It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

The past couple weeks have been filled with Holiday fun. We had all of our friends over for a big ugly sweater Christmas Party, which was a blast! It was so great to get everyone together again.

Then of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without a Holiday Family Picture....and when I say family I mean the whole family. Although it's a bit embarrassing, it's also hilarious so I decided to post one.

Notice the cat my mom is holding. I'm not sure who was hating taking this picture the most- the cats, or Dan. Probably Dan.

Last Saturday my beautiful friend Kylee got married. The wedding was great- and we are so happy for her and James!

A night out on the town

Last night my parents took Dan and I out for a spectacular evening. We started out with a fabulous dinner at the Roof, which buffet style restaurant on the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building with an AMAZING view of the temple! I think we had the best seats in the house. Here is a picture of us sitting at our table:

Here we are surrounded by our devoured dessert plates, wondering why we ate so much!! Dang buffets!

After dinner, we took a carriage ride around Temple Square. Even though we were freezing our butts off, it was so fun!

To end the night right, we went back up to the Top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and got Hot Chocolate at a little cafe.

It was such a fun night, and the perfect way to kick off the Holiday Season. Thanks Mom and Dad!!

Halloween!!!

Thanks to the Fronks, Halloween was great this year!! Katie and Blake hosted an awesome party, and we had so much fun! Unfortunately for Dan and I, we were lame this year and put off finding a costume until literally 20 minutes before the party. (whoops!) Luckilly my mom had the infamous bucket of old halloween costumes that she had aquired over the years, so we were able to throw something together...

So as you can see... I am a witch and Dan is a dead viking! Dan ended up losing the mask on the way to Katies, and became a live viking. Apparently that wasn't so clear, however, because on the way into the house a kid shouted, "Look, he's a deer!" Obviously, my manly viking was quite offended by getting mistaken for a graceful deer, but we got through it. :)

Everyone had great costumes, especially Jeff and Linnea! They made the wolf costume, aren't they amazing? Here are some pics from the party:

The boys:

(gotta love the pumpkin!)

The girls:

The great themed treats! Props to Katie and Blake!

October Fun!

October has been a fun month for us. We've been in California for the past two years, so we have been so excited to get to enjoy fall this season! (Although it's a lot shorter than I remember... and we're NOT looking forward to winter! YUCK!) Dan and I decided to have celebrate halloween early with our own little pumpkin party. We carved some pumpkins, and treated ourselves to some amazing kneaders pumpkin pie.
Here is Dan's haunted tree:
And here is my oh so scary kitty:

Yeah, we're pretty talented! :)

Also, remember how I mentioned I LOST my dang wedding ring? (Yeah I know.. super sad. I try to pretend it never happened!) So really, I pretended that it never happend for so long that I had no wedding ring on for months. Recently, I came to terms with the loss and we decided that it was time I moved on. So we went to Dillards and... ta-da!

I'm married again! :) 20 bucks got us this fabulous ring. This picture doesn't really do it justice, but I have had more compliments on this ring (from strangers) than I ever had on my old ring! Sheesh! Maybe we should have got this cheap one in the first place!

Here are a few more pictures from this month. Dan and I have got back in the habit of having a date night every Friday, and it has been great! We fell out of the habit when we moved back to Utah because things just got so crazy busy, so it's SO nice to get to look forward to spending time with my wonderful hubby every week!

Ok... one more picture. We took this from our front porch on our way out for a date last week- Isn't is beautiful? We have the best view from our front porch, and we get to see the most amazing sunsets! We are so blessed! :)

Florida Fun!

Once again I'm a little late at posting this, but I wanted to share a fun little vacay Dan and I took this summer. Dan had to do some training in Fort Meyers, Florida for work, so we thought it would be fun if I tagged along! It was especially fun for me- because I spent the entire time chillin on the beach while Dan was in meetings. But as soon as he was done we would party it up!

This is the AWESOME view from our hotel room:

In the evening, sting rays would come right up to the shore!

We had so much fun... I'm hoping for another business trip in the near future! :)

It's FINISHED!!!

(Drum rolls please) For those of you who haven't seen yet- here is the finished product!! Ok, so this post is a little late. The house has been finished for awhile. But at least I'm getting around to it, right? After a VERY long and stressful few months, our "little" project was finally completed. Whew! Here are a few pics of the stages the exterior went through:




I never had a chance to blog throughout the building process, because we literally had no spare time. None, zilch, zero. Every spare second was spent at the house- tiling, painting, building a deck, landscaping, and all the other random stuff we naively thought would be easy to do ourselves. We'd usually crawl into bed around 12 or 1, and wake up around 5 or 6. Let's just say we learned a lot of new skills and lessons throughout this project! Mainly, that it's worth the extra money to just pay someone to do it!! :)

Although we had a lot of "situations" happen that weren't quite planned for... like when renting a tractor cost us an extra thousand dollars because we broke it... (whoops!) or when countless subs charged way more than was quoted... or when I lost my wedding ring working on the house...and many more, it was such a great experience. We grew together, learned how to work together, and have such a better relationship for it! I truely am so grateful for this huge blessing in our lives!

But, as Julie so correctly put it: we are now officially 30 years in debt.
Ah, the American Dream.

Home Sweet Home!

Dan and I are officially home owners! Well... almost. We recently purchased this partially finished home in Traverse Mountain, Lehi. The original builder went bankrupt before it was complete, so we're finishing it! We have subbed out all of the work already... and if everyone stays right on schedule we should be ready to move in by the end of May.

This has been the most exciting/difficult project that has come into our lives so far. It has been an amazing experience to build this house together, and such a blessing! We get to personalize everything just the way that we like it, but believe it or not- it is reeeeally hard to make all of the decisions! I hope everything looks ok once it's done!

Dan has been working soooo hard, he works a beyond full time job while managing all of the subs (which is basically another full time job) all at the same time. I am so proud of him, he is amazing! He has so much on his plate, yet handles it all so well! He is the best!

Well, I will post more pictures as the house gets more complete!

Happy Birthday Babe!!

Last week, we celebrated Dan's 28th birthday! The celebration began with a homemade white chocolate rasberry truffle cheesecake. (Yes, I love my husband so much I learned how to bake!)

Then we went out to dinner and ice skating. Dan had never been ice skating before, yet somehow he was WAY more advanced than I was.... I still wonder how he is so good at everything he ever does!

Happy Birthday Babe!!!

Sheesh, it's been awhile!!

Ok... So the new excitement of creating a blog quickly slipped away after the first few posts, and we have been awfully lazy about keeping this thing updated. BUT I have made the commitment to a dear friend that I would do better, so here we go!

The new year has brought a lot of new changes into the lives of the Millers! We said goodbye to good ol California, packed up a budget truck and made our way back to the promised land. Although we may have second thoughts about it every time we step outside into the bitter cold, we are so happy to be back in Utah with our family and friends!

I must admit though, I do miss California! It was such a great adventure for us to be out on our own, and we had a lot of fun! I have a few pictures of our last few months in California that I never got around to posting:

Hiking with the Chubbucks

Boogie Boarding


Downtown LA

Camping on the beach... in November!! (That's why I'll miss it there!)

Our last nights in Cali...

Fun times!