Christmas Greetings from the Warrens

Our family has enjoyed many adventures this year.

Here are a few updates on our various family members.

Annie enjoyed this year by expanding her vocal talents. She auditioned and made it into the school district's prestigious honor choir. She sang a solo in the Halloween program and joined her choir in a Christmas performance with the Reno Philharmonic.
She has maintained straight A's in her 8th-grade year at Billinghurst Middle School.

She is most often seen rocking out to music and typing up her endless stream of stories. We eagerly await the day when she becomes a world-famous author.

Upon graduating from BYU, Chelsea headed out to the East Coast to complete an internship in journalism. She worked with GO Magazine in Brooklyn by day, and lived the Manhattan high life by night. She went to four Broadway shows, ate every form of ethnic food imaginable and danced salsa with an extremely drunk Domincan man on the boardwalk. (Hey, it was Dominican Republic day- you gotta celebrate!)
She is now adapting to the life of a high school teacher, as she has taken over a literacy class in a long-term substitute position. She continues to love dancing, singing, and drawing.

The highlight of our family's year happened in Utah, where the first grandbaby was born.

Asher Brian Peterson came two weeks early and weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds 8 ounces. We all look forward to our various visits back and forth to get to know this chubby, handsome little guy.

Jessica has started a blog featuring some of her fabulous cake creations [how-sweet-it-is-cakes.blogspot.com], while Brad keeps busy with his demanding job, Ultimate Frisbee competitions and photography.

Felicity has been a very busy girl. She participated in her school's Madrigal Festival, where students dress up in costumes from the 1800s and perform numbers as though to the king's court. She ran again with McQueen's cross-country team, continued her love affair with German, and got more than a little dirty on a pioneer trek.
She recently celebrated her 18th birthday and is anxiously awaiting the results of her college applications. (cross your fingers!)

Brian and Melody keep plugging away. Both spent the summer months working in the garden and putting the finishing touches on the waterfall.

Melody dusted off her directing skills with an old-West comedy at Pine Middle School last spring and is gearing up for a murder mystery play in February.

Brian had a wonderful surprise when Jessica and Brad gave little Asher the middle name of Brian in his honor. He is dusting off his stats skills as he tutors various ward members in their pursuit of master's degrees.

From our family to yours, we wish you a happy and safe holiday.

All our love,

Annie, Felicity, Chelsea, Melody and Brian Warren

2009 Christmas Greetings from the Warren Family

Dearest family and friends-

Considering the current state of the world, we understand how blessed we are to be in our home, to have some stable employment, and to have loving family and friends around us. The year 2009 has been a challenging, yet memorable, year for our family.

One of our greatest joys was the January marriage of Jessica and Brad in the Salt Lake Temple. It was just a delightful experience for us all. She was a beautiful bride, and we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have Brad in our family. They bought their first home in Provo this summer and are fixing it all up. Two darling kittens joined the family in the fall, much to Jessica’s joy and slightly less joy from Brad. Brad works in management for a company in Lindon, and Jess is the ballroom coach for two teams at a Provo high school. They are coming home to Reno for Christmas…we can’t wait!

Chelsea has had a very busy year. She is in her last year in her journalism program at BYU and worked as an editor for the BYU paper since last winter semester. She was chosen to represent BYU and attend a journalism conference in New York in February; she just loved that…especially seeing Wicked on Broadway. She interviewed and landed a summer internship at the Mormon Times, which is under the Deseret News umbrella there in Salt Lake. She wrote several articles for the Times last summer. It was fun to look for her articles each week in the Mormon Times. This semester she is back working at the BYU newspaper as the city desk editor and is a freelance reporter for the Deseret News. She was asked to interview for a full-time position at the Mormon Times this month, so we shall see how that plays out. It will mean putting off graduation for a while longer, but a job is a job!

Felicity has also been a busy little beaver this year. She was active in drama last year and was in several plays towards the end of the school year. After school got out she joined the McQueen cross-county team and ran herself to death all summer! I got real concerned about her running in the 100° Reno heat, but she did it! She loved being on the team during the fall semester, made a whole new group of friends and learned to be part of a team. After cross-country was over, she auditioned for Honor Choir here in Reno and made it. Her week evenings were busy getting ready for the November concert … it was quite an amazing experience. She is doing well in her junior year and hopes to apply to BYU next fall. Our bishop took the Laurels and Priests up to experience church conference first hand this last October and she just really enjoyed that.

Miss Annie is taller than me and still seems to be growing. She ended off her 6th grade year playing trumpet in the band, however, I was informed that trumpet is just not her instrument. She really enjoyed swimming as much as possible last summer, is a real water baby. She is now doing very well in the 7th grade, particularly in writing. She fills notebooks with her short stories. She is a real fan of the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. She is enjoying being in Young Womans and is the Beehive secretary.

Brian and I are still keeping busy. I am still teaching English and drama to Reno’s finest. Actually, I have a great group of motivated kids this year. I taught summer school again this summer and am teaching a couple of after- school programs now. I also became a writing grader for the state this year. We took a group of our 8th graders to San Francisco at the end of last year. I got to see things that I had never visited before when we lived there. I will do a play again this year, but not until the spring. Brian spent some of his spare time finishing up the waterfall in the backyard this summer. It really looks fabulous. The project was a very big one and has taken four years to finish, but it was worth the wait.

So, that about wraps it up for us. I have absolutely no idea how to do this blogging thing…just no time to sit down with it. I had to have Chels get it all organized for me while she was home this week. We hope that your families are all well and that 2009 has been filled with rich blessings. We are so grateful for loving people, whose lives touch ours for the better.

Merry Christmas to you all and wonderful blessings for the New Year.

Love,

Brian, Melody, Chelsea, Felicity, and Annie