Millards In The Mountains

Here are 25 random things about myself: 1. I consider it a good day when I haven’t spilled coffee on myself. 2. I have the worst memory in the world. I can be on my way to do something and forget what it is I was going to do. 3. I thought I was going to be an only child until I was 10, when my brother came along. 4. I never in a million years would have thought I would grow up to be a photogrammetrist and love my job so much. (Most of the time.) 5. My childhood heartthrob was Leonardo DiCaprio. I used to think I could converse with him telepathically. 6. I never really knew what college basketball was until I stepped foot on the KU campus. Then I became obsessed. 7. One of my biggest pet peeves is that no one in Denver seems to know what a turn signal is or how to use it. 8. I love “bad” weather. Rain, snow, sleet…it all puts me in a great mood. I only like sunny days when we are camping. 9. If I ever stop being a photogrammetrist, I want to open my own doggy day care. Cats will be wel...

I have gone through a blogging hiatus recently! I really need to update today because of the recent blizzard and weekend activities we have been through. First of all, I want to say thanks to all of you Facebook users who expressed concern over my status update on Thursday. It was something to the effect of “Laura has been stuck in her car for 1.5 hours in a blizzard and isn’t even halfway home!” Here’s the story: All week, we had been hearing forecasts of a huge snowstorm that would hit Denver on Thursday. When that day rolled around, I got up and went to work as usual. The roads were clear, nothing had happened yet, but Matt let me take the Highlander so I would have 4WD. It started snowing at my work around 9 am. It was a “pretty” snow, with huge flakes falling lightly. An hour later, I looked outside and saw a completely different scene. High winds were blowing snow in a complete white out blizzard and we were all warned to go home early so we wouldn’t get stuck. Apparently, the re...

This week is a big week for birthdays in the family, so I am going to dedicate this post to birthdays! As usual, we are late getting both cards and birthday blogs up and out in time! Here goes… First up, Matt’s dad’s birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday, Bill! Anyone that knows Bill, also knows how much of a “car fanatic” he is. I remember one of the first times I met Bill. I think it was during one of my visits to KC with Matt during our freshman or sophomore year and he and Matt had put me up for the night. In the morning by the time I got up, Bill had already washed my car’s windows and aired up the tires for me (and probably more)! I was so impressed that he had taken the time to do all of that, even though we barely knew each other. I certainly felt a lot safer driving back to Lawrence that day. I also remember being present at his birthday last year, which happened to fall on Easter. Barbara had a special "Cars" birthday party all planned out and it was a lot of fun. ...

Disclaimer: If you did not vote in my last post and do not want to see these pictures, please don't read this post! The teeth have dried blood on them and are not overly pleasant looking. :D For those of you who DID vote, (thanks Anna and Erin!) here are the pictures for your viewing pleasure. Here are the four of them! The penny is for a size reference. I couldn't take the shot from straight overhead because of the shadows, so the front ones look bigger. This one was the biggest. It was wider around at the top than my pinky finger! This one had a HUGE hole in it, yet it hadn't even broken the surface of my gum, so it seems odd that it would be a cavity! It could have been from the oral surgeon, but I doubt it. So there you have it, all you curious folks out there! This is what wisdom teeth look like! I wonder what the tooth fairy would give me for these babies!

Hello, everyone. With as long as it's been since my last post, you are probably wondering if I made it through my wisdom tooth extraction alright! Well, I am fine but it has been one crazy experience so far. I must say I was a little nervous about the whole operation. Thursday evening, Matt called on his way home from work and asked if I wanted anything for my “last meal.” What he meant was to ask if I wanted anything in particular since I wouldn’t be eating solid foods for a while, but it certainly didn’t ease my worries. :) Friday morning, I got up and showered and then took my valium, which took effect almost at once! I was pretty loopy on the way to the oral surgeon (luckily, Matt was driving). They took me back right away and about all I can remember is the prick of the IV going into my arm and the oral surgeon talking about KU Basketball and how unfortunate it was that they lost so early in the Big 12 tournament. I woke up about 45 minutes later to Matt holding my hand. It wa...

So, I will keep the writing short because it is half time of KU's Big 12 Tournament game and I have to get back in time to watch it. But, I do have a bunch of great pictures of the puppies and want to share them with everyone. Here goes. A closeup of Perdi, because I love her eyes. They didn't turn out was well as I would have liked, but I ended up with a really cool picture. Now, a pretty good picture of her eyes. Next is Pongo. He has been hanging out for some reason under the desk and it is really cute. Here is what he looks like Now Perdi and Laura @ the Dog Park. And Finally, Perdi streching out Have a great day and we will let you know how Laura's Mouth is soon!

For those of you who are going through P&P withdrawl, here are a few funny pictures I have taken lately. Matt has many more wonderful photos on his camera, which I might get to eventually, or see if he will do a photo post of his own soon. Yesterday, it was so warm that they just wanted to lounge in the sun on our back deck. Perdi is ALMOST as big as Pongo now, and she's only 5 1/2 months! She's going to be a big girl by our standards, but not more than 25 pounds. (That was her vet's projection.) Perdi would stay out in the sun all day if she could. We still don't trust her to do so, since she tries to dig under the fence and eat the side of the house. Pongo likes his bed, and sometimes Perdi's bed. It depends on the night. (The green one is his.) Perdi is completely healed from her operation and she likes to show it off. She has really enjoyed getting back out to the dog park. They go almost every day! Yesterday, I looked and looked for Perdi. I thought may...

Yesterday, I had my consultation appointment for my wisdom teeth extraction. I rebelled against my horrible dentist and found my own oral surgeon, other than the one she recommended. I really like this guy. He has a lot of experience and has a really small practice in Cherry Creek. He was very straight forward with me with worries and recommendations. Basically, he said my operation would be very easy after looking at my panoramic x-ray. There is one tooth with its roots very near a nerve, so he said that might cause me some additional pain. I am surprised that the operation will only take 45 minutes to an hour. I thought it would take longer. I was also pleasantly surprised that it will cost LESS THAN A CROWN for one tooth, to have 4 wisdom teeth taken out. My oral surgeon also pre-wrote my percriptions, so that we don't have to go fill them after I come out of surgery and am groggy and in pain. Very thoughtful...Matt says he gave me "the good stuff." :) I opted for gene...

Just a short post tonight. I haven't been blogging as much as I should lately. I just don't feel like I have much to say beyond the usual. However, I have had a very productive past couple of days. I got all caught up on homework and lectures and planned out the next few semesters of classes at Purdue. I think this one-class-per-semester way should be managable, so long as the courses are similar to the one I have now. For some reason, I REALLY enjoy statistics. I had an excellent professor at KU in the geography department who explained it so well that I still understand what's going on, even though it's an entirely different application of statistics. If it was practical, I would just do my Master's in stats. I don't think my company would pay for that though. I made a big mistake on Sunday night. Matt and I watched this scary zombie movie called Quarantine. I really love scary movies for some reason, especially ones that impact me enough that I keep thinking ...

Things have been pretty uneventful around our house lately. We did manage to get up into the mountains for some skiing on Saturday. We went with a couple of our friends to Keystone, which is pretty much the only place we’ve gone this season. I didn’t think I wanted to go down any blue runs after the last time we went night skiing. They are still a little intimidating to me. However, I hate holding people back and since I was by far the worst skier of the group, I got adventurous and did some easy blues. After a while, I went off by myself so that Matt could try his first black. I was definitely not going to attempt that. The green runs were really super crowded so I veered off on a blue called “Wild Irishman” which turned out to be a big mistake. Lesson learned: when a run is empty, there is a good reason. Wild Irishman was SO STEEP. I can’t believe they even classify it as a blue. So essentially, I ended up doing a near black run by myself. At least I wasn’t the only one going down th...