Christmas Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s that time of year again, and although many of you know the happenings of our family this year, I thought I would recap for this Christmas letter. (I usually send this with our Christmas cards but decided to post it online this year.)

January started off with our newest addition. Rowan Niels was born on January 17th, weighing in at 8 lbs 14 ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. He’s been such a loveable baby since day one and Chandler quickly warmed up to him.

We moved from Rexburg to Rigby about 6 weeks after Rowan was born to live with my (Tiffany’s) parents while Marshall finished school. Marsh graduated from BYU-Idaho in April with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications, emphasizing in Advertising. He also had clusters in Graphic Design and Business. It was nice for our whole family to have him done. He flew to a few different places – and interviewed with quite a few companies. He really wanted to work for an advertising agency. June came along, and although he had interviewed with a lot of companies, no job offers. Marshall finally decided to put things in the Lord’s hands and really did some soul searching and praying about what he should do and what would be best for our family. He thought back to a company he toured with while on an internship expedition to Minneapolis, MN. He was impressed with the company, C.H. Robinson, and decided to apply. We drove down to the Salt Lake branch and the day after, he was offered a job! We moved down to Lehi, UT a few weeks later. Marsh works in Transportation, (logistics) and even though it isn’t advertising, it’s a great stable company that is treating him great. He’s really enjoys what he does and works so hard. At one point, we thought we might be moving to Detroit, MI to work for an advertising agency Marshall had interviewed with. Looking at how the economy is now and the salary he would have been making, I don’t know if he we would have been making it, and who knows if he would even have a job right now. We have been incredibly blessed to be here in Utah, and it’s nice that we are still close enough family to visit when we want to. Marsh has also been teaching Sunday School (Gospel Doctrine) at church and is a great teacher. I am amazed by how much he knows and teaches me each day.

Chandler hasn’t slowed down one bit. He is constantly on the go, and keeps his mommy running. He loves reading books, watching movies, playing outside, and of course playing with or maybe I should call it teasing his little brother. He just turned 3 last month and I wonder where the time went. He has us a little worried right after he turned 2 last year as he wasn’t really talking. He was only saying about 5 words and we got him in some speech therapy. (I’m not sure how much it actually helped. A girl just came to our house twice a month for 45 minutes and let him play with some of her toys. ) One day it seemed like something clicked and he started to parrot everything we said. Now he is talking up a storm and it’s so fun to see what new things he will say each day. He’s such a sweet boy, and not a day goes by without him giving us hugs and kisses along with an, “I love you.” Definitely makes all those hard days worth it.

Rowan is a happy little guy. He is a very mellow baby and is definitely a mamma’s boy. He whines for me everytime he sees me without fail. Being just a little guy, he’s had his fair share of health problems. He had a 2 ½ month stretch of terrible colds and was diagnosed with pediatric asthma. He’s doing much better and hopefully the asthma is something he will outgrow. He has yet to sleep through the night, but one of these days he’ll surprise me and sleep all night. Although he was just born this year, he has gone from rolling, to sitting, to crawling, and is now walking.

I am at home with the boys and can’t believe how much work it has been having 2 kids. It’s definitely worth it though. I started doing a trade at our local recreation center in the daycare for a family membership in August. I have been working out a lot, and going to a lot of classes to get back into shape. I am finally seeing some positive results after being very consistent for almost 4 months. I also launched an informational site and blog this year, which are slowly growing. I hope to be able to eventually open up an online botique. My informational site is about baby showers at babyshowersavvy.com, and my blog is reviewing baby and kid products at babesandkids.blogspot.com. It’s been a lot of work, but I am starting to see some good traffic to both sites.

If we hadn’t already had a busy enough year, we made an offer on a townhome the end of October. We have a closing date of December 23rd. We were hoping to close and move before Christmas and even though that didn’t happen, we are happy to finally have a home.

It’s amazing to look back on this year and think that we’ve moved 3 times, added to our family, started a first job out of college, started a business, and bought a home. It’s been a crazy year, but we have been extremely blessed. We’ve seen many tender mercies from the Lord and are happy to have a warm home to come home to and to have food in our bellies and good health. Happy Holidays to you all!

The Snedakers