Our Christmas Tree and Cousin Eddie!

We had a great Thanksgiving celebrating with our families. First we spent two days in West Jeff with my family. There were so many people this year that we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' church. Then on Friday we headed out for our annual Black Friday trip. I didn't buy much, but it was fun hanging out with everyone. And we can now publicize some exciting news- we're going to be an uncle and aunt again! Michelle is due July 4th! Then we came back to Akron to have Thanksgiving with Josh's family. Joanna was home from college, so we made a big sibling Swenson's run, watched Ohio State annihilate Michigan, and finished the evening with the traditional viewing of Elf on Thanksgiving night.

And now it's Christmas in the Miller home! Our Christmas tree is up, and the Christmas movie marathon has begun. So far we've watched The Christmas Story with Ralphie in his bunny pjs, Home Alone, my favorite- Christmas Vacation, and Josh's favorite- Charlie Brown Christmas. Speaking of Christmas Vacation, my Christmas Vacation has officially begun! Crazy! It was a great first semester at CVCA. Now we are excited to have some extra time with family and to see our HU friends at New Years!

Our first Akron Christmas tree, with the tree skirt my mom made us.


Our advent tree, made by Josh's mom.


And we finally updated our 'Huntington friends' and 'family' map. This was given to me from a friend to remind us to pray for our friends and extended family.




Merry Christmas!

If you move a lot of dirt, someone will get hurt.

Our backyard has been a slow moving project throughout the summer and fall, however slow moving does not mean easy. Our backyard has caused the scheduling of two separate surgeries so far (a shoulder surgery and neck surgery) both to the same individual which shall remain nameless.

As you will see, we started out with a half-above, half-below ground pool that took up almost all of our backyard. As much as we would have liked to have kept the pool, the possibility of a small yard to garden outweighed the maintenance of a pool.


With a Home Depot water pump and Mom's help, we drained the pool.




A couple days later, an army of teenagers dug out the pool. It just so happened that our neighbors were wanting a pool, so we hooked them up!


It took several days of work to get from the above picture to this one. Several shovels, a couple pic axes, and a couple fathers helped me level off the remaining dirt and slope it from right (higher) to left (lower). The red rock pile were all rocks that were in our backyard, and we are saving them to use for decoration or a path.


Next Step - 5 yards of filler dirt. I found out that I can move 5 yards of dirt from my driveway to the backyard in 4 hours. I'm not sure if you can tell by the photos, but there is about a 5 foot drop from our concrete patio area to our yard. So, in moving the dirt I built a 5 foot ramp with the first 2 yards and let gravity do its thing while wheel-barreling the rest into the yard.


See the pool in our neighbor's yard?


Back breaking work.




Next, Next Step - 8 yards of Super Soil. I found out that 3 Miller men can move 8 yards of dirt from my driveway to the backyard in 2 hours. It went so much faster with extra shovelers!


We live on a pretty decent size hill, so it was pretty important for me to get my yard higher than my neighbor so that my yard wouldn't flood when it rains. With great soil covering most of my yard, it is ready for vegetation in the spring!


I decided that it would be a good idea to plant grass seed and put down straw just five hours before the strongest windstorm in three years. The local squirrels who were preparing for winter really appreciated eating the grass seed that blew all around. Needless to say, I will probably have to reseed in the spring.

We also covered up a section of our yard for our garden. Our plan is to have the back half of our yard as our garden, and the front half as grass. My lovely bride really wanted an area in our yard for playing games. The giant 10ft X 17ft area isn't big enough for cornhole, but perhaps she will want to use it exercise by running laps in the spring.


I still have some work to do to protect the foundation of my garage. Spring's project will be to build up a support wall a couple of feet next to my garage, and after filling the space with dirt it could end up being a strawberry patch or something.


A special thanks to all of our family members who helped with this project, but please, don't send us your medical bills.

Us folkies went to the Smokies

A couple weeks ago, Kristi led me on an adventure weekend. Before leaving on our adventure, all I knew was, well, nothing! We both blocked off a Friday afternoon through Monday evening and hit the road. She planned the whole trip, and even secretly packed my bag! One hour on the road turned into nine, and I didn't figure out where we were going until a half hour before we got there. My wife of mine is such a secret planner!

Little Ladies and Gentle Giants - Our weekend adventure in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee:

Adventure #1 - The Hotel

As soon as we stepped foot into our hotel room, looking to crash after our nine and a half hour drive, we caught off guard by the stench of smoke. Did we book a smoking room? Negative. But we did find this, which made the whole room smell like campfire.


So, with it not being what we expected, after one night we ditched the Days Inn and went down the road to the nicer, cheaper Best Western.



Adventure #2 - Gatlinburg

Gatlinburg, the city we stayed in, was a sweet touristy town. For those that don't know, it is connected to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville by a 'strip'. On this strip there are hundreds of restaurants and probably the same number of attractions. It's enough to empty your life savings. So, we selected the couple things that we wanted to check out on the strip.

Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede
(Yee-Haw! Horse tricks + 5 course meal (including a whole chicken) - silverware = a spur tappin good time!)



Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum
(Kristi on a normal size chair.)



Legends Restaurant (& Bennetts BBQ)
(Turns out this is the only picture we have from the restaurants we visited.)



Look! We even saw a bear!


Adventure #3 - Smokey Mountains National Park

With this being my first time in the Smokeys, I was amazed at the sites in the National Park.









What a great weekend planned by my wonderful wife! We are so thankful for everything that has been happening in Akron, and we are also thankful for the ability to go on some adventures from time to time. Through all of our searching during our adventures, we were fortunate enough to see one wildlife animal. A dead deer on the side of the road in West Virginia.

Fuddruckers burgers to finish the weekend was just what the mountain man ordered.



**Disclaimer**
If you do not live in the Akron area, you may be thinking to yourself, "Wow self, all the Millers do is work on their house and go on vacations", and probably rightfully so. Perhaps one of these blogs, we will let you in on what's going on with our new jobs.

Three Leaks in a Matter of Weeks!

When we moved into our house, we thought the kitchen would be one of the easiest rooms when it came to projects. We didn't do any painting and our refrigerator and oven came with the house. We were wrong.

Here is an overview of our kitchen projects.

Ceiling: About two weeks after we moved into the house, we had our first unexpected house project. I was driving home from Indiana and received a call from Josh that our toilet had leaked through our kitchen ceiling. I was expecting a small baseball-sized leak, so you can imagine my surprise when I found this!

Josh put his handyman skills to work. He fixed the toilet and, with some help from a friend, sanded the ceiling (I'll leave out the details of the electric sander that left a layer of dust on EVERYTHING in the kitchen, dining room, and part of the living room) and retextured the ceiling. We just triple coated that section of the ceiling today, and although it's not perfect, it looks much better.

Ceiling Numero Dos: About two weeks after we fixed the hole in the ceiling from the toilet leak, we had a shower leak. This time the shower was leaking through the light in the kitchen ceiling. After a few hours of testing, we discovered exactly where the leak was coming from and Josh fixed leak number two.

Faucet: We soon discovered that our kitchen faucet had a leak. Once again, Josh put his handyman skills to use and installed a new faucet.

Dishwasher: This one's my favorite! Before moving into our new house, we decided we wanted to install a dishwasher. The first week of June, we were blessed with a new dishwasher as a gift. The first step was adding switches to our breaker box. My Uncle Rick made the trip to Akron to install a whole new breaker box and rewire our electricity. What a blessing to have an electrician in the family! Step two was finding someone who could make space in our cupboards and install the dishwasher. So after sitting in a box in our kitchen for 4 and a half months, we finally have a working dishwasher!!! (Well, almost working. Sears is coming tomorrow to repair a broken part.)





Our next project is finding a breakfast nook table. Without the dishwasher sitting in the corner, we have a big open space to fill!

Time to Recline

Our living room has a lot of character. After being overwhelmed by all the wood at first, we have grown to like the wood paneling, wood floors, and even the wood built-in shelves for the entertainment center. Hours of work + an incredible wife who decorates = another finished room!

Before




The big project in this room was all the painting. We painted the previously wallpapered walls and what seemed like miles of trim. Although it took a lot of time, we are pretty happy with the outcome.

Middle

The folding chairs in this picture served as our only furniture the first two weeks. A lot of meals were eaten on those chairs!


This gives you an image of the color of the previous trim (left) with the newly painted white trim (right).

After




As you can see, we scored the previous owner's TV! She claimed that 4 guys who could all bench press over 200 lbs couldn't get it out of the house! She asked us if we were interested in a TV, and I said no, because I didn't want to pay for one! I told her if she could get it, that she was welcome to it. It's still sitting in our living room 3 months later, so I'm assuming its ours! It beautifully broadcasts our 4 good digital channels that we pick up from the 'bunny ears' in HIGH DEFINITION. I suppose we will figure out how to get it out of the house when TVs become obsolete....

Where you could sleep, and count your sheep.

The spare bedroom is one of the rooms that we have actually done very little to. With all the painting we have done, we decided to leave the spare room the way it was. Here are a few of the things we did to Millerfy it:

-Took down the 'cute as a bug' decor. (Another way of de-4-year-olding the house)
-Touch-up painted the walls
-Put up new, white blinds
-Hung curtains that we had in our previous house
-Painted closet
-Built closet storage units
-Fill it with furniture from Kristi's room growing up

Other than the previously mentioned items, can you tell what else is different between the first 2 photos?

Before


After




The closet was a relatively small, but pretty rewarding project for me. After getting some ideas, I built the clothes rack (with the help of Kurt) for my hanging clothes out of 2X4s, a 1X10, and a 3/4 inch rod . Then I built the closet maid shelves for my other clothes out of the previous owners metal racks, plus one I purchased. Horray for not having clothes in luggage!

Ok, so I know I said it was relatively small, but to me it was actually a pretty big project. It took days of work to spackle, paint, build, respackle, build and repaint. So when you think a project will just take you a day, YOU ARE PROBABLY WRONG!

Closet Before


Closet After


So now when you visit, you have a place to stay! Even couples can stay in this room, since the bed is a day bed (which I had never heard of).

So schedule a visit!

Rethink the Pink

The Loft (3rd Bedroom)

This room, as you can see, required a LOT of painting (and sticker removal). After days of priming, painting walls, painting trim, and a new carpet floor, our loft was one of the first rooms completed! We turned half of it into our office and the other half into a hang out room. We also put all of our international decor and collectibles up there. And we love the built-in bookshelves! Can you believe we didn't keep it the way it was when we moved in?

STAIRS

Before

During

After


SIDE #1

Before

During

After


SIDE #2

Before

During

After


The loft is definitely one of our favorite rooms in the house. We're looking forward to hanging out up there this winter, as it is waaaay too hot right now.