Millards In The Mountains

Today's Topic: Reasons Why I Am Loving My New Job 1. I enjoy the projects, am doing a good job on them (I think) and I can TALK about my work now! 2. These are small projects, so I get them done and feel a great sense of accomplishment. 3. I work in a brand new mirrored glass building and it is awesome. (Except I can't get in sometimes since I don't have a key yet.) 4. The breakfast burrito man comes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I have never had one, I just think it's cool. 5. We had an ice cream social hosted by the building on my THIRD DAY at work. 6. People are starting to get to know me and talk or at least smile a little more and I am getting more comfortable with them as well. 7. There is a lady that offers "chair massages" (for a price) at least once a month to the employees of the tenants in the building. 8. The drive takes a little longer, but I get to see the mountains almost every morning and evening during this time so I don't mind. (Some days...

Blogger didn't want to upload the few pictures I took of our gathering this weekend, so I'm going to write a short post. Everything went so well and it was fun to have everyone together and show off our house. Matt cooked some wonderful "burly man" chicken burgers and homemade spicy cole slaw. We're still eating them for leftovers. All I had to do was cut some vegetables and make a couple pasta salads. Oh, and go shopping at Wal-Mart with the entire rest of the population of Denver. It was CRAZY! I had a whole cart full of stuff and couldn't navigate around the store at all! My dad came over for dinner on Sunday evening which was really nice but didn't seem long enough. I totally took it for granted how close and easy it was to see my family before. But it was still fun to have him over and our furnace got a passing grade. (He always checks to make sure everything is in good condition, which makes me feel much better.) In our last house, our basement heate...

Let me first say that Laura has done a great job, but I thought it might be nice to throw in some of what I think and what is going on with me. First of all, I started work on Tuesday. I will eventually be an evening pharmacist (2-1030pm) working in two different areas at the Children's Hospital in Denver (even though it's actually in Aurora). The first area will be general medicine as well as hematology and oncology. I must say I am very excited about this. The second area that I will be working in is surgery. I am excited about this too, but not as much. I am also excited because I thought I was going to be working every 3 weekends, but I found out that it is every 4! Tuesday was the hospital wide orientation day that was extremely boring. I was glad that I got paid well for it cause it was painful. Then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I started training and learning the processes and systems that they have. I must say that I am impressed with some of the systems that...

Tonight we are having people over for our official "house warming." I put it in quotes because it's a rented house so it's not one of those parties where people bring wine and gifts and things like that. We haven't had anyone over to the house yet because it has been a mess with all of the unpacking and boxes. Today we are finishing up with the unpacking and getting things organized. My last major project will be my desk, which I have not had time to do. To my knowledge, we didn't lose any boxes or furniture in the move, which is amazing since the truck was packed full with at least four different households' things. They had to re-arrange some of our stuff to get the last load to fit so I was nervous. We did even end up with a Dish reciever of someone else's, which we are not sure what to do with. When I get a moment, I will probably try to call the moving company, but since we spent most of my cell phone minutes last month arguing with them, I'm ...

So I know it's been a couple days since I updated this, for which I apologize. Not a whole lot new is happening with us. I've tried to get Matt to write about his thoughts on his new job, but I don't really think blogging is his thing. I'm sure many of the Millards have already heard much about his job by phone. I honestly don't really know much about what he thinks so far, but I think that's because he's just training for a couple weeks. So far, the general comments have been positive though. The one thing I do want to comment on is how I wished for thunderstorms on Facebook and the past three afternoons have been dark and rainy, just as I like! However, the downsides are: 1. They don't last very long. 2. I can't see them from my windowless cube. 3. They are always overhead when I leave work so I get good and soaked on my small trek to my car. Oh well. I'm still glad to have them, regardless so I shouldn't complain. Luckily, they have dumped...

Matt and I headed out tonight for what seemed like a normal twilight walk with Pongo. Our neighborhood is quiet and it's really nice and cool in the evenings. We encountered our first obstacle near the beginning of our walk. Sprinklers! They lined the sidewalks and we got drenched running through them! Our other option was to walk in the street which is pretty busy and people here drive crazy! It was fun and even a little romantic to run through the sprinklers. But when we turned off of the busy street to a quieter one, things got really interesting. Some high school kids who were "cruising" the neighborhood must have taken an interest in us. Something wet spattered out onto the street. It scared me, but we just kept walking. I thought maybe they accidentally dropped their drink out the window. WRONG! On their next pass, they proceeded to hit my feet with a water balloon. This really made me mad. I yelled. Luckily, I had on rubber Croc-like shoes because they dry fast. I...

I couldn't resist posting these. Pongo was being so photogenic tonight and I'm sure some of you would like to see him in all his cuteness. You can see here who controls what's on TV in our house. We did not stage this picture! I promise. Pongo is showing off his new bed. For some reason, he has been spending a lot of time in his other bed, so we bought him one for the living room and put the other one in our bedroom like he's used to. This one matches our living room furniture and Pongo has taken to it as well as his other bed. Maybe he feels safe or maybe he knows we'll leave him alone and let him sleep in there because he knows we love it when he lays in his beds.

My cousin Jaime tagged me in this survey...I think. I'm doing it anyway. Check out her answers too! (And all the CUTE pictures of her daughter) http://jaimeschechter.blogspot.com/ 1. Where is your cell phone? on the phone table on vibrate. (Sorry if you call and I don't hear!). 2. Your significant other? Cooking us dinner on his last night of not working. He's so good to me. 4. Your mother? Probably cheering on my brother at the Riley County fair. 5. Your father? Business travel in Ft. Worth, TX 6. Your favorite thing? Thunderstorms 7. Your dream last night? I don't remember, but I've been having really bad dreams lately, so maybe I don't want to remember. 8 Your favorite drink? Dannon Light and Fit Peach Yogurt Smoothies (a good breakfast on the way to work) 9. Your dream/goal? Lose weight, pay off car/student loans, become successful in my career. 10. The room you’re in? Living room #1 11.Your hobby? I guess my new one is blogging! 12. Your fear? Snakes, spide...

We just got back from our second rafting trip. This time we went through the Royal Gorge part of the Arkansas River where the rapids are much bigger. We had such a good time! I wish we would have bought some of the pictures because I wanted to post one, but for ONE, it was $27.95. We were not going to give in to that kind of extortion. Besides, there was only one good picture since we went through that particular rapid backwards. Well I do have some interesting stories to tell about this trip. First of all, I want to make it known that I did NOT fall in the river. Apparently, I only do that in the tame sections. On this trip, we opted to paddle, so we had to learn some commands to get through the rapids. The group of people we rafted with were not the best. The three in front were drunk (I know this because I could smell alcohol the entire time on their breath), the guy behind me was chewing tobacco and the guy behind Matt was French and didn't really know what was going on. We wen...

After a week of working, I can't complain. I also can't definitely say anymore how "adjusted" I am to living out here yet. Some days it seems better than others. When you live in one state for your entire life, moving 600 miles can't be expected to be easy. It seems like the "vacation" should be over about now and we should be going home. But this is home now. It just doesn't always feel that way yet. I was never the kid that got really homesick at camp when I was little, but I think I'm regressing. What I need is a "Kansas fix" (yes already, after 2 weeks!). It's a good thing my dad is coming out to Denver for a conference next week because that should do just the trick. In fact, we have a lot of visitors coming in the next couple months. Matt's dad and his wife are coming out around the first of August, our friend Jake is coming sometime in August and I'm sure we'll have others. If you haven't officially planned to...

Don't worry, I'm not going to write another long post about all the things I miss about Kansas. I do miss a lot of things, but if I think about it, it makes me sad. No, what this post is about is the fact that Matt starts his job on Tuesday and there are so many things that are going to change again. Since he'll be working from 2 pm to 10:30, we won't really see each other during the week. He'll get home as I'm going to bed and I'll get up before he does (most likely). It's going to be hard not being together for dinner and normal things like walking the dog and watching movies. It just seems like when things get semi-normal again, everything is thrown out of balance by another change. Well, on a better note, I think things at work are getting better. I was overwhelmed by how fast I was expected to know how to do this first project but my supervisor says I'm doing fine and I'm almost done with my first airport with not too many misses. (Ha! Misse...

Those of you who know me even a little know that I am big on recycling. At my old job, I would dig aluminum and plastic out of the little trash cans and either take them home or put them in an appropriate bin at work. I would constantly remind my co-workers not to throw away their cans. I brought a box to work so we could all recycle newspaper. I'm not as big of a recycling guru as my mom (she recycles EVERYTHING! Every scrap of paper, plastic or metal) but if she lived here in Denver, her life would be a lot easier. Recycling is HUGE here. All you have to do is have a designated bin and if something has a recycling symbol on it, you put it in the bin and they take it away and recycle it. You don't even have to SORT anything. I remember spending hours doing that in my youthful days. At my new job, there are recycling bins for everything. Batteries, cardboard, paper, you name it. I AM IN HEAVEN! I never knew before what to do with #3, 4 and 5 plastics. Not many places take them....

Today was the first day in a while that I spent mostly indoors. I started a new job and I will begin to post some pictures of our house, hence the title of this post. First of all, I want to thank everyone for all the good wishes for my first day. It went as well as expected, though I still am really missing the people I left at Western Air Maps. I do ultimately think this is a good move for me professionally. I have my own cubicle and was given a whole tray of new office supplies, a book shelf and a filing cabinet for my own personal use. The downside of this is that my computer was just ordered on Friday and it won't be here until Thursday at the earliest. I am thrilled to be having a new computer ordered just for me, I just wish it was here so that I could get my cube in order and not have to be in the way of my supervisor at his desk. The company I work for is called Woolpert, Inc. I am acutally working at a branch of Woolpert; their main headquarters are in Dayton, Ohio. There...

We just returned from another outdoor adventure. This one was a little more tame (as opposed to our rafting trip) as we went camping with one of my former roommates (Carlene) and her boyfriend Nick. While it was really hard to leave our friends and family in Kansas City, it is great to be able to spend time with friends here. I love going up in the mountains. We've done it twice now since we've moved here and I can't get over the smell of fresh pines and clean air. It's also fun to get away from the ringing of cell phones and the distraction of internet and video games. mention the cell phone thing because I posted an ad on Craig's List for free moving boxes and got so many calls in a few hours that I had to take the ad off. However, it was very convenient to have someone come to our house, flaten the boxes and take them away. We didn't have to do any work! Sorry...back to camping. We took our dog Pongo along for the trip. He seems to be adjusting great to the ...

I thought that since we are starting a new adventure in our lives, I would start blogging so that everyone can keep up with us now that we have moved to Denver. I apologize for the corny name of this blog. It came to me today while we were out rafting and it just kind of stuck. Anyway, I am getting a little ahead of myself. This whole moving process has been a big headache. About a month ago, Matt and I came out to Denver to find a house and for me to interview for the job I wanted. I got the job, and we thought we found the perfect house to rent (so we have more time to look for a house we want to buy). After about three weeks of trying to get the owner of the house to give us an official move-in date so we could sign a lease, the realtor we went through informed us that the owners no longer wished to rent the house. And since we had already booked our move with a moving company, we had no choice but to try to scramble and find something to rent online. To make this story short, no on...