Sunday, October 2, 2011

What you get from living in paradise!

You learn to walk and also to walk on water




You get to meet John Denver and hear him sing while he is accompanied by an angel.



You get to experience flowers in their true beauty. (Both by smelling and by seeing)




You get to see the real ring of fire.

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You get the ride of your life.



There is pure oxygen.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

A birthday message for Grandma Miller from the MNM Miller-ites

A birthday card from Taden Lilly Thomas, and the new one.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!


A birthday message from Mike and Maranda.


Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!


What our kids remember about you and a birthday cake to remember. (Where you don't have to blow out the candles!)

Monday, August 8, 2011

Fun times with Grandma and Grandpa

Our kids at first kept saying they wanted to go home. But home soon became Grandma and Grandpa's house. What helped persuade them was the various activities that Grandma had the kids do. Most of which had to deal with sugar, chocolate, or bribery.

First a painting lesson. Grandma bought Lilly nail polish and Lilly was easily persuaded to make her look beautiful. She will let anyone know who lends a listening ear that she is beautiful and that, "I love me!"






Taden felt quite left out but he knew that nail polish was for girls but he made the exception that "pink is pretty but blue is for boys."





Next Grandma incentivised bath time and bought a pool. Here are a few examples.









One of the niceties of living in paradise is that you live close to beaches. And another nice thing about paradise is that those beaches aren't full of tourists. Here is a video and some pictures of our grand experience complete with some views of paradise.


















Sunday, August 7, 2011

A 51.5 hour move

In preparation for moving to paradise we had to condense to a 6 x 12 Uhaul. This meant much use of Matt Scott's dumpster at Big O Tires and thrift store runs. My dad bought a flatbed 4 x 8 trailor around the same time that worked perfectly to haul our stuff away We had a tornado hit our town the night before we moved. A couple blocks from our house was hit as demonstrated below. Our house, our trees, and our 6 x 12 Uhaul all remained in place. A sign that it was okay to move I believe.









It turned out to be the longest road trip I have ever taken. Our kids behaved very well. It turned out to take around 51.5 hours driving. My dad helped get us to Utah and then Maranda drove most of the way to Washington.

This is what our Uhaul looked like when we unpacked it. We were greeted by stuffed animals.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

A boy turns one and a science center with little girl next to a big ear, astronauts, and a little boy chipmunk

On April 14, Thomas turned one and my dad turned one for the 63rd time. Maranda found an idea to create a birthday cake that looks like the one year old on their birthday. Here is her version of Thomas.









A tradition that Mike's family has is to allow the one year old access to the cake on the ground. Taden just daintily picked at the icing, but Thomas devoured almost the whole piece in around 5 minutes.



We departed Indiana on Thursday the 26th. 51.5 hours in the van we made it to the beautiful state of Washington on Tuesday the 31st. We spent a couple of days with Mike's sister. On Saturday we went up to Portland to visit with Natasha, Grandpa Dave and Ben and we went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.) Here are some of my favorite snapshots.








One of the highlights was being able to become astronauts. Everyone shows off their own unique personalities. Taden refused to stick his face in it. Grandpa Dave told him to stick his face in so that he cold kiss him. Taden just sticks his head in. (That's the first picture.)













They had a dress up costume in a play zone for Thomas. Here are some of our favorite shots of our cute little chipmunk.





Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A messy child, an adopted Pointer and some amazing cakes and pillowcase dresses.

We feed Thomas baby food and in the afternoon I came and saw the following scene.



Lilly decided that she would help feed Thomas. Thomas didn't mind at all.

Last Wednesday we tried to go find an adopted dog for our family to bond with. We didn't realize how sick Taden was and decided to take him anyway. I have never seen Taden so uninterested. He didn't want to look at the dogs and didn't care about being there. At midnight Maranda took him to the ER and he was severely dehydrated and spent the next 3 days in the hospital with Rota Virus. He is now complely better and on Saturday he said, "Daddy I want a puppy." We went back to Evansville and found Katie a pointer, springer spaniel mix. She is about 3 years old and is learning commands very well.







Maranda has found that she has a very creative knack for creating dresses and cakes. 



She made a cake for Groundhog's day and it even had a Groundhog that moved up and down.





Each year the Relief Society (The women's organization of our church) has a birthday celebration. Maranda made a cake that matches one of their symbols.




Here are pillowcase dresses she has made for Lillyana.