hello we are the millers

A Few Holidays…

Meghan — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 03:06:48 +0000

First off, about Halloween. Sorry I’m behind on that- time goes so quick! We had our second annual Halloween party here and we did have quite a precedent that we set for ourselves last year. Didn’t do quite as much this year, but still had several spooky treats!

: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Lil' Mummies

Shrunken Head Cider (my favorite!)

Mark as the world-famous Jungle Boat Skipper

Prince William and Princess Kate (with Steph as the little girl)

and of course- the owl candle returns!

And on a more recent note, we also hosted family thanksgiving again this year. Meghan’s parents traveled to Chicago to celebrate with her brother and sister-in-law so we hosted just the Miller parents this year. No less food however. All was good and left us full until the next day. Luckily, we ran off some of the calories preemptively with a 4.5-mile race in the morning called the Drumstick Dash. It was a very crowded race, but made us feel better about our turkey indulgence.

jeff and meg after drumstick dashing

ran like a champ!

on to turkey time!

the Miller gang

Now on to Christmas! Got the decorations up today, so we are ready!

Concerts!

Meghan — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:31:25 +0000

The last couple weeks have been a cultural re-awakening for us. We have been waiting for these concerts for months and then they both came within a week of each other! Both were at the Egyptian Room at the Murat, which is a venue where you stand the whole time- reason #1 we are getting too old for that place.

Last Wednesday, we saw John Mark McMillan, Chris August, Gungor and David Crowder Band. As you can imagine, this was a long concert (remember that part about standing?)! Unfortunately John Mark and Gungor did not play as long since they were openers, but Gungor gave an amazing teaser performance to go see them again when they come back in the Spring. This was David Crowder Band’s last tour, so that was cool to see before they finish up.

Us enjoying the concert

hanging with Michael Gungor!

quality photography in the Egyptian Room (that's Gungor)

makes for some artistic shots (thanks Jeff!)

The following week we were back at the same venue to see The Civil Wars! This show was amazing- they are so incredibly talented! We even got voted best crowd of the year by both Joy and John Paul! Bonus! (Unfortunately, I think that was partly because of the beer spilling drunk people next to us who were yelling that they loved them or wanted to marry them, or something more explicit, or just plain yelling about every minute.)

hunkered down for the show (in pretty much the same place)

the amazing duo!

More summer fun

Meghan — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 02:06:42 +0000

Wish I was on top of it enough to post each of these things individually, but I will never get caught up that way, so I’m just going to try to get to our Montana trip in August and then get that posted and I’ll be much closer!

Family Medicine Residency Graduation was in June and we had to say goodbye to all the 3rd years. Which is kind of weird to say because now I’m a 3rd year.

with all of my Team 2 nurses!

Back on July 4th, we went back to Lion’s Park where Meghan grew up watching fireworks with Jordan, Abi, and Mark. After cookout and games at the Olsen’s.

the soon-to-be-wed Abi and Jordan

In August, we went on a hot air balloon ride. It was actually Jeff’s anniversary gift, but the weather had not cooperated for awhile. We had a perfect night!

Up we go!

lots of beautiful scenes!

We saw a couple movies at the IMA this summer as well!

Jess is the picnic cupcake queen!

I’m actually going to go past Montana a little bit here… In September we went to a place called Wasatch Lake in western IN for the resident retreat. We stayed in cabins, played lots of games, canoed, ate lots of food, had a bonfire, and watched football. Super fun.

in our cozy cabin

a s'more with the biggest marshmallow i've ever seen!

The following weekend was one of Meghan’s fellow resident’s wedding! JW and Marissa got married at St. Joan of Arc and had the reception at the IMA. Gorgeous all around.

Now fall is here, so I’ll have to get to blogging on all the fall activities!

Summer Fun

Meghan — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:18:12 +0000

All these posts to get caught up to Memorial Day! This year we hosted Memorial Day at our house for our friends and were actually able to cook out in the backyard instead of the garage like last time. Hamburgers, lawn games, and first fire pit blaze with s’mores. Good times.

We have had a couple other fire pit s’mores nights as well. We also have been inviting our friends over on several of the friday nights this year for Game Nights. We started the tradition back in Gabon and felt like we didn’t really have a reason not to continue with our friends here. Can’t do it every week, but it’s nice to have something we can fall back on.

: Jeremy and his oatmeal creme pie s’more

: our board game box pose

The Wedding

Meghan — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:28:20 +0000

On May 21, Meghan’s brother got married in Asheville, NC at the Biltmore Estate. The day was beautiful and the bride and groom had a great time! We got some photos in front of the house and gardens and then went over to Deer Park, the restaurant where the ceremony and reception were held. Definitely different to go to Biltmore dressed to the nines rather than the shorts and sneakers from last time Meghan and her mom went. Everyone loves to see a wedding party, especially there.

from the rehearsal dinner night- held at the Champagne Cellar at the Winery

Wedding party in front of the house

the wedding digs

Sean & Stephanie & crew

Meg & parents

Meg with Aunt Sue & Aunt Dorothy- the "fun aunts"

Many more pics posted on Flick’r.

Blue Ridge in May

Meghan — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:34:17 +0000

…continued journeys in May. After our day in DC, we headed south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is one of our favorite trips, but Meghan had never been the length of it, so here was our chance. It starts/ends at the Southern end of Shenandoah and goes to the Smoky Mountains in TN. We hopped on after a night at the first Bed & Breakfast (a nice bed, a great breakfast!).

Day 4 started with another great breakfast at the Lazy Bear Lodge near Boone, NC. This place was great- we only wish we had had more time there! The owner was fun and she posed us in all these different positions in the “lodge.”

one such pose

jeff "got" to hand feed the fish

trip to the top of Grandfather Mountain

At the end of Day 4, we were in Asheville, almost ready to transition to wedding activities!

A link to all the Blue Ridge pictures on facebook is here.

(I forgot to give the link for the DC pictures- you can find them here.)

May

Meghan — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 02:01:59 +0000

May was busy. Or at least one week of it was busy. Meghan’s brother got married on May 21 in Asheville, NC so we took the week beforehand to drive through Virginia down through North Carolina on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We also ended up taking a detour through Washington, DC to avoid bad weather on one of our “hiking” days. It was awesome and unfortunately already seems like a long time ago!

The first day was spent mostly driving, getting to Winchester, VA. We went to the cute little downtown area, so that was kind of fun!

The next day was supposed to be a trip through Shenandoah Valley but the forecast was for heavy storms so we detoured over to Washington, DC instead. We figured we could just hit up all the museums if it rained. It actually turned out to be a pretty nice day in DC, but apparently still rainy in Shenandoah, so good move! Jeff took some great shots!

OK, my computer and my brain are moving too slow right now so we need to reboot. More on the May trip to come!

hello we are still the millers

Meghan — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 03:08:54 +0000

It has been embarrassingly long since we blogged. Probably many of you think we stopped doing this blog. I will make an attempt to catch up what we’ve been up to the last 6 months in the next several posts. Sorry for the Miller overload.

Taking it back. January I think. Doctor Prom (or the Physician’s Ball or something like that). This is always a fun opportunity to get dressed up and this year’s theme was the Beatles. At the Indiana Roof Ballroom for those of you from around here.

In April for Jeff’s birthday we drove down to Mammoth Cave for the day and then came back through Louisville to visit with Jordan and Abi the next day.

Around that same time came Easter and we hosted the Kellys and Millers at our house. We also got maybe the best pic of all of us ever!

That should get us to May, when things started to pick up, so I will have to post more later!

North Dakota Christmas

Meghan — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:20:45 +0000

So I basically blogged about this already in the top ten, but the video is finally up, so I wanted to share that. It’s been done for awhile, but we’ve had more difficulties getting it uploaded this time, and for some reason we can’t get the video to embed here (apparently wordpress and vimeo aren’t friends). You’ll have to follow a link. You’ll get over it.

The Christmas Video link.

2010 Top Ten

Meghan — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:47:36 +0000

So, we never got a Christmas letter out this year. A blog post will have to suffice, although many things have been blogged already- if that is the case, the title will be a link to the original post. Our ten best pieces of life from 2010. In order.

10. Jeff’s 28th Birthday. Maybe Jeff should write about this one but o well. Jeff’s birthday this year we partied it up 12 year-old style. We had a pizza party with cupcakes at our favorite joint, Chicago’s Pizza. After pizza, we went bowling then came back and played some games.

9. The Crate. Back in October, we spent 24 hours living and networking in a big green box called the Crate. It was a fundraiser for FAME, Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism, and by the end we had made our goal! It was surely a different way to raise money but thanks again to all who supported us and FAME!

8. Jeff’s Man Trip to the Appalachian Trail. Back in June, Jeff and 3 other guys (along with some non-hiking females) took a trip down to Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains for a two day hike on the AT. I wasn’t able to go because of work but that let Jeff marinate in some testosterone for awhile. He also had been reading some books fostering his manhood so this was a culmination of sorts.

7. End of my Intern Year. June 30 was my last day as an Intern ever! July 1 was no walk in the park, however, as I was on the most difficult rotation of second year (PGY-2 we call it– post-graduate year 2). At least that one is also over now, as well as the second most difficult month. It has been a transition from doing a lot of busy work and having a fair amount of responsibility to doing more shadowing on rotations like surgery and ortho. But I also have more weekends off, which is nice. I would think I would have more holidays off (me working St. Patrick’s Day above), but I have worked July 4th, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve so far this year… With the exception of my month of nights, I have been able to see Jeff more so its a win-win for us both! Or maybe even a win-win-win!

6. Halloween Party. I blogged about this recently, but as much work as hosting a party is I do enjoy it. Everyone was a good sport and found some sort of costume and even participated in the walk-off competition. I enjoyed making fun cupcakes and other fall-themed treats. We’ll see if it becomes an annual tradition for us as our party has been rotating around for the last several years.

5. Life group. I believe we talked about this last year, but we have continued to lead a group of 8 every Wednesday night for Bible study. Steph, Jill, and Arin above are in our group (unfortunately, Mark is not). Laura, Adrienne, and Jenn are also in our group. Yes, that is 7 girls and one Jeff. He is being a trooper but having more guys would be one thing we would maybe like to see in the future. We are excited about our upcoming study of the book Radical by David Platt- I’ll keep you posted over at One Book One Month!

4. North Dakota Family Christmas. The most recent of our top ten. We do have a flickr page with our photos posted now. We left at midnight on Dec 22 and drove to Grove City, MN an hour west of Minneapolis to visit with Jeff’s dad’s brother’s family. The next day we moved on to Grand Forks, ND where Jeff’s mom’s sister lives and hosts the family Christmas. Christmas Eve we went to church, had a music program, and opened presents from our gift exchange. Christmas Day we stayed at the hotel with good breakfast and hot tubbing then went cross country skiing in the afternoon, followed by a fabulous turkey dinner. Sunday we had another good breakfast, some poetry time and played lots of games. We headed back starting Dec. 27 and took 2 days to drive back home to IN. Successful family time!

3. Panama. You would think our one international trip of the year (unless you count Cozumel for a day… no) would come in at #1, but it was a quick trip and largely work-related for me. The fact that Jeff was able to come with made it way better though. There are several blog posts about this trip already so I won’t re-hash the trip, but it was a breath of fresh air for us both.

2. Tucson. I think we had a tough choice between our top two. We really enjoyed all the hiking we were able to do and scenery completely different than what we see at home. Our favorite were the Chiricahua Mountains pictured above. We also loved the Bed & Breakfast we stayed at and the little get-away feel the trip had.

1. The Cruise! It’s tough to beat 6 days and 5 nights of sun, good food, and water activities! Our first cruise and probably not our last. I think we agree that our fav part of the trip was our bike trip around Key West with crazy Lloyd. And the food… although our waistlines could’ve done without the unlimited dining options.

Well, that wraps it up. A really great year overall. May 2011 bring as many joys and surprises!