Millards In The Mountains

I don't have a whole lot of thoughts tonight, except around my little girl pup. Perdi finally seems to be growing up...or at least maturing a little bit. I have noticed this mostly in the past week. I still don't trust her to be out of my sight for very long, but this week, whenever I realized I couldn't see/hear her and went to find out what she was up to, I would mostly find her either chewing quietly on a bone or sleeping in her kennel! *Long sigh of relief* Also, Perdi did us a big favor and let us sleep in as long as we wanted this weekend; another sign that she is growing up. Granted, one of us still has to get up and let them out early in the morning, but Perdi has been quite content to hop back in to bed and settle down for some more sleep. *Another long sigh of relief* I am happy to see her moving out of puppyhood. She has put us through quite a lot the past few months. (Many of our lamps are out of commission due to chewed and severed cords, for example.) She stil...

Usually I dread weekends when Matt has to work. This weekend was one of those weekends, but I think I really made the best of it, for myself and for Matt. It all started on Friday. Nick and I planned a surprise birthday party for Carlene. I left work a little early to get things ready for the party and ended up getting home right as Matt left for work. That was probably the worst part of the weekend. He was upset that he didn't get to see me more and I felt incredibly guilty for not being there sooner, since I got off work early anyway. Not fun. The party was great though. Carlene was surprised and we had a good turnout thanks to Nick and his mad emailing skills. :) Poor Carlene...she had just gotten off a plane from a week long business trip in Phoenix and was probably exhausted. Here are a couple pictures of the birthday girl... When I got home from Carlene's on Friday, I was SO tired. I fell asleep until Matt got home at 10:45. He convinced me to get back up and go out to Ol...

Happy Friday everyone! I just finished putting the final touches on the last "Monday" series post. This is a collection of recent photos I stole from my husband's camera. He is such a great photographer...much better than me! Here are our puppies chasing each other through the dog park. As you can see, the vegetation is very dense...lots of great places for snakes to hide. Matt braved the dog park today...the first time the dogs had been there in at least a month! This next bunch of photos are of course more of our precious puppies. Perdi sleeping in the sunlight. She looks almost angelic, quite the contrary to the way she acts when she is awake... Pongo in a cute sleeping position atop the couch. He thinks he owns the couch and remote...just one way he is much like his "daddy." :) Sometimes it is a fight for the sunlight. Pongo is getting inched out here. The rest of these photos are ones Matt took on our camping trip at the beginning of this month at Golden...

I am going to try not to get in the habit of posting about my dreams. Most of the time they don't make sense and I'm sure nobody really wants to hear about them that much. But the one I had Monday night dug up an OLD childhood memory that I had almost forgotten and brings up a semi-interesting story. I'll start with the story. I can't even remember how old I was during the period but it was sometime in elementary school when my mom took on the job of executive director at her office. She had to make some tough decisions, including having to let go of a lady that worked there. Well this woman's husband went NUTS. His name was Ernie and he did all sorts of things in the wake of his wife being let go. The harassment was mostly on the level of him making tons of random phone calls to us where he would burp on the phone and then hang up. Some nights, he would call over and over again and do the same thing every night. It progressed to him driving past our house and steal...

One of my favorite TV shows to watch is “Jon and Kate Plus 8”. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a show which chronicles the life of a couple (Jon and Kate) with twins and sextuplets. Last night, Jon and Kate made a big (but expected) announcement. They are getting divorced. Due to all of the rumors in the media, this was not a shock. But I find it ironic that Jon and Kate started doing the show because it was “what was best for the kids.” Granted, it made them a LOT of money and skyrocketed them to fame. But ultimately, and I can only speculate, (they don’t ever really officially say what specifically lead to the divorce) that the fame and money are what dissolved their marriage. Clearly, the show was not really what was best for the kids in the end. I think I am mostly upset about this because I just read Kate’s book “Multiple Blessings,” which was written a couple years ago when she and Jon were still completely in love. I miss that. I really love their story. It was hard to rea...

A couple very important celebrations occurred this weekend while we were gone. First of all, since Father's Day was Sunday, I just have to send a big ol' Happy Father's Day out to all of the dads in my life. Grandpa Govert, Bill and of course my own dad...I am honestly at a loss for words to describe how lucky I am to have you in my life, each in your own different way. I am especially thankful for my dad. We have been chatting a lot more by phone recently and this is something I really enjoy and appreciate. Sometimes I call my dad after I get really worked up by a political debate I have been having with various people. It's nice to hear someone who agrees with me on pretty much everything in that regard, espcecially when I sometimes feel completely alone in my views. Of course there are many many more things that I appreciate about my dad, but that is just one thing that comes to mind as I write this. The second part of this post belongs to my wonderful husband, who c...

Well I didn't mean for it be a whole week between posts! It seems I got really caught up trying to get everything ready for our trip to Ames. Dont worry...I have much in store this week! I have so much I need to post...I have already finished most of a multi part series and I will post them gradually through the week. I'm going to start with some pictures and stories of our trip to Ames, since I happen to have Matt's camera plugged in to my computer for once! I mentioned in my last blog post how I felt a bit like a travel agent and how I had booked a reservation with Enterprise for a rental car. Well Matt and I left good and early on Friday morning to go get our car since an agent had called the night before to let us know that we should "come in early because he didn't know if he would have the exact car we requested." I took this to mean that maybe we would get an upgrade, or possibly a little compact car which would not be ideal but it would work. It turns ...

I absolutely cannot believe that it is mid June already. Time seems to be flying by! In four days, we will be celebrating Matt’s birthday with a road trip to Ames, Iowa for our friend Laura’s wedding. In three weeks, we will be official residents of Colorado for a year! We will also be back in KC to celebrate the 4th of July. Hopefully this year when we drive back with my brother in tow, we won’t have quite as much stress. (See my very first Mountain Millard blog post.) I feel like a travel agent as of late, booking weekend trips and campsites. For our Iowa trip, I just finished taking care of the details for the dogs. (thanks again for picking up our puppies on Sunday, Carlene!) I also took care of our hotel reservations and rented a car. We decided to rent a car for this trip because we have put quite a few miles on the Highlander already with our drives to KC, Manhattan and Kingman in the past few months. We are also trying to conserve miles on the Civic in case we decide to trade i...

I have been having fantastically realistic dreams (nightmares?) lately. There seems to be no end to them. Last week, I dreamed that I climbed up the stairs of a water tower-like structure. When I got to the top, the stairs had magically disappeared and I was suddenly crazy scared of heights, which has never been an issue for me before. I woke up just as I was starting to really panic in my dream and it took me about 30 minutes to calm down. Yesterday, I took a nap when I got home from work. I was dreaming that I was home alone with the dogs and the doorbell rang. A guy was standing on my front porch talking on his cell phone with his back to me. I somehow knew that he was going to violently attack me and at the same time that the front door suddenly disappeared. Then I woke up. Last night I had another nightmare as well, but I can’t remember it well enough to retell. The most vivid part occurred in the middle of the night and was lost on me by morning. Anyhow, I am not really sure what...

This is another "tag" I received 3 times! (From Anne, Erin and Casie) So I figured I better just do it...it looks pretty fun. EIGHT Things I Am Looking Forward to: 1. Sleeping in this weekend. 2. Our upcoming road trip to Ames, Iowa in a week for Laura and Ryan's wedding. 3. Having a whole day with my husband on Sunday...now I just need some fun plans to fill the day! 4. Spending our 4th of July weekend in KC and everything it will bring. 5. The theater release of New Moon. But I don't think that happens until November. 6. Having Matt bring me lunch at work today. 7. Our next camping trip, whenever that may be... 8. ALL of our summer visitors, whether or not I know you are coming! EIGHT Things I Did Yesterday: 1. Woke up at 5:30 am and went to work. 2. Sent a couple emails to co-workers who live close to me about the issued tornado warnings for our neighborhood. (I swear, we live in the "tornado alley" of Denver, which is fine by me!) 3. Donated some unwante...

Here are a few photos of our first camping trip of the summer. I didn't take as many pictures as I hoped, but at least I got some! By the way, GGCSP stands for Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is where we spent the weekend. Our campsite...with the tarp set up as a wind break. It was SO windy. Pongo in a chair, thinking he is a human. :) I got Matt a surprise for our first camping outing...a camp axe! Here, he is having fun chopping up a pine branch (which was already cut from a tree). Sometimes I wonder if this was a wise purchase. :) Perdi did fairly well for her first camping trip. She definitely does not like the camp fire or the smoke. But she was a trooper. We brought her sweater and Pongo's jacket because our dogs are spoiled. But it turns out that the evenings were really chilly, so I'm glad I packed them. Pongo is definitely an indoor dog, even in the wilderness. As you can see, he made himself at home in our tent. At "Dude's Fishin' Hole" a...

Yesterday afternoon, Matt and I decided to go out for a run after we got home from camping and unloaded the cars. We had just stepped outside, when it started raining a tiny bit. We started to reconsider whether or not to go running, but the rain is so sporadic out here, that we decided to just go for it anyway. It was mostly my decision...I was aching to get out and run after how badly I ate on our camping trip. However, this was not one of the better decisions I have made in my life... We had no issues for the first 2/3 of the run. It felt really good and we were running at a good pace. Then huge raindrops started falling around us. The raindrops turned into small pieces of slushy hail. Then the tornado sirens started to go off. We quickened our pace a bit because we had no other option other then to get home. We weren’t far away and of course we had left our poor puppies in the back yard. We turned the last corner of the run and I immediately gasped at the tornado I saw forming a co...

This summer, I will be participating in an activity I haven’t done since grade school. I joined a kickball league! I am very excited to get started, yet I wonder how good that this I will be. If grade school is any indicator, I will be the awkward and unathletic kickball player on the team who always gets out. However, I am hoping that there won’t be certain boys who pitch (more like hurl) the ball as hard as they can with the sole purpose of inflicting pain this time around. It will help if I am not scared of the kickball. :) We shall see. I am hoping for the best, and predicting disaster. More than anything, I am excited to have an “activity” to keep me busy. It was so nice having Matt home for two evenings this week. I miss him so much and long to spend more time with him. I hate feeling like we lead separate lives. But we knew this was how things would be for a while when we made the decision to move here. Anyway, things should get better by the time fall rolls around but I don...

I can’t believe how much rainy weather we have had lately. Of course, I am loving it all! I decided on Sunday that I needed a “personal day,” so I took a nap and read Breaking Dawn (the fourth “Twilight” book) until I finished. I had no choice. I couldn't put it down, and when I did, I couldn't stop thinking about it and anticipating what it had in store.I was so sad to finish that series and now I can’t wait until the second-fourth movies come out! I am considering re-reading the four books again already. Matt and I have been in a bit of a funk lately. For me, our completely polar opposite schedules are just starting to get to me, as well as other things going on in my life right now. For him, I think it’s stress about deciding which position would fit him best at the hospital now that his #1 choice has gone to someone else. I think he has made a solid decision and is starting to get excited now. This position would move him primarily to days. Matt has it a lot worse than me w...