The rest of the time...

Other than the trip downtown and a few other activities out, we spent some time around the house just hanging out.  Here are just a few pictures of how we spent our early holiday together…

Mason spent countless hours making knitted hats for everyone, all of which turned out pretty cool.  Unfortunately, they apparently don't come in a size big enough to fit my giant head, so I missed out.

Went down to the playground to let the kids get some of their energy out.  Here we see Miller #4, aka Rowan Matthew Miller.

And his big brother, the one they call Mo... Morgan Shane Miller.

And this slightly crazy swing rider, Jasmine Isabella "Izzy" Sellers.

Of course, who could forget the oldest Miller boy, ready to take somebody out in a ball tag death match!

Jasmine was Queen of the Surge Hill, a dirty fighter, but more often than not the victorious one in our king of the mountain game.

But she had stiff competition, as you can see with the fierce determination on Rowan's face during his blood thirsty assault!

The crew, battered and beaten, but still standing... victory on the mountain!

It was fantastic that Granny Steele made the trip.

And of course, this elderly fellow came along as well.

Miller #5 once again looking for trouble, and all too often finding it in the form of staircases.

Josie Marie and some wonderful green bean casserole... gotta love the holiday food selection.

The Lord of the Manor immediately put his servants to work on his basement... no rest for you Missourians.

Though I can't imagine why Shane would want to work on the quiet, peaceful basement while a hundred small children were upstairs screaming, running, and otherwise doing anything that causes noise.

Wyatt took a break from the X-Box for a moment to harass Grandma Steele.

Grandma Cindy and Liam in the Christmas spirit.

So in all, we're very fortunate for as far apart as we've lived these past few years that we've been able to all get together from time to time.  It happened twice in 2011, and we hope it's not too long into 2012 before we can do it again.  So here's wishing everyone a happy holiday season, and we go on... into a new year...

Beehives and Temples

After the planetarium we took a walk down a few blocks to Temple Square and to the Beehive House (the home of Brigham Young, for all of you non-Mormons out there… including us, I guess).  I saw it in a painting at a local gift shop and thought the house looked pretty cool, so I wanted to check it out.  The tour was free, so you can’t turn that down, and the house was pretty impressive.  The tour guides, however, were amazed that my sister and her hoard of children were not members, so they quickly went to work trying to save their heathen souls.  I don’t think it worked though, so I guess all is lost for those Missouri Non-Mormon Millers.  Oh well, maybe they’ll get them the next time they visit Salt Lake.

Paul James making the trek from the planetarium to the temple on a cold December day.  Good thing he bundled up.

Stop for a photo-op with Grandma and Grandpa, Adam, and the two oldest Miller kids.

The true Elder Sellers outside of the Beehive House.

Amber and two of her many nephews making up the back of the pack.

This one I think they just call Miller #5, though I have heard of him being referred to as Liam Joshua.

 A traditional Fundamentalist Mormon family...

HRH Prince Mason, the Duke of Herriman, the Earl of Wasatch, the Baron Snitzey, the eldest Sellers grandson, heir to the throne and second in line of succession to... well, probably not much...

Mase, Mo, and Paulie J all in red and trying not to freeze to death in Temple Square.

So just an educational and chilling trip downtown to see a few sites, and yet another fun time while everyone was here.

To the Stars... and the Planets!

The entire Sellers/Miller families were here in the Salt Lake Valley last week for an early edition of the holidays, so naturally we took a few photos worthy of a blog post.  All in all, my side of the family now consists of nine children, and including Great-Grandma Steele, there were eighteen people staying in Josh’s house here in Herriman… so it was slightly chaotic at times, but definitely fun.  Of course, there was plenty X-Box playing with all the boys, but we also made it to downtown Salt Lake and to a few sites.  We took a little trip to the Clark Planetarium and watched an “interesting” Japanese anime-like movie in the dome theatre about the constellations.  The dome was cool, and we all destroyed a couple of buckets of popcorn and gave the cleaning lady some job security.

Jasmine learned about the power of electricity.  Now if only she could learn to harness that power... the world would be hers!  

Moon Landing 2011... it looks like Adam would rather keep his feet on the Earth, right next to his mom.

Liam rolled around on the planet Mars for a few minutes... looking for Martians I guess.

Mason and Jasmine learned all about the planet Earth... ok, probably not really, but they did see this giant globe, which was cool.

Gotta stop for a moment and share a really large Pepsi.  Helps wash down the bucket-loads of popcorn.

And that's almost everybody, excluding me, who was taking the photo.  Had a good time, gotta love space exploration and moon-walking.

Those were the places...

So it’s winter time in Utah, but it really hasn’t always felt like it.  It’s been pretty mild so far, with some sunny afternoons and very little snow.  I imagine January is going to be rough,with as nice as it’s been so far.  But when I have a day off or two, we’ve been trying to get out and see some of this massive state.  There are a lot of national parks within a days drive, but those will have to wait, though I do want to see them all.  In the meantime we’ll have to just check out some of the more local sites.  So we took a little trip down to this place called Thanksgiving Point one day, and we went up to “This is The Place” at Heritage Park a week or two ago.  

Thanksgiving Point has a resort like feel, an interesting market/shop, a dinosaur museum, and a dairy farm.  We went to check out the advertised reindeer.  It is almost Christmas you know.

Adam was impressed.  He’s a big fan of animals. Regardless of whether they actually fly or not.

“This is The Place” was the place where the first Mormon settlers came into the valley and decided that… well, this was the place they were going to stay.  We didn’t pay the entrance fee to the real part of the park (a replica town of an early Utah settlement), but we did check out the monuments and statues.  Including a replica Pony Express Depot.  Paul was terrified apparently.

 

So just a few quick stops, nothing too exciting.  Maybe slightly more exciting than a tall smoke stack, but who’s keeping track really?  Anyway, we’ll have more I’m sure… since Amber said I’ll pretty much go see anything.  Yeah, she’s probably right.  If it’s on Wikipedia, it must be worth a drive to see…  

Tall Stacks and Salty Lakes

We are now the Traveling Sellers... I guess.  From Florida to Maryland, now to Utah and a lot of places in between, the general purpose of this blog has been to share our adventures with family and friends who weren’t there at the time, and we’ve had a lot of exciting travels here and there!  Well, “exciting” is used liberally, but if you enjoy pictures of cannons and random parks, then this has definitely been at least an interesting blog to read.  Hopefully.  So here we go again… this time we took a little drive up to Magna, UT to see a couple of things.  Now Magna is a little rural area to the west of Salt Lake on I-80, and if you ask Becky… it’s her future home.  Ok, not so much, she wasn’t too impressed.  But it lies on the southern border of the Great Salt Lake (which we’d never seen from the ground), and it was home to – and this is the exciting part – the 33^rd tallest free-standing man-made structure in the world!!  And that is why I had to go check it out.  Seriously.  The Kennecott mine dominates the Oquirrh Mountains, pulling copper and other precious metals from the ground, and they built this smokestack 1,200 feet tall (more than twice the height of the Washington Monument) to spew chemicals up into the air and out of the valley.  Impressive, but it didn’t actually look that tall.  

Of course, Paul wanted his picture by the smokestack.  It's basically a cannon pointed directly up, so it only made sense.  If only we could get him to sit on it somehow...

 The Great Salt Lake was bitter, bitter cold on this day, but it was pretty impressive, and somewhat intimidating with the waves and gusts of wind.  It's the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere they say, but at its deepest it's only 33 feet deep.  Pretty cool to see.

But we didn't stay long, the arctic winds drove us away as we ran for the cover of the car.  We'll have to go back on a warmer day, I'm sure.  But we did get to see the smokestack, and that of course was a journey only we would take… I think… I hope.  Maybe not exciting, probably not even interesting, but that’s what you get on this blog.  Ha!