) wearing a Dale Earnhardt jacket and Bengals cap left the voting line, came up to us and introduced himself as Mike. He told us he had overheard our conversation and asked if the ladies would like to borrow his jacket to put over their t-shirts so they could go in and vote. The ladies quickly agreed. As long as I live I will never forget the image of these 80-plus-year-old Jewish ladies walking into the polling location wearing a huge Dale Earnhardt racing jacket that came over their hands and down to their knees!

Mike patiently waited for each woman to cast their vote, accepted their many thanks and then got back in line (I saved him a place while he was helping out the ladies). When Mike got back in line I asked him if he was an Obama supporter. He said that he was not, but that he couldn't stand to see those ladies so upset. I thanked him for being a gentleman in a time of bitter partisanship and wished him well.

After I voted I walked out to the street to find my mother's friends surrouding our new friend Mike - they were laughing and having a great time. I joined them and soon learned that Mike had changed his mind in the polling booth and ended up voting for Obama. When I asked him why he changed his mind at the last minute, he explained that while he was waiting for his jacket he got into a conversation with one of the ladies who had explained how the Jewish community, and she, had worked side by side with the black community during the civil rights movements of the '60s, and that this vote was the culmination of those personal and community efforts so many years ago. That this election for her was more than just a vote ... but a chance at history.

Mike looked at me and said, "Obama's going to win, and I didn't want to tell my grandchildren some day that I had an opportunity to vote for the first black president, but I missed my chance at history and voted for the other guy."

Secret confessions of a newbie blogger

I used to believe that bloggers were self-important egomaniacs who actually believed that other people cared what they had for breakfast or thought about politics. And who knows – maybe I was right. It wasn’t until I started following a few blogs, though, that I understood the value in online journaling (aka blogging).

Following blogs gave me an inside glimpse into the lives of the authors. These bloggers became my “friends” and now I have to check their sites every morning to see what’s new.

So I got to thinking…In our crazy, busy world, it can be difficult to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. What if, instead of my annual, two-page Christmas letter outlining the highlights of the past 12 months, you (our friends and family) could log in at your leisure to see what Allen and I have been up to? And what if, instead of that one-sided message, the “letters” were interactive and you could leave messages and comments? This is what caused me to convert from a blog-hater to a full-fledged blogger.

Now if you’re one of those people who think blogs are stupid, by all means – don’t read this. You won't hurt my feelings. I’m still a fan of e-mail, telephone calls and face-to-face visits, and we can keep in contact that way. However, if you like what you see, feel free to stick around and maybe even have a laugh at my expense.