Come Roam Through Our Home!

We finally closed on our house this past weekend! We got our keys on Saturday and then spent the weekend working on the house. A few of the rooms were new surprises, as we had only been in the house about 15 minutes with our realtor and forgot what a lot of the house looked like. We are excited to begin the adventures of home owning!

Allow me to take you on a virtual tour...

We're excited to be new home owners!

Kitchen

Dining Room

Living Room

Master Bedroom

Guest Room

This is the back of the house. We are looking forward to having some cookouts on our deck and patio. There's also a pool in the backyard, but we are removing it so we can have some grass and a garden.

Josh and my project for the weekend was the loft area. As you can tell, a young girl and her mom lived at this house. For some reason, Josh wanted to remove the stickers and repaint. We primed the loft so it will be ready to paint next time we're there.

Before:



After:

We were very blessed to have both of our families come help us start the house projects. They scraped off wallpaper, painted, spackled, cleaned, and finished some little projects around the house.

Joanna washing the windows in the living room. We got all of the wallpaper scraped off of the walls in the living room and upstairs hallway.

Ben hard at work :-)

We will post more before and after pictures once we finish our projects. We're planning to spend a week painting and fixing up the house to make it our own and then moving all of our stuff from Huntington. We have two and a half weeks of work left in Huntington, and then we will be heading back to our house to begin life together in Akron!

This girl & this guy = leaving the Indiana sky.

This blog post (according to many of our friends) is long overdue. As I sit down thinking about what I need to update the cyberworld on, it is a bit overwhelming. Perhaps this is why I keep putting off an update. Change is coming for sure for the Millers, and it is exciting, nerve-racking, stress-relieving, stressful, and boom-shacka-lacka-tastic all at the same time.

Early on this year, I applied to be the youth director at Goss Memorial Church in Akron Ohio. This church also happens to be the church that I grew up in. After quietly going through the process, I was offered the job, and Kristi and I decided to take it! We spent a great deal of time thinking about this decision and thought that the move would be good for us. I am very much looking forward to working in a church, and Kristi and I are also looking forward to being able to spend more of life together.

So with this new job, obviously comes a move to Akron. We are currently in our last month in Huntington, which is actually very strange to type. We are finishing out the school year in Huntington, and then will be moving the first couple weeks of June, and I start at Goss on June 20th.

Along with moving, we have decided to purchase a home! It has been a very stressful process buying a home from out of state, but we are in contract, in the process of acquiring a mortgage, and have a tentative closing date of May 14th on a house. This house, which will soon be our home, is only a block and a half away from Goss, as location was the top priority in our house search. I think I have faxed a total of 20 sequoia trees so far during this process, and actually even faxed in our original contract from Vegas.

It has been a very busy month for us, and with all the transition coming ahead, we are sure that we have a couple busy months ahead of us. We are not looking forward to leaving our friends and connections in Huntington, but we are excited for this new adventure.

When you pray, please pray for us as we are transitioning out of Huntington and into Akron. Pray that the great things that God is doing at Huntington North and the Boys and Girls Club would continue, and that we would be prepared to join His work in Akron. Pray for open and closed doors with Kristi's job search. Pray for me as I will be spiritually leading teenagers.

Oh, and if any of you would like to meet LeBron, I'm sure I can arrange it. He will pretty much be our neighbor.

Loving the Snow Days, but Ready for Some Sun Rays

Well, winter in the Midwest means lots of cold weather, hot chocolate, and my personal favorite, snow days! The first thing I have done every morning since December 1st (after pressing snooze a few times) is check for school delays and closings. And I love when "Huntington County Schools" pops up and I get to crawl back in bed. I've had five snow days so far, which unfortunately means I am now teaching into June, but it has been fun while it lasted! We've also had several relaxing weekends in a row, which does not happen very often. It has been the longest streak of free weekends in a row since we have been married, and it has been wonderful. We're starting to get cabin fever after being stuck inside for so long, but have enjoyed playing Settlers of Catan (our record is twelve games in one day- don't judge us), trying some new dinner and bread recipes, starting our vacation scrapbook, intramural soccer for Josh, and sledding (or Josh rolling down the hill in a tarp). We also got to go to a Derek Webb concert at our church this weekend, which was a-mazing.

Overall, it has been a beautifully boring month for us. We have enjoyed time at home, while at the same time are looking forward to our next adventure and some sun rays.

Spending our snow day sledding with some of Josh's co-workers


We just had to include these pictures of our nephew, Elijah, These are his 9 month pictures. We really miss seeing him through each little phase that he goes through. Isn't he adorable?

A Whole Wheat Treat

2010!

Well, ladies and gentleman. You did it. You made it to the tens. The holiday season has come and gone. We had so much fun being with our families and our friends this Christmas and New Years. One of the benefits of living in Huntington is getting to see all of our friends come back for New Years. People literally travel thousands of miles to get to see each other, and we hope that tradition continues.

If you have been keeping up with our blog, you have probably noticed that we are seeking better ways to consume less, produce more, and to become more mindful of the things we purchase and the things we eat. We are trying to eat more earthy, whole foods in order to be healthier and feel better! In our quest to live in a more 'monastic' way, we were blessed this Christmas with a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer! It's our hope to start making our own bread, rolls, cookies, etc.

I never thought that I would be this excited about a kitchen appliance, and definitely never thought that making bread would be blog worthy. But we are definitely both excited about this!

Here is this bad boy in all its glory. We have yet to name it. Any suggestions?


Yesterday we made our first loaves of bread! I must say, it is a very empowering experience to make your own bread. It makes you appreciate eating it so much more. It is quite a process, and it makes me wonder how people used to make bread before modern technology.

Here is the beautiful cook, getting ready!

We used the Stand Mixer to mix the milk, water, wheat flour, and yeast. For the next step, you had to hand mix 6 cups of white flour into the bowl. That's right- hand mix. I couldn't believe Kristi chose a recipe that required us (me) to HAND MIX when we had a $300 mixer! The irony.... I will say, the only time I was smiling during this 15 minute process was for the picture.


The risen dough in the stand mixer bowl from the Thompson parents!

Ready for the oven in bread pans from the Miller parents!

Finished Whole Wheat Bread!

There were lots and lots of dishes, but it was worth it.

Our first slice of bread was served with Chili!

Now as you will notice, we sort of ruined the whole eating healthy goal by having a Vanilla Coke with our meal (all that sugar and high fructose corn syrup), but we figured we should celebrate. Kristi later took that celebration too far and craved, purchased, and consumed McDonald's french fries.

We want to give a special thanks to both of our families for the Christmas gifts to make all this possible. We hope to have some good bread for you next time we see you!

Trees, Lights, and a man in Tights!

Merry Christmas season everyone!





It is starting to feel like Christmas at the Miller household. We put up our trees (Christmas Tree and Charlie Brown Christmas Tree), wrapped some gifts, and kicked off the Christmas season with Elf (hence the Tights reference).

Here are a few of our favorite Christmas movie quotes: (Can you name which movie they come from?)

1) "If it makes you feel any better, I forgot my reading glasses."

2) "This is just a real nice surprise. Just a real nice surprise."

3) "Nine million terrorists in the world and I gotta kill one with feet smaller than my sister." - (may be a stretch...)

4) "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"

5) "Have you seen these toilets? They're GINORMOUS!"

6) "I can count to ten. One, two, three, four, five, nine, six, eight... Well, I can count to five."

7) "Deck the harrs with boughs of horry, fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra."

8) "My name is all wrong. No child wants to play with a Charlie-In-The-Box so I had to come here."


What are some of YOUR favorite quotes?


We always love this season. May we all rediscover the wonder and the joy in the Christmas story. For the God of the heavens became an infant child!