Wedding Anniversary + Key Lime Pie = Yay!

School is back in session (as I am sure many of you are fully aware of). On the 18 January, Katie and celebrated our 6-month wedding anniversary! It already feels like I have known Katie all my life; it is getting hard to recall what my single life was like. So on the 18th of January, Katie and I both dressed up and baked key lime pie together! It was incredible! Yes, our lime pie looks more like banana cream pie but do not let its yellow hue beguile you: it had an amazingly refreshing lime flavor. So the gorgeous princess in the icy blue gown is Katie dressed up for our anniversary pie baking. The picture of Pac-Man is our pie with a raisin (I just put the raisin there for the photo).

The picture of the couch is our lovely new home accessory, compliment of Katie's parents. As a Christmas gift, they told us to buy ourselves a sofa so we did. R.C. Willey was having a sale for Martin Luther King weekend so we browsed for about an hour or two, sitting on couch after couch, comparing the soft-index of each one, until we decided upon that one: a nice chocolate brown. It is a great sofa to nap on.

The picture of the snow is for those outside of Utah. Isn't snow such a beautiful thing? I admit that it is no fun driving in snow because you have to scrape the ice off of your car and have the air conditioning blowing so you don't fog up your windows but it is lovely nonetheless.

This will, perhaps, reveal some of my nerdom, but I enjoy preparing for the LSAT. I am excited to take a standardized test. There, I said it. To me, it is just fun to challenge your mind in new and innovative ways and to learn and apply knowledge.

Recently, Katie and I have both been reading from the book she gave me for Christmas: "With Love" by Kaitlin Miller. To be more precise, it is an anthology of most of the e-mail Katie and I sent to one another in our history of knowing one another. So it all the way back to 2005 when Katie and I were only good friends our freshman year together at BYU. The anthology then continues our exchange of e-mails through my mission in Chile, into our brief post-mission experience, on into our dating period, and then on into our engagement. We do not e-mail one another quite so frequently now that we are married but we talk everyday. But nowadays, even if the e-mails just simply say "I love you", it is just as sweet.

Post-Christmas Happiness

Merry Christmas, everyone! Yes, that was a few days ago, I know. I can't believe that Austin and I have been married five months! It seems both like we just got married and that we've been together for a long time. We have so much fun together-I love it.

Right now we are in the land of Katy, Texas, where Austin's family lives. They actually lived here for several years, then moved to Oklahoma (at the same time as my family, actually) and moved back to Katy just this summer. We were here for a week right before school starts, and let me say, the temperatures are much better in December. While everyone else is having blizzards, we barely need jackets.

I am having a lot of fun with the Miller family during this holiday break. We have watched a lot of movies together in the media room, played video games and board games, gone shopping, and had lots of fun. Right when we got into town, we went to Cici's Pizza. Austin's family has been eating there for every Saturday for more than ten years; it has a lot of meaning for them. My favorite pizza there is the one the family special orders-alfredo with pepperoni and pineapple. It sounds gross, but it is really really good. It is fun to be included in this family tradition of eating too much pizza and then looking at all the video games there.

After that was my new brother Darrik's birthday. We got him a book on Zombies (brothers are so fun). Can you guess what his other presents were?

Christmas week a lot of the other family members went shopping, though Austin and I had already gotten our presents for everyone so we spent a lot of time at home. With original mario and DDR, anime, no school and lots of yummy food here, I can't say that I minded at all.

One of the Miller family traditions (aside from watching tons of Christmas movies) is filming the opening of Christmas presents that morning, and also watching the highlights of all the previous' years' videos on Christmas eve. It is really funny watching the four miller boys opening presents each year, and watching them grow up. Austin asked what is was like for Christmas morning with girls, and I said it was basically the same but with less bodily function humor and more Barbies.

On Christmas, Santa gave me a sweet new laptop, which I am writing this blog post on. This was way nice as my old computer died at the beginning of last semester, and while I was using an old computer of the Millers, it is nice to actually be able to open documents from my professors (and have a bigger screen for watching Rurouni Kenshin). It was a very fun and enjoyable. Growing up, my family drove around a lot on Christmas (visiting three different families) and even though I loved it and miss my extended family, having a slower pace is rather fun.

For the last few weeks I have been working like crazy to finish Austin's surprise Christmas gift-BYU recently acquired a machine that prints and binds your own books, so I compiled all of mine and Austin's emails, all the way from freshman year until right before we got married. We emailed a lot, so it took a lot of time, but it was worth it. I hope we will enjoy reading it for many years to come.

My birthday is tomorrow, and Austin has some kind of surprise for me. I can't wait to find out what it is!!!

This is me wearing my new flannel shirt from Austin (yes, I really wanted a flannel shirt for Christmas) and my new headband from accessories shopping with my mother-in-law and Rachel. I know they don't exactly go together, but I love them both. Austin is just there to look cute :)

Everyone has trials, but my life is better for this wonderful person that I am married to. I am excited for this new year to share with him!

-Katie

For those of you who have been to BYU, this is Austin's interpretation of the Karl G. Maeser statue :)

Feliz Dia de Halloween

As you can tell, Katie and I carved a pumpkin. It was our activity for Family Home Evening on Monday night. We had forgotten to buy any carving knives but we made it through anyway with kitchen knives. Katie delighted herself in the de-boweling of the pumpkin and scraping its inards. In case you have a hard time reading the pumpkin, it has the letter 'A', the letter 'K', and a little heart. Pumpkin: 9 cents a pound. Carving love messages into a pumpkin: I charge $10 (that's a joke).

On Wednesday night, the 28th, Katie and I went to the Social Dance lab because I am in Social Dance 180 and thus was required to go. And since Katie loves dancing and I would much rather dance with her than any other woman, she came, too. We had such a fun time dancing the waltz, foxtrot, and cha-cha.

Tonight, Friday the 30th, our ward had a Halloween Party. Originally it was going to be a trunk-or-treat: classic LDS family ward tradition so that parents can take their kids trick-or-treating in a safe environment without having to walk very far. So that is like a win-win-win situation, right? Well, unfortunately, Utah weather disagreed with out idea so the ward moved the activity inside since it was too cold (particularly for the children). Katie was a Newsie although she looks like she could be the Newsies' attorney. I am wearing a homemade costume that was made 7 years or so ago by my mother; isn't she amazing? I was Legolas from Lord of the Rings. I have been wearing my cloak to school everyday since Wednesday. I get the ugliest looks, like I were a child rapist or something. Someone actually yelled to me, "Go back to Azkaban, freak." Don't worry, it isn't as bad as it sounds; I know who yelled it, he was just kidding....I hope. Anyway, back to the Halloween party: so as we walked in, I was asked to help with the children games. Little did they (or I) know, I was soon to be labeled as villain and I would also soon have 7 knee-height midget superheroes attacking me, ranging from Wolverine to Spiderman to Indian Jones. Even Ariel the Mermaid had her fair shot at me. I love playing with children. There were several really cute kids in costumes.

Katie and I are both really tired and need to get some sleep. But first, we are going to watch some Cardcaptor Sakura and Rurouni Kenshin. Yay anime ^_^.