Awesome story, and congratulations!

I too use miles mostly for others, though I am saving up for a trip to Aus/NZ with my wife.

Most recently we used miles to send her parents to Alaska (and back), and to help lessen the blow of flights to California for a girls trip she's going on.

The latter is something we've done a couple times. Basically her group splits the cost of all airfare since they're coming from all different places, and we'll offer to use miles for the most expensive ticket to lower the cash cost for everyone.

I've used miles to upgrade segments when flying with friends too...actually I'll do that every time if we're in the right fare class and there's inventory. Same with using hotel points to put us into a nicer suite or something if it's possible.

I actually can't think of a time I've used miles on myself other than a couple PWM upgrades on DL where it was like 12k miles to get lay flats on a cross country flight. ^

Miles are definitely there to be spent, IMO. It's not like they'll gain value ever...