Best Birthday Ever

I do not like birthdays.  Plain and simple.  I like other people's birthdays, but not my own.  I think this stems from being born on Thanksgiving and always feeling like we were celebrating my birthday on the way to our Thanksgiving celebration or on the way home from it.  If my birthday was on or after Thanksgiving no one wanted cake.  Everyone was always so tired of eating that they just politely took "a small piece".  I don't think it helped that one year we had to go gophering on my birthday.  Mom tired to make me feel better by saying we were just "giving the gophers some birthday cake", but the magic of a birthday was lost. 

Don't get me wrong, mom always did her best to make my birthdays special with my favorite meal and then in later years a homemade Red Robin style mudpie (that would take mom over 7 hours to make!).  I just don't really like receiving gifts and being the center of attention that a birthday brings.  Okay, so I like being the center of attention sometimes, but I don't like "having" to be the center of attention on a birthday. 

So knowing all of that, Mark had his work cut out for him.  He was determined to make it more than just any other day, and I was sure it would be just like any other birthday.  I was wrong.  From the moment I woke up until my head hit the pillow I was loved and pampered and throughly enjoyed the day. 

It started with the sweet aroma of biscuts and gravy filing the house.  I love biscuits and gravy!  It is my favorite breakfast food (actually one of the very few breakfast foods I even like).  The kitchen was decorated with balloons, signs and even window stickers.  More importantly, I got to spend the whole day with Mark!  He made the day special.  I felt like the birthday royality.

We went to Tri-Cities and out to dinner to the Bonefish Grill.  Later that night Mark said he needed to stop by mom and dad's place to pick something up he had left there or something he needed for work.  Needless to say, it was just a ploy to get me to my parents house where Mom and Dad, Crystal, Chris, Ashley, and Cailyn, Justina, Landon, Kendra, Braden and Malek were all waiting to have icecream birthday cake. 

I couldn't have asked for a better day.  Thank you Mark for making it all come together with my favorite things and more importantly, my favorite people.  I guess I do kind of like birthdays.  I actually woke up the next day a little sad that it wasn't my birthday anymore, so needless to say I'm already looking forward to my birthday next year! 

Conference Weekend

Dear Jenae,

Thank you for the fabulous weekend!  We loved it!  We loved spending time with you and cannot wait to come back and do it again!

 

 

Girls Camp, Mark?

Okay, so I will admit it.  I snuck my cell phone to girls camp.  I'm a newlywed and this is my first night away from my husband.  I actually had to spend 3 days and 2 nights away from him!  That's a long time.  On the last night I actually snuck him up to girls camp :). 

It was so good to see him.  I missed him.  Thanks for being our priesthood for our last night at camp Mark!  We got to break in our new sleeping bags and tent.  What does the fine print say?  Oh yeah, I pack for camping trips and you unpack and put things away.  Thank goodness for the fine print!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July, from our family to yours!

Mark claims we will never, not ever dress alike and be one of those "nerd families".  Well, on the forth of July in Bayview you are a nerd family if you do not dress up, and dress alike, so I think with Kendra's persuasion, Mark gave in.

Food, Food, Glorious Food

Mark and I love food. We love everything about it. We love shopping for it together, we love making it together and we love eating it. (Which is probably why my pants feel like they are getting smaller. I'm not sure why the exact reverse is happening to my husband. He actually is buying pants 2-4 sizes smaller than he normally does, but I am feeding the poor boy, I promise I am!)

When we were dating we took turns cooking for each other. I have heard it said that most people have 10 recipes that they make over and over again on a rotating basis, so Mark and I decided that we would each make 10 meals for each other before we could repeat one of those meals again. We had a blast doing it and ate some yummy things.

I like to cook things I have grown up eating, recipes I have gathered from roommates or friends over the years but do not branch out a lot. Mark on the other hand loves to try new recipes. He hardly ever makes the same thing twice (unless I request it), and even makes up his own meals. (Don't tell him this, but I think he is a much better cook than I am, except for salmon. My salmon is much better than his is, but he too will admit this.)

It's kind of funny because when we go to a restaurant and order food I usually order between the same 3-4 things, just rotating them between visits. Mark hardly ever orders the same thing. The sad thing is that I usually end up preferring what he ordered! (I have thought about just letting him order for me because he does a much better job, but I actually kind of enjoy stealing bites of his food :)).

A couple of weeks ago we were trying to think of what to eat for dinner and decided to make a list of all the things one of us have cooked for the other (or cooked together). I think the list also came about because we have some married friends that eat the same 3 things all the time. (They are really skinny-maybe there is something to that :)) With our list we also rated the foods. Stars are really hard to make a whole bunch of and it is super hard to make just a half star so our rating system is as follows: Mark gets up to 3 orange circles. I get up to 3 green circles. We are also allowed to give 1/2 circles by not coloring in the circle. It was actually interesting to rate these recipes because some of the foods I love to cook and eat (crock pot chicken for example-you know cream cheese, Italian seasoning, cream of chicken soup mix) Mark only gave it 1 1/2 circles and I gave it 3! The meals we both agree on at a 6 star recipe are Teriyaki Salmon Sandwiches (made by me) and Chicken Bacon Ranch Wraps (made by Mark).

A dish that did not even make the book was Mark's stuffed shell pasta. I tried to eat it, but it was so bad. Come to find out the recipe had asked for 1/4 cup of lime juice and Mark made the mistake of putting in 1/4 cup of lime juice concentrate! (It was so sour and sour is not a taste I like!) Needless to say I will be requesting that meal anytime soon.

We have over 35 main dishes on our list and more being added all the time. What's for dinner at your house? We're looking forward to having spaghetti squash spaghetti sometime soon (unless Mark sprayed that plant too :))

Harvest time!

Mark and I decided that we would plant a square foot garden this year. It was quite the endeavour! It took us almost a whole day just to buy the supplies we needed because it seemed that no one store had everything. We had planned on putting the garden boxes together after we bought it but ended up having to do it the next Saturday (which, by the way, turned out to be the coldest day of the month of April. It was windy, rainy, and super cold- which is why I am wearing a headband to keep my ears warm and gloves.)

(Lucy wanted to help too)

Mixing the compost, vermiculite, and peat moss was work. It was made even more difficult in the rain and wind, but we actually had a lot of fun putting our garden box together. We felt quite the sense of accomplishment.

Doesn't it look so nice.?!

(I know, I know, who poses in front of some plain boring dirt? Hey, I have to tell you we were super proud that box of dirt!)

Pure concentration :)

(Do you know how hard it is to count out the right number of tiny seeds in the wind.?!)

We planted:

• 1 Roma tomato (had a difficult time with the late freeze, but is snapping out of it. There are lots of blossoms on it now!)
• 3 regular tomatoes
• 8 pea plants (only had to replant 1 because the birds ate it)
• 2 regular cucumbers and 2 lemon cucumbers
• 2 heads of cabbage-1 per box (replanted them a couple of weeks ago because our not so cute rock chuck was enjoying them more than we got to. And to think I actually thought the rock chuck was cute-until he found my garden. Thanks Mark for making him disappear! Although I think last week I saw his wife. She got some of my lettuce so she is now on my bad list-watch out Mrs. RockChuck!)
• 4 marigold plants (still not growing after replanting 2 times. They were supposed to keep the bugs out. Next year I'll have to plant the actual plant I think).
• 16 green onion plants
• 16 green bean plants-8 per box (not sure if it was the birds or the rock chuck but we replanted all those)
• 16 garlic cloves (Those were funny to watch. Everyday it seemed like a new one was pulled out of the box and dropped a short ways off. I picked it up and replanted it. Next day same thing. I think the birds were trying to eat them but did not like the taste. So those are growing great!)
• 16 onion in one box and 16 onion in the other box. The other day Dad came over and was doing something in the yard when all of the sudden he said "Are those onion?" and headed to our garden. He complimented us on how good they looked (which means a lot coming from Dad) and said that we better be careful because one of these days they might come up missing. Great, now we not only have to worry about the 6 legged animals, the 4 legged animals, and the 2 legged animals, we have to worry about him too!
• 16 carrots (do you know how hard it is to plant carrot seeds in a wind storm? We ended up having to replant 3 of those but later have found carrots growing in a couple of our other boxes-humm. . .:)
• 2 brussel sprout plants. Mark is not sure about these plants. I have never grown them before but like brussel sprouts so am kind of excited to see if they actually grow.
• 1 Jalapeno-for homemade salsa!
• 4 Basil plants-can't wait for chicken pesto. I think I should be able to harvest some in a couple of weeks. I think I am going to have to try a basil butter for fish too. Mom said Costco puts it on their salmon and it is really good.
• 1 cilantro plant
• 18 spinach plants (only 1/2 of them grew, but so far we have had more than enough. I think I am going to have to try to cook with it too, maybe add it to some chicken pasta dish or a casserole.)
• 8 romaine lettuce seeds (once we put the cans around them we didn't have anymore trouble with the best part of the leaf being eaten. Actually those large cans from school lunch have been quite the save for us this year protecting our plants from the wind and animals. Next year we will start out with them earlier and I think we will have better luck.)
• 4 pepper plants-I think one is green, one is red, one is yellow and the other is one of those repeated. (I can't remember which)

I know I know that is awfully boring for you to read, but it nice for us to document everything we were able to get in one 4x8 foot box. We are actually talking about adding another garden box next year. We will see. It is kind of addicting! Another bonus is that so far we have only pulled 4 weeds from our garden-if you can believe it. I actually saw another one this morning but didn't have the heart to pull it yet-it is so tiny :)

We also have several other plants that are embedded into our landscape. Around the tree and rock we have peas (again), oregano, cilantro, a pepper plant, and spaghetti squash. We have a strawberry patch and a raspberry jungle. Around the water fall area we have zucchini, watermelon, summer squash, spaghetti squash, and butternut squash. The zucchini is looking amazing. The summer squash was looking good but um, Mark, do you by any chance know why its leaves are curling up like the weeds leaves next to it? :) He tried to rescue it by washing off the leaves after the spray bounced up on them, but so far it is not looking very promising, but the weeds are looking good. Thanks husband! :)

Yeah, spinach, our first harvest! (It was actually about 2 1/2 weeks ago, but it has taken us awhile to post this.) Since the time of the picture we have eaten a lot of fresh spinach. It is so nice to just go cut off a few pieces to put on your sandwich or wrap at lunchtime or pick some and make a spinach salad for dinner. We also have romaine lettuce growing beautifully. Why does it taste so much better home grown?

How hot is too hot?

June 22, 2010, Blogger Update
Yesterday was the first official day of summer and today we can finally tell it is here. A few months ago I asked Mark when he thought we would have to run the AC full time. I can't remember what he said, but when I said I didn't think we would have to until I was out of school he thought there was no way of that happening.

Well the end of the school year has come and gone and we've still been surviving without using the AC very much. (Definition of very much in that sentence: less than 3 hours a week). I too am surprised! Judging from the picture above, we probably should have used it that day too :). (Actually that isn't the hottest it got in the house, that is just the hottest I captured on camera. One day it was 83, but that was with the AC on!)

Our heating bill in the winter topped out at about $357 one month and then dropped to $68 during a month required no heat or AC. We'll see what happens this summer. (I know you don't think I should post about money things, but hey, I waited until most of you had already seen this post anyways and looking back on it in years to come it will be interesting to see how things changed.)

It may be time to get some new curtains for our living room to keep the afternoon sun from roasting us to death. Any suggestions?

Shh, it's a secret. . .

They say it is the best kept secret in Washington so I hesitate to post about it :).  Only an hour and six minute drive from our house (according to Frieda) is a simply beautiful waterfall-the Palouse Falls.  It is out in the middle of nowhere.  Sagebrush and rock were all we saw until we were literaly at the edge of the waterfall.  

Apparently this has a longer drop than Niagra Falls even.  Rumor has it that a couple of years ago some guy set an unofficial world record for kyacking over the falls, making it the highest waterfall run. 

Here I am at the upper falls



and Mark at the lower falls



Update:  We actually took our Young Women's High Adventure group to the falls and we hiked back around the lower falls and out on top of the waterfall itself.  It was quite frightening in a few places and I wondered why we took the girls out there, but somehow we all made it back in one piece.  Although it was beautiful, I think the hike to the lower falls will be enough for me next time.



Charity 7, Mark 4. . .

. . .but who's counting :).














I apparently am a much better fishermen than Mark is.






Okay, okay to be fair Mark is the one who takes all the fish off the hooks. (I think he would probably be able to catch a lot more if I wasn't constantly yelling "Mark, Mark, I have another one, come help!") And if we were keeping score of how many fish we've cleaned the numbers would be in Mark's favor: Mark 13 Charity 0.

So I guess we make a good team. I catch and cook the fish. Mark cleans the fish and cleans up after dinner too. (I think I have the better jobs :))

We love the convenience of Dad's fishing pond. One Saturday we decided we wanted trout for lunch so we went down to the pond. In less than 1 1/2 hours we had caught 3 fish, cleaned them, cooked them, ate them and had the dishes done too! Now, that's my kind of fishing.








I thought I would spare you the sight of the actual cleaning because it can be a little bloody (but have you ever seen or better yet, touched a fishes lung sack? It is really cool!)

We're always trying to figure out new ways to cook them. So far we've tried several of different ingredients: lemon, lemon pepper, butter, garlic and teriyaki sauce, and have tried grilled on the BBQ and broiled. None of them have tasted anything but fabulous, but my favorite so far is still grilled with a teriyaki garlic marinade. Yumm!

When you coming over fishing? :)

Oasis in the Desert Heat

The Before:

The After:

How it got to looking the way it does now:

Pool boy aka my hard working husband

the not so lucky frog found among other not so alive animals at the bottom of our pool. We won't even tell you that we found frogs, mice, dead birds and too many bugs to count.

Somehow wearing a shower cap made the not-so-plesant job seem just a little more fun. (You should try it sometime. It is true what a difference a tiny piece of plastic can do.) Mark and I lugged bucket after bucket of mucky water out of the bottom of the pool. It didn't look like that much was left after the pool pump got most of it out, but we stopped counting after 25 buckets each!

Extreme Home Makeover-Newlywed Edition

Most people, when they get married typically get their cars decorated, right.!? Well we did too. Although by the time we saw the car it did not look like this it was a melted runny mess. I actually did not know what it looked like until Dawn posted pictures of it on her blog. The kids all told me that Chris was the one responsible for it, but I'm sure he had some help. . . Anyways the windows were so messy that I couldn't see out of them. Mark wanted me to drive but I said I would not until we went through a car wash-good luck-we had to travel over 30 miles to the nearest one. (I think I still have an Oreo cookie down in the crack by my windshield wipers. Maybe it will come in handy one of these days.)

Well, their adventures did not stop with the car. Nope. Not even close. When we arrived home from our honeymoon, it was very late or maybe even early early morning. We were tired and glad to be done traveling, but the house seemed different to me. To start, there was tin foil covering the entryway glass. Weird, I thought. Maybe Dad thought that would be an added safety measure since we were not home for all that time. Upon unlocking the door the strange russelling noise began. "Um, what is that? Mark why don't you go first-what is going on?" Well this is part of what we saw. . .

someone. . .or a bunch of someones. . . completely changed the look of our kitchen to a space age stainless steel kitchen. From our chandelier to our carpet, counter-tops to covered doorways. They covered everything. How could they have known I'd always wanted stainless steel appliances? (Loved that they covered the toaster cord too)

Wow! We wandered through the house surveying the damage. Although the bulk of it was in the kitchen we found cupboards opened with sports balls all over the living room. Our T.V. was going to be a little difficult to watch with all that tinfoil on it. We were tired and determined that we would take care of it in the morning so we just went to bed.

More surprises in bed! We found little rolled up tin foil balls between the fitted sheet and mattress. Our sheets had been short sheeted too! (Mom, I heard that was your idea. . .) Luckily in the morning I also discovered on the night stand were loads of goodies to enjoy. (I heard that Braden wanted us to have something nice so he took it upon himself to gather us up some yummy treats leftover from the reception. Thanks Braden!!)

We woke up ready to conquer the tinfoil and found it was much more elaborate than we had originally thought. We kept finding tin foil everywhere (and still do actually). We opened the cupboard to get a drink and found this

Our silverware was also covered-each piece individually wrapped. (We didn't actually take the tinfoil off the silverware since we thought it would take way too long and besides, we got new stuff for our wedding. We just loaded up the silverware and put it in dad's new work office. Wonder if he's found it yet? :)
Breakfast anyone? Yeah, even the eggs inside the carton inside the refrigerator were covered in tin foil. I can't even imagine how long it took them to do this. It seriously must have taken all day. I mean it took the 2 of us 3 hours to unwrap most of it. We actually took a break in between to sculpt tinfoil clothing for each other. Project Runway, here we come!
Some of my favorite things they wrapped (which still make us laugh even as we write this) are the dishes in the dishwasher (which were dirty, by the way-YUCK! :)), my rock collection with each rock individually wrapped (and I have a lot of heart shaped rocks), the papers on our kitchen counter, the pens in the pen holder-all individually wrapped, the cupboard and drawer handles. I also kept finding little wadded up tin foil balls in everything for weeks to come, in our shoes and my coat pockets. I loved how they even wrapped the toilet paper roll but then re-wrapped it with the paper covering so you couldn't tell until you went to use it. I can't believe the effort and detail they invested in their prank! I don't know who had more fun-them wrapping it and imagining us finding it or us discovering it and having to unwrap it all. But hey, when we were done we had one way cool tin foil ball (and memories to last a lifetime-thanks!)

That's amor

Scandalous! Here start the adventures of married life for Mark and Charity Miller, but the plane
tickets and cruise passes do not reflect this.


For those who do not know, we went on a cruise to the Mexican Rivera for our honeymoon. Okay and we loved it!! We could just end this post at that, but we wanted to post some pictures to remember it and make you all a little bit jealous :).


The ship was amazing! For those of you who have never cruised before it is hard to imagine that all that can be inside a boat. From 3 swimming pools and 5 hot tubs to a mini-golf course overlooking the ocean (I got a hole in one and won the game!) and rock climbing wall. They had an ice skating rink, theater and a promenade filled with shops and restaurants. They had dance clubs and karaoke competitions. And there were so many rooms. We liked ours. It even had a nice window view. The bathroom was very practical (I guess)-you could use the toilet, brush your teeth and shower all at the same time. I guess they figured you wouldn't be spending much time in there.


As for food-we were never hungry and most of the time stuffed. The first couple of days we loved the options and ate as many things as we could fit on a plate (or two or three). Breakfasts and lunches were generally buffet style and dinners were 5 star dining every night. We loved our waiters Achmaad and Ben. Mark was a little more adventurous when it came to ordering new things off the menu: escargot, lamb and watermelon gazpacho are a few things he ordered. (The escargot was amazing by the way!) I stayed safe and ordered salmon, strawberry cheesecake and seafood pasta. We both loved lobster night! Wow, that was yummy. Achmaad even snuck us a third lobster tail to share! By the end we were sick of food and all wanted was normal stuff. Our serving size shrunk considerably and we stopped ordering midnight room service (oh but right now a vegetarian panini sounds amazing. Oh room service. . .)

Our first port of call was Cabo. We tested our skill on the beautiful blue waters of the Pacific Ocean in a two person sea kayak. And, if we must say so ourselves, we were good. Neck-and-neck with our guide the whole way there. We saw whales and sea lions. We snorkeled and saw many tropical fish (until Mark lost his snorkel to the bottom of the ocean-oops). Relaxing on the beach and swimming in the ocean was refreshing. Mazatlan, here we come!




Mazatlan brought on an excursion we can't wait to repeat. We went on a zipline canopy adventure. If the drive up to the first zipline was an indication of the events to come, I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with it. We almost drove off the edge of the ravine (even our driver was a little shaken with how close we got). The first zipline was absolute scary for me and a complete adrenaline rush for Mark. Phew, one down, 8 to go. By the time the third one came around I got it figured out and Mark was already on to flying down the zipline upside down (I thought I was doing good just going right side up). We would definitely do that again sometime. We rappelled down at the end and headed back to the ship. Yipee!













In Puerta Vallarta we decided to relax on the beach and enjoy the the water, that is if the beach vendors would leave us alone for 5 minutes. That got annoying fast! I put my Spanish to good use and used my new husband as my excuse not to have my hair braided or buy and of the jewelry. (I actually thought he wasn't understanding my conversation and that I had used him as my scapegoat but when I finally confessed, he already knew. Busted!)

On the way back to LA I thought it would be fun to go to a towel folding class. (Mark has some amazing turtle towel folding skills-you should ask him about it sometime. He will act modest and try to deny it, but check your nearest you tube for a demonstration soon.) He was a good sport because he really didn't want to go. Mark wanted to go ice skating, but the way back home was very windy and walking was hard enough. I couldn't imagine trying to skate. The water in the pools was splashing out 7 feet out of the pool and by the time we docked in LA the pools were almost empty.

I'm not sure we will ever again have the chance to watch whales out our breakfast window or while we exercised at the health spa, but we sure enjoyed it while it lasted. One morning I think I even saw a shark!

It was hard to leave all that behind and go back to real life. I mean we kind of got used to being together. The longest time we were apart in our first nine days of being married was 20 whole minutes. The only bad thing is that it had to come to an end.