Family Member Spotlight- LOGAN

LOGAN

Logan is 10 years old and in 5th grade. He is a sweet, loving boy with a very tender heart. He wants to make people around him happy and wants to be close and cuddle with Mom and Dad as often as he can. He also has a very sweet love for his Savior.

He loves animals, especially baby animals and, his favorite, cats! 

This kid has an appetite and loves eating sushi, seafood, especially shrimp and crab and nachos! 

Logan loves to play baseball. The moments he gets to spend watching BYU football with his dad are really special to him. He also enjoys Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu and hip hop.

He loves to learn and especially enjoys science. He's a really smart kid and he loves building, inventing and creating things. He just loves learning how things work.

He spends his free time playing games like Minecraft, playing with his Legos and likes engineering-type hobbies. He also loves to try new things and seems to have no fear, whether it's rides, haunted houses, climbing, you name it! One thing that seems to run in the Miller blood is a love for race cars! 




Sitting in Grandpa Jim's race car!








Although he can be pretty shy, he loves making friends with anyone interested. He also really loves spending time with his cousins. He can be a pretty amazing brother, too.

When I had brought up having a 4th child in the past, Logan was not very interested. I don't think he was very thrilled at the idea of having one more little sibling getting into his stuff. He was the one kid I was a little nervous to tell when we felt we were supposed to adopt to complete our family. Something very special happened, though! When we told our kids, Logan was the one that could NOT STOP SMILING! He was so giddy and he kept jumping up and down! It was the cutest thing. He prays every day to find his baby sister and he has said how much he loves her already. 

Family Member Spotlight- JAX

JAX

Jax is 3 years old and has non-stop energy. He likes everything from drawing on the couch with a marker to playing video games with his brother. 

He can be a little bit shy and clingy at times, but if he gets to know you or thinks you're pretty awesome from the get-go, he hates to leave you. He will often tell people he cares about, "I lost you!", or "you lost me!" if they go somewhere and come back. He is especially close to Mommy and loves spending his days with her.

Here he is at the beach, flirting it up

with the cutest girl he could find.

He would spend all day in the backyard digging, running through sprinklers and jumping on the trampoline if we let him. In the winter, it's hard to keep him in because he loves being out in the snow!

Like most little boys, Jax loves dinosaurs, trains, race cars and monster trucks. He loves racing his cars pretty much anywhere- from one side of the tub to the other, around the table, all across the house.

He hates when his siblings leave for school in the morning, but excitedly greets them every day when they come home! Even though he's much younger than his older brother and sister, he will bravely protect them if he feels like they are being treated unfairly. 

In this picture, he saw Roxie coming home from school and ran right into her arms!

Jax loves babies, even baby animals. He will often say things like "Ohh!! So cute! So little!" When he sees a picture of a little baby, he will ask if it's his little sister. He will repeatedly do things to show he's ready to be a "big brother" that he didn't do or like to do before, like help pick up or go right to bed at night. He is so ready to be have his little buddy to love, protect and play with! He's been so excited, he told me he had a something to tell the baby, so I wrote it down for him and took this picture!

Family Member Spotlight- BEN

BEN

While Amber is a shy extrovert, Ben is more of an outgoing introvert. He loves people and loves to connect on a deep emotional level. People who know him well and people who have listened to him speak or teach often refer to him as being extremely authentic and sincere and does his best to be as transparent as possible with his feelings, struggles and fears. Much of his life is dedicated to helping other people realize their potential or overcome their personal struggles. He uses many of the skills he has learned while being an instructor for the Army, a chaplain assistance in the Army and a employee at therapeutic youth facilities to help him to his current full-time job as a marketing and sales director for his family's Custom Home Building Company. Well he is fiercely passionate about caring for people, he can sometimes overwhelm himself and need time to recharge emotionally. 

Ben spent several years trying to come to grips with his self-image and learn how to accept all the silly, odd and unique things about him that make him special. He is a self-proclaimed geek and nerd, but is also passionate about sports and other high testosterone activities. He loves going out to movies or playing online video games with his friends. 

He was born and Salem, Oregon and moved around multiple times before he finally settled down in Utah at the age of 18. While he lived in Washington, Oregon, California and Utah as a child, the majority of his life was spent between Oregon and Utah. 

After graduating high school and joining the Army, then has traveled across the country and across the world. He has served two deployments to Kosovo and Iraq. He has been in the Army since 1998 and considers it one of the most important decisions he ever made. In addition to being in the Army and doing marketing and sales, he also runs a small life coaching practice. He has a Facebook page where he makes videos to help people overcome interpersonal issues and other related topics.









As a husband, he is completely dedicated to his wife, Amber, and does everything he can to help her feel loved and empowered. He loves and embraces everything unique and quirky about her. He would happily leave the world behind and take him and his family to an isolated place and live contently forever.








He does his best to be a good father to his children. Growing up with different step parents and several broken homes has giving him a somewhat difficult but unique perspective. He does the best he can to learn from the mistakes of his parents and tries to connect deeply with his children to help them understand the values that he professes. While he has several important responsibilities, he understands that being a parent is the most far-reaching effect he can have in this life.  Adoption was something he'd always had in mind, but it wasn't until recently that he knew it was more than just something he felt like he should do. He feels like this adoption process is more than just expanding his family and bringing another child into the family. He feels like it is what the Lord needs him and his family to do. Knowing this makes it very easy to put his personal reservations and fears aside and trust in the Lord and want to do all he can to provide for this child and give her the best life possible.

Family Member Spotlight- AMBER

AMBER

We refer to Amber as a shy extrovert, because she struggles with social anxiety but she loves being around people and having fun. It's difficult for her to talk to people she doesn't know well, but she has hard time being quiet around people she loves and can get a little crazy. It can be hard for her to be serious because she loves to laugh and joke around. She would probably be happy to go out and do something exciting every day if she had the opportunity. She loves to go on "adventures" and make all the amazing memories she can.

 She really loves the peace she feels being in nature. She also enjoys meditating all the stress away and feeling more in tune with herself. She dreams of having a meditation/ prayer room when they build a house in the future.

She also LOVES games. It's something she did with her family ever since she was little and enjoys the bonding time, whether it's shooting her husband in Call of Duty, playing Jenga with the kids or Tripoly with her siblings and parents. She also loves hosting game nights with friends and neighbors.

Amber is a very loving, passionate person. This can be a great thing, but it can also cause her to get her feelings hurt easily. She has a lot of empathy and she is fiercely loyal to those she loves and is very protective of people and even animals. She has a strong desire for things to be peaceful. She tries hard to see all sides of the story and calm tense situations, even those she isn't directly involved in. She just wants everyone to be happy. She loves doing things to brighten someone's day.



She loves to research and plan everything from get-togethers, vacations, parties and even things like new schedules and parenting techniques. She's always trying to find a better way to do things, but sometimes her ideas are probably a little bigger than they should be!

(One year, she did about 30 Disney movie nights, complete with themed dinners, to prepare them for their trip to Disneyland. It was a little crazy, but SO fun and special for the kids!)



After she got married, she realized she had a nerdy side she never knew about. After trying to get her husband to sell his comic books for years, she ended up convincing him to go to San Diego Comic Con and meeting Stan Lee. She particularly loves X-Men and has a Han Solo cosplay.



She lived in Los Angeles county during her teen years and is now an avid Dodgers fan.

She loves all things sparkly. Her mom and sister always thought she would grow out of it when she was little but she never did! 😜

She loves Olympic lifting and Crossfit. Almost 2 years ago, she decided to try Muay Thai and fell in love with it. She also enjoys watching UFC fights.


She runs an eBay shop from home, which is great because she gets to set her own hours and can work while her kids play right next to her.

She absolutely loves being an Army wife. When Ben was deployed, they actually reunited stronger than they had ever been!

Amber really loves what being a parent has done for her. She could not wait to grow up and be a mom. She always thought she would have like 10 biological and 4 adopted kids, but soon realized she did not have that kind of energy! She absolutely loves the magic that her children bring into her life and is constantly trying to find more ways to make their childhood feel more magical. She was raised where every holiday was a big deal. She has passed that magic and excitement down to her kids and it's seriously the best thing in her world!

Family Member Spotlight- ROXIE

Roxie

Roxie is 8 years old and is in 3rd grade. She is pretty much the exact opposite of her older brother, Logan, as far as personalities go. She loves to entertain anyone and making people laugh is her favorite. She's the girl that, somehow, the entire school seems to know and it feels like she always has a new best friend.

She has a very strong and often opinionated personality, but will repeatedly put aside her desires to make someone else happy. For example, if we are going out as a family and she wants to get ice cream but both of brothers want to watch a movie, she will say we should go to the movie. She has a hard time being serious. Even when she's scared, hurt or mad, she often handles it with some humor.

She LOVES drawing. She also loves crafts and cooking/ baking. She loves to learn everything. She'll want to take a class or sport and before you know it, she'll be asking to take something else! She loves dates with Mommy or Daddy. She's like a mini teenager- she loves makeup, decorating, shopping, doing her hair and fashion and she can be quite sassy....

Her biggest interest of all, though, is having a little sister to love and take care of. She would do anything to make her dream come true! She loves her brothers, but a part of her heart as always felt she was missing out on what would be the greatest experience she could have as a child.

She is fiercely protective of her little brother, Jax.  She will often hold onto his hand if she feels he could get hurt or lost, even if we tell her he is perfectly safe. She loves reading him stories, helping him go to bed, playing with him, and even tries to teach him everything from letters and numbers to good choices. I know she will be an amazing "little mommy" for her baby sister and they will develop a bond that will last for a lifetime.

Family Spotlight- Grandma Chris

Grandma Chris lives in Oregon where she takes care of her parents. Great-Grandpa is almost 103! We love going to visit Grandma Chris each summer. While we are here, we visit Great-Grandma and Grandpa on their farm, spend a night or two on the Oregon coast where the kids love splashing in the water and building sandcastles and spending the day in the tiny town of Detroit Lake, where Ben's step-brother owns the local diner (Ben's step-dad owed it when they were growing up).

Grandma Chris loves her grandkids. Because Ben is her only child, she absolutely loves spending all the time she can with us and they can be a little spoiled when she comes to visit! She loves doing everything from playing games and taking them on walks to going out to eat, Taco Bell runs and taking them out to movies. She really loves having the chance to have one-on-one time with each child so they all feel special. She'll do pretty much whatever the kids want to do, as long as it's okay with Mom and Dad! She also sends cards and little gifts frequently in the mail so the kids always know she is thinking of them. There's nothing she wouldn't do for her family!

We hope she will be able to move to Utah soon so we get to spend all the time we can with her! 

COMING SOON- Family Spotlight- Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jacci

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON- Family Spotlight- Aunt Melanie, Uncle Trevor and Cousins

Family Spotlight- Aunt Shandi, Uncle Nathan and Cousins

Aunt Shandi and Uncle Nathan live in Southern Utah, a little over 3 hours away from us. We usually get to see them about once a month. As a family, they love everything from playing games at home to camping and hiking. 

They have 5 children ranging from 11- 18 years old- Cole (oldest), Megan, Hunter, Ryder and Ashlin (youngest). Our kids love spending time with their cousins! Cole will gladly give Jax piggyback rides around the house, Hunter and Ryder love playing games with Logan and Megan and Ashlin love sleepovers, baking and crafts with Roxie, as well as taking care of Jax. They were SO excited when we told them we were hoping to adopt! They couldn't stop talking about it and they are so excited to have a little cousin!!

-Cole loves to run and is a great singer. He can be a bit of a nerd, like his aunt and uncle. He will be leaving on a mission for our church within the year and we are going to miss him so much! 

-Hunter is also a great runner and loves playing soccer. He loves to tease but he has a big heart!

-Megan is also in the school choir and is great on the swim team. She can be a little shy but is very caring and loves to do things for her Aunt Amber!

-Ryder is a fantastic football player and enjoys singing as well. He will try really hard to make his cousins happy if they are sad and often end up making tears turn into laughter.

-Ashlin seems to love everything and really loves soccer and basketball. She's a teenager trapped in an 11 year old body that loves texting Aunt Amber and she's not afraid to tell people what she thinks!

-Aunt Shandi is 13 years older than Amber and was like a second mom when they were growing up. Now she's a busy stay-at-home mom and nobody knows how she does it all!

-Uncle Nathan seems to constantly be singing songs wherever he goes and loves watching sports and going fishing. He loves babies and enjoys singing to them and rocking them.

COMING SOON- Family Spotlight- Uncle Matt, Aunt Melissa and Cousins

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON- Family Spotlight- Grandma Sue & Grandpa Gary

Family Spotlight- Uncle Nathan, Aunt Becca and Cousin Reece

Uncle Nathan, Aunt Becca and Reece live in Southern Utah. We usually get to see them about once a month.

Uncle Nathan is 10 years older than Amber. She feels very close to her brother, probably because neither one of them know how to be too serious- ESPECIALLY when they're together. They enjoy sending funny pictures and videos back and forth and love playing games when they're together.

Aunt Becca loves making costumes, especially for Comic Con, where she often helps her brother-in-law run a booth.

Reece is right between Logan and Roxie in age. He is a very sweet kid that loves stuffed animals! He and Logan enjoy a lot of the same things, and love talking about things like YouTuber Dan TDM and playing video games together. Roxie loves doing pretty much whatever with him and loves having sleepovers at their house when we visit!

Family Spotlight- Grandpa Larry and Grandma Deena

We are grandpa Larry (Amber’s dad) and grandma Deena (Amber’s step-mom)!  We have been married for almost 15 years now. In this modern world, it might not surprise you that we met online. Lehi, UT is our home.

 Between the two of us we have 8 children and 22 grandchildren – with 2 more on the way (and one of them is the baby Amber & Ben are hoping to adopt!) Some of our grandchildren were born into our family and others were brought into our family in other ways. 

We are both retired and fill our days with things we love to do. Grandma Deena loves to scrapbook (it is her way of journaling) and grandpa Larry spends time working on his family history. Grandpa Larry also loves to read. We also love to go to plays, concerts, and play games of all kinds with our friends and our family.  Grandma Deena makes homemade chocolates for Christmas and grandpa Larry helps. We make over 2400 chocolates every year!

We both serve faithfully in our church callings and love to help wherever we can. We were ordinance workers in the Mount Timpanogos temple for two years. The gospel of Jesus Christ is very important to us.

Since grandma Deena is from Canada we travel there twice a year to see children and grandchildren and other family members who live there. We also travel to Hurricane, UT to visit children and grandchildren there.

Family often comes to stay at our house. We eat (sometime a lot!), play games, go for walks and visit. Family is very important to us and we love them with all of our hearts.