Where on earth (or elsewhere) did Katie and Austin go....?

Wow, has it really almost been 7 months since Katie and I last updated our blog? Lamentably, yes. Katie and I have even mentioned several times in the last few months that we should update our blog, but then we just never get around to it. We would always mis-remember who was the last one to update the blog so neither one of us got around to it. So with all the turn-taking aside, I am going to update our blog while Katie is at a ballet showcase with her sister Sarah.

So what eventful events have transpired in the recent 7-month time span? Well, in a bombshell, Katie graduated, I got a job, quit a job, Katie found a job, I started my senior year of school, and then I found another much more enjoyable (and less morally apprehensible) form of employment. Let me expound slightly on these.....

Katie graduated from Brigham Young University in April 2010 with a degree in Marriage, Family, and Human Development. I am proud of her. Education is indeed important for this world and the next.

Mid-May, still finding myself jobless, I was offered a position at American Income. To be honest, I don't even recall applying for the job; I think I was getting desperate and was responding to job postings on Craig's List. I was given the position as Insurance Agent. To make a long, grueling, deceptive story shorter, I will give you the conclusion: I was unhappy there. I gave it my all for 3 months but not only was I not succeeding financially (as promised) I was not happy. The company endorsed selling life insurance to EVERYone, including people without jobs, poor college students, and even seniors who already have several life insurance policies in place! Short line: they wanted money. This is was only one of many problems so I quit. Money is important but it is not worth the stress and the lack of ethical behavior.

However, I am now working as a Research Assistant in the Career and Counseling Center of Brigham Young University; this is a nice, flexible job that I can feel good about. I am helping a professor develop a reading test for college students, seeing as many are ill-prepared for the heavy reading loads.

Katie is now working with iInstructor. It is an online schooling system. Katie performs all sorts of tasks there in the office on the second floor of the University Mall, including writing curriculum, grading papers, creating tutorials, handling live chats to answer questions, and entering transcripts.

That is basically the most exciting events of our summer/fall. That is not to say that we haven't done other fun things in between....for example, yesterday Katie and I went mini-golfing at Trafalga's because they have $3 Thursdays and today we ordered a $5.99 large pizza from Domino's (delicious).

We have curtains now (with the help of Katie's mom). It makes our humble apartment look pretty classy, I have to say.

We have also entertained ourselves with an exercise DVD we received for free (the best price) in the mail from Special K cereal after we sent in 5 UPC's.

Oh, Katie and I won our Halloween costume contest, thanks to the costumes from Katie's mom. If you can't guess, we were Captain James Hook and Tinkerbell. There were about 3 other little kids dressed as Tinkerbell but Katie was still the cutest.

We are extremely anticipatory of the Christmas season. It will be a blast! See you all next time (which hopefully isn't in 7 months...).

Babies and Birthdays

Katie and my life has been held pretty constant at the same degree of awesomeness and fun as it always has. Where to start? This coming Sunday, the 18th of April, marks the nine-month anniversary of our wedding! I can't believe that it has already been 9 months, and yet, at the same time, it seems like we have been together forever (in a good way). It just feels right to be with Katie, like I have known her my whole life (when clearly I have not).

April the 2nd was my birthday; I turned 23. You will notice that my "Red Velvet Cake" is not red nor round. But hey, it still tasted amazing! Alas, I am further embracing adulthood, and Katie likes to remind me that now we are both 23 (she is 3 months older than I am). Growing old is a funny thing. However, I do not fear or mourn the oncoming of old age as many do. I think America needs to revere old age and the accompanying wisdom, as do many other cultures. For example, in China and India, the elderly are well-respected; their wisdom is implemented by all. Not to mention, I can't wait to have star-light hair like President Dieter F. Uchtdorf! He has such healthy, shiny hair. My birthday was a wonderful day. I had to go to an event for one of my classes but I ended up winning a raffle there for a backpack and soccer ball. Then right afterward, my dad called me. I thought I was going to get chewed out for something but he wished me a happy birthday and told me to pick up a $50 gift certificate at Pizza Factory. That place has amazing food! My mom sent me the Kingdom and the Crown trilogy by Gerald Lund, the man who wrote the Work and the Glory series. She also sent me his most recent book, "The Undaunted". It is about a specific group of pioneers; it is terrific thus far. Katie's parents showed me the present they got me over video camera: a new solar-powered watch! It was so nice of them. It is the same kind of watch that my Book of Mormon professor, Brother Whipple, gave me 4 years ago. I no longer have that watch, however, because I gave it to an investigator on my mission in Chile. My older brother Brandon got me a year-long subscription to Netflix and Darrik, my younger brother, got me some Red Vine candy with pixie sticks. Good childhood memories. What you do is pour the Pixie Stick down inside the red vine. It is potent so be warned. My precious wife is all the gift I ever need but she went the extra mile and got me some presents with sentimental value: a Batman kite and a fort! She built a fort in our living room so we could watch General Conference from inside of it. She also bought the materials necessary to make smores, and she rented out some fun children's books from the library. Let it be a testament that a good gift does not have to cost a lot money. In fact, the best presents come from the heart.

(sorry if this is long and boring. Your patience will pay off).

To complement my birthday in making my feel older, my older brother, Brandon, and his wife, Rachel, just had a healthy baby boy: Chase Michael Miller. I am now an uncle. Being a parent someday is daunting and yet exciting. It would have been totally fun to have a child today when Katie and I went to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. We both love animals so it was a blast. If you haven't noticed by now, Katie got a new hair style. Her hair is now much shorter that it used to be. Katie and I have noticed that married women tend to have short hair styles where single ladies tend to have long hair. Is it because single ladies want long hair to style for their wedding and then chop it off so babies cannot pull on it? Perhaps...(f.y.i., the Giraffe says 'hi', Amy. Thanks for directing us to the zoo!) Aren't the ducklings so adorable? We also purchased a cute stuffed owl, which we named Sophie, for Katie and a Butterfly which I named Bri.

Katie is graduating this next week! We are all pretty excited for her. I used to bewail that Katie and I would have much less time to spend together once we both find some summer jobs and are employed full-time. However, Katie wittily replied that perhaps we would be spending much more time together than originally anticipated: neither one of us have jobs yet so we can both go job hunting together! Yay for quality couple bonding.

Well, the time for me to stop speaking is over. Until next time kiddos!

Yummy Treats, Homework, and Dancing

Happy March, everyone! We keep forgetting to add to our blog, because we are so busy, but we know there's at least one person (possibly) who is interested in what we've been doing, so here I am. A few weeks ago was our first Valentine's Day together as a married couple, so I was quite excited. Our ward (where we go to church) decided to have a catered dinner and a dance the day before, so we decided to go. They did the seating arrangements by what month people were married in. As we are all busy students, most of the couples were married in december or the summer months.

That first picture is at our apartment. I didn't realize that Austin was taking a picture of me. I'm happier looking in some of the other couple pictures of us, but this is the only one where you can see my V-day gift to Austin-a tie to match my dress, of course!

This was my gift:

Isn't it beautiful? I have a sweet husband.

My favorite part of valentine's Day? THE CUPCAKES!

Think of it: chocolate souffle cupcakes with a white chocolate cream on top. It is absolutely heavenly, particularly fresh out of the oven. We took heart-shaped cookies to the kids in our primary class, but we kept these ourselves.

I'm not going to say how many of them I ate myself. For the recipe, check out http://smittenkitchen.com/

So, basically, we spend most of our time making yummy desserts and studying for classes (I'm in my last semester at BYU, and Austin's studying for the LSAT) so we're busy but we love life. We tend to act like silly little kids in our free time, but we love it. It is so fun spending most of your time with someone that you get along so well with (most of the time). I hope you all are doing great!

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.