A Tale of Two Christmases

Christmas was fabulous.

As I mentioned before we traveled home on the worst day possible, last Friday, in the middle of a snow storm. We arrived in Seattle an hour later than planned, but managed to make all of our connections safely and by 2:00 am we made it to our final destination - my parents house in Silverdale. This trip I decided to keep things simple. I didn't make any plans or commitments ahead of time. It made for a very enjoyable trip. The first couple days we hung out at the house, visited with my family, and watched the snow pile up outside. We never actually played in the snow, but it made for a great photo op... (my Mom took this first one).




Here we are doing what we do best - hanging out. Not to be confused with the other "hanging out" associated with dating. Sorry Maren, I couldn't resist.


On our anniversary, we discussed going out to dinner, but with icy roads and threats of more snow to come we bagged that idea. Something about getting stranded in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter just didn't sound like fun. Instead we bought a new game for our Wii - Cooking Mama - and spent the evening preparing various meals from around the world.

On Christmas Eve my Mom prepared a large meal - ham, scalloped potatoes, rolls, salad and olives and we ate together as a family. It was great to have the time together, much like old times when we all lived at home. In true Miller fashion we chatted about all of the essentials - what's new, what's annoying and who has the weirdest OCD tendencies. And of course, the poo discussions. We always have to go there. What can I say, at 29 I'm still fascinated by it.

Miller Family 2008 (well, sorta'.. we're missing half). Doesn't Amber look great?


Christmas Eve also happened to be the day Austin was able to call home. He's been serving a mission in Santiago, Chile. The last day I saw him was March 19th when he entered the MTC:


We were so excited to hear from him and even more excited to hear he is doing so well. We miss him dearly, but listening to the enthusiasm and devotion he has for missionary work made us feel great. Here we are hovering around my Mom's computer. Alex's family was on the other end (via Skype) talking with Austin on the cell phone. It worked pretty well.


Later that evening we packed our bags and caught the ferry over to Edmonds to meet up with Steve and Maren so we could spend the remainder of our trip in Bellingham.

Even though we got to bed way too late (1:30 am??) we were up bright and early a few hours later to open gifts. Santa spoiled us this year. Seriously. The crazy part is, I am really picky - really, really, really picky. Teri managed to find me the perfect gifts. She made me PJ pants and slippers, which I love. A few of the other gifts were: a really cute purse, polka-dot pitcher, cool ice-scraper with a glove cover, socks, and a stack of DVDs to add to our collection. I love them all.

After we destroyed the living room with wrapping paper and gift boxes, we hopped in the car and trekked down to Mukilteo to have dinner with the Hildebrand's - longtime friends of the Booth family. Dinner was delicious. After dinner, we played Puerto Rico (one of Alex's Christmas presents). This is our new favorite board game, even if it adds some extra tension to our marriage. We played once and then it was time to leave. The first game took us almost 3 hours.

The next day, the family went sledding while I stayed home to tend to my not-so happy stomach. One of those explosive situations not to be messed with. The family had fun and were lucky in that they didn't have to share the sledding hill with too many other people. Here are some pics from their adventure.





We did several other things while we were in Bellingham - church, dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant, etc, but there's one thing that was especially cool. On Saturday, we went to the Seattle Temple to see Terry & Nicholle Jones get sealed to their children. It was a full circle moment to finally see them all together as a family. It was a wonderful experience and I'm thankful we were invited to attend. For the record, the kids are all adorable.

Monday morning reality set in and we slowly packed our bags. The time we had been dreading had finally come... and now, here we are back in Utah. Back to work.

Throughout the week the one thing I thought of continually was my gratitude for my two families. I am grateful for my (Miller) family. We have our quirks and sometimes I get annoyed, but I love my family. I am also grateful for my wonderful in-laws who took me in and made me part of their family, even before I was married to their son. Love you guys!

Happy Merry Christmas Anniversary Vacation!

Merry Christmas from the Booths!

Currently we are blogging from Washington state, where we've been spending the last several days with family and friends. We flew out last Friday, a little scary considering the weather conditions - freak snow storm with limited visibility - and managed to arrive in Seattle safely within an hour of our scheduled arrival time. Several others had canceled or severely delayed flights. I'm thankful we were able to get in with only a slight delay.

In addition to the holiday festivities, we celebrated our very first wedding anniversary.


I'm hoping this means we can finally drop the obnoxious title of "newlyweds". I'm so done with that. Every time someone makes reference to us, the "newlyweds" in that sickeningly adoring tone, and gives us the sappy loving look that goes with it, I want to puke. Let's get real here. We spent most days arguing about anything and everything. Finances, how the clothes are folded, when to read scriptures, what to buy at the grocery store, etc, etc.... Trust me. If there was an argument to be had, we had it. Every day, for the last year. Strangely enough, during this process we've grown closer together and learned how to communicate better. I've also aged an extra 10 years, but that's beside the point. Hopefully we will continue to improve and be more understanding of our differences as time goes by. In the end, I'm thankful to have such a wonderful husband that works so hard to try to accomplish the impossible - making me happy. (He's always willing to take on a challenge.)

Anyway, I just realized it's super late. I'll have to follow up later with details on our two Christmases. Until then, here are a few pics to tide you over. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

A Lovely Weekend

We had a busy, busy weekend, but highly productive and enjoyable.

On Saturday Alex, Nolan and I met up with Valerie and Denis for an overdue temple trip and dinner. We went to one of my favorite temples, here's a clue:


After our session, we were all starving - a normal occurrence for me. As planned, our next stop was dinner - a Thai restaurant (earlier in the week Nolan mentioned had had yet to try Thai food). After discovering our usual place was closed for reasons unknown, we ventured out to a new place in Provo - Spicy Thai. We've seen this place a few times, but I figured it wasn't going to be anything special. It was surprisingly excellent. Check this place out -


It's totally misleading.
Inside those doors is one of the best Thai restaurants we've found in Utah. Not only was the food amazing (reminiscent of the good stuff we ate back in Bellingham), it's literally 10 minutes or less from home. We were both pleasantly surprised and overjoyed with our find. My only regret is that I didn't order my favorite dish - the beef waterfall. Definitely going to try that next time. We ordered several entrees between the 5 of us - it was like something out of a dream. The food just kept coming and coming and it was all delicious. What can I say, I just love food.

Later in the day we got a call from Richie, one of Alex's mission companions, inviting me and Alex to join him and his soon-to-be wife, Laurie, for the Mormon Tabernacle Spoken Word and mini Christmas concert performance this morning (Sunday) at the Conference Center in Salt Lake.


I had secretly been hoping we could go to this event after hearing about it from a co-worker this last week. The thing is, with this specific event you had to request tickets months in advance and then pray you'd be randomly selected to receive them (max of 4 per household). There was no way we would have been able to get them this late in the game. Thankfully Laurie did get tickets and was kind enough to invite us to use the extra 2.

I've seen the choir perform before, but this time was different. They had ballet dancers, bell ringers and a guest singer, Brian Stokes Mitchell, from Broadway. It was incredible to watch. At one point in the program they sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. It was beautiful. I could feel a tear starting in my eye and quickly looked to Alex in hopes that he was in the same boat. He was. His Grinch heart grows larger everyday. As my sisters have experienced, whenever I feel an emotional response coming on, I have to distract myself by focusing on someone else. This time was no different. Shortly thereafter the concert ended and we made our way back to the car like a herd of cattle. I guess that's expected when you have 21,000 people parked within 5 blocks of each other.

That was the busy part of the weekend. The productive came when I stumbled upon a wonderful sale at Macy*s. I made a mad dash Saturday morning to replace my favorite black sweater and buy myself a new coat (3 inches of snow and butt cold wind chill convinced me this was a necessity). I was pleased to find that they were having some sort of holiday sale (aren't they always having a sale?) and offering additional 20% off of that. I found a super cute black cowl neck sweater normally $59 for $21 and a $200 wool pea coat for $81. I left the store feeling very accomplished. Later that evening we went back and got Alex outfitted in some new duds. $70 dress pants for $24, one pair was $12. A couple $40 dress shirts for $21, and a pair of Rockport shoes for $75. Needless to say, he won't be needing to go back anytime soon. Thank goodness.

There's only one stop we didn't get to this weekend, but after the disappointment we felt last time and the wonderful Christmas spirit we've experienced today, I think it's a blessing we missed this stop:


The overpriced tree lot!

Alex's Christmas List

Okay, okay. I guess I should write a Christmas list before it's too late. This year for Christmas I would like a packaged college education, a decoder for the language of girls, and a negativity/laziness purge (preferably a "just-add-water" kind of a deal).

Since none of those things are available (or ever will be), here's a list of other things that have popped into my mind more than once:

1) the Japanese Book of Mormon

[A picture should go here but the website says it's copyrighted so what do you do?]

2) a genuine Russian book that was written in Russian for Russians. Example:

Denis would be a good resource for finding out which novel is the best.

3) a board game that you (Kristine) would also like to play. The game Puerto Rico sounds pretty cool to me.

4) a cool tie that's long and thick



5) a good rest from stuff.



(Hopefully this will help me do better when we get back to the grind of things.)

I really can't think of any other things that I'd like. You can surprise me if there's something you think I've got to have. Here's one other thing I'd like someday:

a 1994 Geo Prism right side mirror

( I realize that the picture shows a left side mirror but the picture is more for effect really).

The Love of Bread

The most fantastic Christmas gift arrived today - a bread machine!
Thank you, Mom and Dad. I made my first loaf this evening - white Italian Herb. Aside from being shaped a little funky, it tastes great and made the house smell amazing in the process. Here are a few pics of "Slopey". (Yes, I named the loaf. Is there a problem with that?)


There are so many recipes I want to try; it could take me years to bake them all. Then there's the dough setting, which adds a whole other element. #1 on that list would be cinnamon rolls which will be happening very soon. The only problem is, what to do with all of this bread?? I may just have to host a bread party. Done.

Christmas... without a tree?

This weekend we had every intention of selecting a Christmas tree and doing all of the traditional Christmas type things - decorate the tree, bake cookies, hang stockings. Somewhere along the way, it all fell apart. It was probably when I figured out having a real tree was out of the question. Early on I asked several people where to get a tree. More than once the response was, "Walmart". That's pretty much the last place I wanted to go. I was hoping for a U-Cut place with reasonable prices. You know, like a tree farm. Guess what? They don't have tree farms here - and apparently I'm the only idiot in Utah County that didn't know that (until Saturday). Naturally we moved onto Plan B. Plan B was to hit a tree lot somewhere in town since surely they would have what we were looking for. We found a tree lot close to Target and stopped with high hopes of finding the perfect tree - one priced at $30 or less. Good news: They had big, bushy, beautifully shaped REAL trees. Bad News: They were ridiculously expensive. The prices started at $20 for your standard "Charlie Brown Tree".... Not Kidding.



... and topped out around $100. Seriously. Not kidding. Most of the desirable trees averaged $50-$60. Still ridiculous. We left quickly and haven't returned since. I've pretty much bagged the idea of doing a tree this year, which bums me out since it takes away a big part of the Christmas essence. Maybe next year (which is what I've said for the last 2 years).

Other exciting news...
We were formally called (set apart) as Webelos leaders for our ward. We spent the other part of the weekend at the Scout office getting outfitted with our uniforms, patches and various leader guides. I've since completed my required online e-learning courses and scheduled us both for the New Leader training next month. In the meantime, we'll start having our weekly den meetings starting this Wednesday. We still need to add a few patches, but it's a good start. Check us out...



Now, if we can just pull off our first den meeting, I'll be happy... until we have the next one.

On another totally unrelated note, here are a few other pics I took recently.

#1: Yes, Utah sunsets are beautiful...


#2: Proof that Alex is still living, even though I've been tempted to take him out more than once.

When Did I Grow Up?

It's true.
Somewhere between birth and now I've become an adult. I'm not sure when or how it happened, but tonight it became so blaringly apparent, I was instantly depressed.

The realization came when I was talking to Alex about date night. I was giving him ideas of things I'd actually like to do as opposed to things I should want to do. I'm done with dinners and movies. Been there, done that. I'm over it. After some thought I came up with a perfect plan, "We should go to Whole Foods Market in Salt Lake and then stop by Smith's Marketplace (Utah's version of Fred Meyer) to check things out." It should come as no surprise considering how much I LOVE going to Costco for my routine grocery run (snicker away, I speak the truth).. but the fact that I consider that to be a date-worthy activity is disturbing on so many levels.

Maybe it's that euphoric feeling I get being around all of that cool, affordably priced stuff under one roof. I dunno, but it's amazing. I'm reminded of a comment I made to Alex once. He won't let me forget this one. I said, "You know that good feeling you get when you go to the temple. That's how I feel every time I walk into Costco."*

Pretty sad really. What's next? Drink our prune juice together? Engage in heartwarming discussions about our deteriorating health? I'm sure the possibilities are endless.

*Disclaimer: Although I consider this to be true, I am in no way implying that visits to Costco should serve as a replacement for temple work. That would be seriously retarded and ridiculous.

Elf Yourself...

These are great for a laugh. Enjoy!

First, the Charleston:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/zzxBa7M2Hoy11invi0SU

Second, a Country Dance:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/2QteQjsRJosNuUvsU4ki