Millards In The Mountains

Well Matt certainly has taken the reigns with our blog lately. I love it. I love reading what he writes about our lives from his perspective. I hope he keeps it up. I am very happy that this week is only 3 days long. I can’t wait to travel and see so many of each of our families. I can’t believe how well everything worked out, trying to organize 3 different Thanksgivings. Matt and I are going to be stuffed with food by this weekend. I am excited about driving and not having to limit what I bring back. It would be nice if we were making the trip in a nice new Highlander…but we are not done looking and test driving yet and my civic will really save us on gas. Plus, we want to compare prices in the Kansas City area. I am looking forward to heading to the Honda dealership to look at the Pilot. Anyhow, I promised good news so here it is. Today I was officially accepted to Purdue University for my M.S. in Geomatics! My heart was beating so fast as I opened up that email. (Yes, it’s email now...

Just a quick post about the weekend. I am getting excited for thanksgiving break and seeing family and stuff. I have had a good amount of time off of work now and am going to be able to use it to actually go home. Plans are to see Lor's family first in Kingman and then head to KC for my family. It will be fun and filling as I'm sure we will get lots of food. Hopefully we can see some friends somewhere along the way. This weekend we were just kinda lazy. It was fun. We did manage to do some research and test drove a couple of cars. It takes a long time to do that when the sales people talk a lot. We are looking at something a little bigger (SUV-type) so that we can have room to travel from here to the mountains to home with the dogs and other large objects (i.e. skis). We started with Toyota because we have friends with the 4Runner who just love it, so we wanted to look at that. While we were there we wanted to look at the Highlander also. Both of the cars we liked. I...

So, this is Matt again. It had been a while (ok a really long time) since I last blogged here for y'all and thought I would start up again. I will try to do more regular posts to give everyone my point of view on the world as well as some more pictures that, at this time, are only on my computer. First things first, the puppy!! Perdi is soooo cute. I know Laura felt bad a little bit about getting another dog cause we had it so good with Pongo, and he had it so good with us, but now he has a buddy to play with. They are really cute together, whether they are just laying there or chasing each other in the back yard. The thing that gets me about Perdi is her eyes. She has these bright green eyes. I just melt when she looks at me all tired with her eyes. Here is a pic that I took to demonstrate: Here is another one with her just being cute, same day: And now an obligatory picture of Pongo being cute. This is when we were driving with Susie to the mountains. I just love the p...

Life is certainly more entertaining these days. I am so proud of Pongo for getting over his jealousy and becoming a great "big brother" to Perdi. I have received some great tips from friends and the internet today for crate training and Perdi is already making good progress even though she is still a bit young to be left in the crate for significant periods of time (aka, an hour) but she is just starting to understand that she can go in there and hide from Pongo. He sometimes gets a bit too rough with her. We'll see how tonight goes, sleeping wise. She's chewing a puppy approved bone. Sleeping in the sun. I'm still contemplating options for thanksgiving. My mom sarcastically said we certainly picked great timing to get this dog, with the holidays coming up. She is right, of course. One of my co-workers offered to watch Perdi, which would certainly make things much easier. The only drawbacks are that she couldn't meet all of her Kansas relatives and we also ri...

Well call us crazy but we brought another little beagle home to join our family last Friday. Her name is Perdi (to go along with the 101 Dalmations theme) and she is a dream to train so far compared to Pongo. For example, she sleeps in the car instead of panting wildly. Her biggest downfall is the crying (shrieking) at night. It gets better each day though. So we are going through the stresses and sleeplessness of puppy training again. I think this must be like what having a second child is like. Luckily, the weather is cooperating wonderfully for potty training. Pongo is sharing his things well, including his water bowl. At first, he just wanted his space, but he is warming up to her and even plays with her quite often, even though she is so small. I love having a girl dog! Here, I have her dressed up in a little pink hoodie. I know she'll grow out of it, but I wanted to have a keepsake of her size when we got her. Almost everyone I have asked advice about beagles on has told me...

Here are some of the pictures from our latest trip back to Kansas. A view of the plaza from atop the Intercontinental Hotel. (That was where the wedding and Sunday brunch were held.) Ahhh Kansas City, we miss you! Sunday evening's hike on the Konza Prairie with my family. My camera is horrible at night, but I thought this picture of my mom was cool. The brother and I. Posing with my husband. I LOVE THIS PICTURE. I still love the view as much as any out here in Colorado. Yikes, a HUGE wolf spider! I almost stepped on it. Crossing the bridge, no more than three people at a time as the signs warned.

Here’s a new topic, strange as it may be: automatic toilets. We have them at work, and while I understand the idea behind them, I think they are dumb. Maybe it’s just the ones I deal with every day, but these things are so sensitive that as soon as I am one second from sitting down, they decide to flush. Not only is this a waste of water, but it’s annoying, especially if you really have to go to the bathroom. I’d rather just use my foot to flush… Now I am a good girl and wash my hands after I use the bathroom. But some of the ladies in this office building crack me up. They won’t even touch the door handle after washing their hands. (Sorry if you are one of these people.) I hate germs as much as the next person, but the reality is that they are everywhere. We are constantly in contact with them and no matter how many precautions we take, they are going to get on us unless we live in a bubble of Purell. Using the handicap button to automatically open the bathroom door is silly. And it l...

Yep, that's the most creative title I could come up with today. There really is no theme to this post so I guess it's fitting. I feel like I always talk about the same things anyway. I am in a major posting rut with new stuff to say. Anyway, here goes... I can’t believe it’s November already! The Christmas decorations are going up and it’s getting colder, yet I have not seen or heard any songs or commercials via TV/radio. Perhaps this is because I don’t watch nearly as much TV as I used to and I listen to talk radio almost all day. I read a lot at night for fun. I am going to miss that if/when I start school again. I still haven’t heard anything, but it’s only been 5 days since the application due date. I hope I can finish the Twilight series before then. I am on book 2 of 4 and can’t put them down! I’m sure many of you know what I am talking about. I am anxiously and selfishly awaiting the upcoming weekend. It’s going to be a Matt/Laura weekend unless we get any invitations fr...

This week has not been the best for sleep, at least in my case. I realized it is not a great idea to start the week by hopping on a flight from KC to Denver on Monday morning and then jetting straight to work after that. We had to get up at 5 am Kansas time (4 am Mountain). I could barely make it the 8.5 hours I spent at work that day. Tuesday was normal, sleepwise, which meant I still only got 6.5 hours of sleep. Any progress I made was all for naught though yesterday night. I stayed up past midnight watching the election results. This was my own fault. Tonight I got home and immediately fell into bed. No running, no dinner, NOTHING. It felt SO GOOD. I did worry Matt by not responding to texts or phone calls for 4 hours. But sometimes, you've just got to turn everything off in your life and let your body get what it needs. In my case, a huge helping of sleep. Matt and I had a wonderful weekend back in Kansas. We were attending a friend's wedding, which was not only beautiful, ...